JIM JANNARD RESIGNS as Face of RED

[Jacques Mersereau]

My Final Post....

Love him or hate him, no one can deny the man has accomplished amazing things.

For me, Jim put together an amazing team that has turned the industry upside down, creating many winners along with many losers.
All too often innovators suffer the brunt of attacks, skepticism and worse.
Sure, sometimes they bring it on themselves, other times it is unwarranted - the spawn of fear and personal self interest.
Despite all the failings, shortfalls, and missed delivery times, my hat is off to Jim Jannard for his and his teams' accomplishments. I do put Jim in the same category as visionaries like Steve Jobs.

As always, YMMV.

Peace out.

[Bill Koehler]

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

[Jon Fairhurst]

ACT I: Oakley
ACT II: RED
ACT III: To be written...

[Zach Love]

I really got excited about Red in 2008 after their NAB announcements, mostly Scarlet 3k for $3k. When they had a big announcement in the fall of 2008, I planned my day around it. I was disappointed, butstill excited, that that announcement all but got rid of everything they announced at NAB & replaced it with an entirely new plan. Eventually it became obvious that even that new plan was thrown out & another new plan was pitched. This is about where I stopped really following & being excited about Red. (Mostly because what they were delivering wasn't what I needed.)

So as someone who is not a Red fanboy, I have to say it is as clear as the sky is blue that Jim Jannard helped change the camera industry for the better. Red has been a great example of how the free market can get shaken up by a small group of people wanting to do great things.

I have yet to own, rent, shoot or even touch with a Red camera. Maybe that will change in the future, maybe it won't. But I do know for sure, I have benefited from Jim creating Red because I use cameras to make my living & he provided competition that forced cameras to be better & cheaper.

I wish him the best & nothing but future success to Red.

[D.J. Ammons]

The link to the blog did not work for me.

My thoughts are similar to Zach's. While I was disappointed that Red's business plan evolved from bringing a high resolution cinema camera to the masses to a much more expensive product line targeted to the professional feature film, episodic tv, and commercial filmmaker, there is no denying they changed the playing field.

I don't think there is anyway we would be seeing the Sony PMW F55 or the Canon C500 at the price point they are it if it were not for the inroads into the professional filmmaking industry that RED has made.

Interestingly enough it looks like Blackmagic Design is going to be the one to deliver on the initial promises RED made.

[Bob Hart]

One of the best bits of all was that the RED adventure, at least in the public and interactive stages, kicked off right here on dvinfo net with Mr. Jannard himself posting as the Madman.

As with the 35mm adapter and the SI2K, it was a grand adventure. One looks forward to many other good things gestating right here on this forum. Kudos to Chris Hurd and others for making this place happen.

[John Richard]

I think we all owe a great deal to Jim J and his team's successes.
Red truly is responsible for bringing digital capture close to film along with workflows that no longer require an expensive chemical process and bring so much of the process right on set. Look at how much they have done since inception. It isn't just sensors and cameras - it is a whole workflow.

And they are not through yet! Delivery/projection/RedRay.

The man has some guts to spend a good part of his fortune on a roll of the dice on a dream that came from his hobby. How many would do that? And make it succeed. Sorry that all the excitement was finally overwhelmed by those who make the easy choice to highlight the negative. Shake it off - you guys have done a marvelous thing - and did it from scratch. THANK YOU!

[Brian Drysdale]

Just a reminder that there were a number of other people and companies involved in that process. Some of these were working on this at or before the time RED started, the previously mentioned SI 2K and Jeff Kreines.

[Jim Martin]

DJ -"I don't think there is anyway we would be seeing the Sony PMW F55 or the Canon C500 at the price point they are it if it were not for the inroads into the professional filmmaking industry that RED has made".

I'm not so sure on that....at least with Canon. The C300 & C500 were a result of the massive world wide sales of the 5DII, not RED. According to the numbers I heard, Canon was doing roughly 200,000 5DIIs a month for something like 4 years.....2 years into that is what caused Canon to start the Cinema EOS project. As for the F55/F5, Sony was already into 4K so those cameras were just 1) a continuation of their evolution and 2) rushed out a bit because of the success of the C300.....IMHO

Jim Martin
Filmtools.com

[Bill Pryor]

I agree with Jim there. Canon brought the big chip to the masses, and the F5 and 55 were probably Sony's hurry up move to the C300 and 500. While we can thank Canon for getting the big chip down to an affordable level for anyone, Sony has surpassed them, in my opinion, with the FS100 and FS700. Now there's a "real" digital cinema camera for anybody's pocketbook, from the FS100 at a DSLR price all the way up to the F65. Not to mention the impending arrival of the Black Magic digital cinema cam.

[Ray Bell]

My prediction...

Its just time the baby boomers retire and go away.. leave the world to work out our spoils...

[Jipsi Kinnear]

I remember the original thread where the seeds were planted. Very few can say, they in fact did put their money where their mouth was and back up their talk. Kudos to Jim for doing so, he may not have started the revolution but he certainly did have a major hand in kicking it into high gear. I'm a reformed luddite due in large part to people like Jim and forums such as DV Info. Thanks to both.

[Barry Goyette]

I think the man deserves his due. He did reshape the landscape. Simply conceiving of a US based camera manufacturing company was enough...but he has pushed an envelope that didn't want to be pushed, and we've all benefitted from it. The industry is more alive at least partially because of him.

However, Jim Jannard did it with a hell of a lot of hype. He did it on the internet. He used that internet to build his company, often in ways that were occasionally "border-line" and frankly he personally trashed a lot of people and companies in the process. To now claim that he didn't deserve the criticism, that he's tired because people on the internet are mean...and that because of "them" he doesn't want to play anymore...well...that's pretty funny, don't you think?

I watched dissenters get publicly shamed on reduser for merely suggesting that there might be flaws in the system. I hardly ever saw the big guy step in and stop it. Actually...I saw him regularly add to the pile-on when it suited his needs.

The man deserves his due, all right. He created a great camera company. That company will continue to prosper and innovate. As he said, the public face is now Jarred...a person who is much better suited to the job. But the rest of it...the reason "why" he's stepping back...well that's just more hype and BS...which unfortunately, is business as usual for Mr. Jannard.

[Jon Fairhurst]

Well, nobody ever accused Jim of having a small personality. It takes a bold person to do bold things. Hey, it's not only his cameras that have "large attachments." ;)

As I count it, RED had many wins and only a small number of losses. The 3K Scarlet was the biggest loss. The hype got ahead of the reality on that one. And, yes, schedules slipped regularly. That happens with product engineering. I just doesn't usually happen that publicly. (The openness during development was another bold approach.) Still, ONE, EPIC, Scarlet2, and Dragon plus all their support are huge accomplishments. No camera manufacturer releases a mid/high end camera without first studying the RED product line.

Personally, I hope Jim rests up - and then gets bold again. :)

[Sabyasachi Patra]

There is always a tendency of people to glorify a departed soul or a retired person. We saw worldwide outpourings of sympathy when Princess Diana died and similarly after each celebrity passes away. It is not a comment on those departed souls, but I am just trying to point out that people normally try to forget the blunders and only pick the positives and amplify those many times.

5D Mark II with its video really democratised filmmaking. After the launch of 5D II, a number of Hollywood filmmakers got in touch with Canon and urged it to move seriously in this direction. Introduction of 5D II increased the number of guys shooting video. The market got expanded. Lot of people started trying out video and many moved up stream to shoot with costlier equipment and bigger productions. Companies started lowering costs and created products with similar functionalities at a cheaper cost to tap into the new class of video shooters. The increased base of shooters helped the overall economies of scale. So I would say that it is 5D II that had a massive impact on filming.

On the other hand, RED coined the slogan 3k for 3k. That attracted many people to RED. Jim realised that they didn't have the bandwidth to create a mass market product. So RED moved further up. Nothing wrong, as companies need to create strategies for their own survival. Jim Jannard did well to envision a product and make it successful. Full marks to him. However, to deify him and attribute the change in film industry solely to him is wrong.

In my country and in many asian cultures, the society is paternalistic. The CEO is looked upon as a father figure. We can't imagine a CEO making inflammatory remarks in his forum and after a number of sharp responses from other users the thread gets locked.

Please understand that most of the decision making is not often rational. When you study the psyche of individuals, you will realise that people perceive certain products as good or bad based on other considerations. Not many people will buy the product when they hate your personal philosophy. So it is better that Jim moves himself from these uttering which are a PR managers nightmare.

Fist fights, bazookas, bomb reps, bomb squad, bomb EVF.... I am a wellwisher, but I do have trouble with such nomenclature and use of such jargon against competition. As such the security in airport is so tough. A number of times I am asked to dismantle the rycote zeppelin, show each lens, connect the EVF and show the camera etc etc. Don't want to say that I am carrying a bomb EVF. :)

It is true that competitors keep an eye on RED and are releasing high resolution cameras just to keep one feet on that side of the fence for customers who get swayed by the high resolution hype.

On the other hand, RED too follows its competitors. For example, RED held their own announcement of Scarlet on Nov 3, 2011 in direct competition to Canon C300. The product was created to compete with C300.

Similarly, the EPIC price was slashed in response to the impending response of Sony F5/F55. The talk of efficiencies leading to price cut is just a load of bull. They even tried to stall the shipments of Sony F5/F55 by filing legal challenges. The initial dragon footage looks good. Buy it due to its own merits and not because someone told you.

Gentlemen, this is cut throat business. Don't get misled by talk of so called altruistic moves. Its a camera, not your wife. :) And howsoever beautiful the wife may be, I haven't heard of too many people fighting to defend their father-in-law. :)