The same thing is about to happen in the film business. Making a cinema quality movie remains an extremely expensive enterprise. The digital revolution has made movie making a mass market proposition, but professional quality has remained far out of reach. The gold standard is 35mm film run through a professional movie camera. HD digital cameras are widely used for TV and some cinema productions. But HD is nowhere near 35mm in terms of quality, and the cameras have limitations compared to traditional film cameras.
Red Digital Cinema surfaced two years ago with claims of a new digital movie camera that would hammer traditional movie technology. They promised three revolutionary features. A 35mm quality sensor, an ability to take standard movie camera lenses, and a price of less than 1/10th that of professional motion picture cameras. According to a feature in Wired (watch the video), they have delivered all three. The $17,500 4K Red One captures 4,096 x 2,304 pixels and takes off-the-shelf professional lenses. That compares to 1,920 x 1,086 for a $150,000 HD camera that cannot take standard lenses. Or to a standard 35mm movie camera from Panavision that rents for $25,000 a month and delivers in the region of 4K resolution. Plus film, development and scanning. This can be worth several hundred thousand dollars for a feature film. The 4K outputs to hard drives. And hard drives are cheap. Its also smaller than an HD camera and much, much smaller than a film camera. Size and weight are important as they limit what can be done with the camera. Shots using cranes, booms and helicopters are rare in all but the most expensive films due the cost of cranes, booms and helicopters.
This is apparently only the beginning. Really epic films used to be shot in 70mm rather than 35mm. That's about halfway between 35mm quality and Imax quality. Unfortunately, the cost became so great that the last film shot entirely in 70mm was Ryan's Daughter in 1972. The splendor and impact of such visual quality disappeared from movie making. Red is promising a 5K camera next year. Obviously, they can go further. But even if that was all, 5,000 lines of resolution is better than anything since 70mm became uneconomic.
They are also promising a 3K camera next year. Its incredibly small, can be controlled wirelessly, and will be cheaper yet I expect. Still cameras are also under consideration. High-end professional digital cameras cost upwards of $40,000.
All very interesting from a technology and cost point of view. But there is an interesting asthetic promise as well. Over the last 15 years, movies have used more and more digital effects. Not only are they cheaper than the real thing, but can deliver scenes that could never be filmed at any price. For example, the 250,000 strong Orc army in Return of the King. A steadily larger slice of what we see on the screen is CGI. Despite being a digital technology, Red holds the promise of making traditional film making techniques more cost-effective. Unlike many at my end of the political spectrum, I believe technology is more liberating than dictatorial. To paraphrase uh, someone, communication becomes democratic when the people control the means of production. The artist in me is please also because digital has come to mean crap. Crappy digital music, crappy digital pictures and crappy digital video. Technologies like Red will hopefully change that.
