Gizmodo: red camera

RED to Make Another, Even Bigger Announcement on December 3rd

John Herrman — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:51:20 EST

RED CEO Jim Jannard, who generally manages to construct all sentences using only intensifiers and superlatives, is getting really excited on the RedUser forums again:

New announcement on Dec. 3rd. Everything has changed... just as we promised. :-)

:-)? :-)? What do your cryptic smilies mean, Jim?

He goes on to say that the new announcement will make November 13th seem 'insignificant', which is, let's be honest here, quite a claim to accompany such a vague pre-announcement. [RedUser —Thanks, Øyvind]

RED Teases Nov 13th Announcement With Cryptic Renders, More Hyperbole

John Herrman — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 07:24:52 EST

RED CEO Jim Jannard is either an incredible visionary or prone to serial exaggeration. Just yesterday, he deigned to visit the RED forums, promising that "[RED is] doing things we never thought possible... When we do post, it will be very obvious why we needed a bit more time to 'spill the beans'." As a teaser, he decided to spill two of those beans early, in the form of vague, zoomed-in renders of RED's new HIV-curing, hunger-ending, climate-stabilizing übercamera.

Owners of any number of popular DSLRs will notice some familiar controls in these renders, but what does that mean? It seems obvious that Jannard's lovable breathlessness is for his new RED DSLR (or DSMC, I guess), and that his enthusiasm hasn't been diminished in light of the stunning video performance of Canon's 5D DSLR. RED certainly has a track record of innovation, but could Canon have beat them to the DSLR HD video punch? [RedUser via Crunchgear]

A Viral-Video Making Comedy Group Takes Aim at Hollywood with Help from the RED Camera

Adam Frucci — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 14:40:00 EDT

Derrick is a comedy trio who's been making short comedic videos for the web for a few years. You've probably seen at least a few of them in the past. But now, they've set their sights higher: they want out of the internet comedy ghetto and into the mainstream. How're they going to do that? By making their own feature-length movie outside of the Hollywood system, with the help of the super-powerful RED camera. Welcome to the future of movies, where the playing field has been leveled.

According to DC Pierson, one of the members of Derrick, the only way they were able to make a feature-length (and Hollywood-quality) film on their own was because of the affordability of renting the RED camera. "The budget was extremely small and we probably would not have been able to shoot the movie were it not for this technology and its affordability. The RED leveled the playing field for us and will do so for other filmmakers. It absolutely did and it absolutely will."

The next step for the movie? Now that it's complete, they're submitting it to festivals such as Sundance and looking for a distributor. Whether or not their attempt to turn internet fame into Hollywood success will work out is still to be seen, but one thing's for sure: with incredibly powerful cameras like the RED becoming cheap enough for first-timers to use, this is certainly not the last time we'll be seeing Hollywood outsiders skipping the system altogether. [Mystery Team]