can keep the production costs with canon to 1/2 or 1/3 compared to red.....that is huge....
A friend of mine who is a good photographer says to me why would any still photographer go into motion, because in comparison to their still talents vs. motion talents, motion is a still photographer's C game.
I don't disagree and not singling out any one person or talent, 90% of the video work you see on the web and 99% of these type of video promos for camera companies are at best a B game and usually C to D, when you compare the final result to high end theatrical or commercial productions.
But . . . when you step back and think about it,
the Web is the C game when it comes to publishing, video, entertainment and compared to most forms of established, traditional media and right now clients do ask for video in conjunction with a still shoot, even if it's a little shaky, a little off color or a little disjointed in how it tells the story.
Not that you can't shoot a great project with a 5d, but if you have serious production money and serious production values, then why do it on a $200 per day rental camera when there is a world full of panaflex's and arriflex's or for that matter RED rentals that are falling out of the trees and stacked on shelves in just about every major city.
This RED vs 5d thing reminds me of the medium format vs. dslr conversation that goes on and on. Yes I am sure the RED shoots a superior motion segment compared to the 5d (except in extremely low light), but what is the intended medium, a 180 ft. screen of a 3" web movie?
And whether you shoot a 5k or 2k camera, it's all at it's biggest going to be 1920 across. (I know there is a difference in recording methods, but regardless 1920 is 1920).
Now I agree with TMark that I don't see the point of taking the goodness of the 5d which is small, quick and light and locking it down with 1000lbs of accessories, remote focus pulling from lcd's and using it as a stationary camera, just because you can do it. At that point, rentals and end cost you could go the RED route or really just shoot film, because the cost is not that much different.
It's interesting, I was just inches away from buying a RED and I'm talking about credit card in hand, list made out, phone number dialed, then I hung up the phone, because I had a flashback of my medium format experiment and realized for a sometimes 20% quality improvement over a dslr, I was going to spend double, triple, even quadruple the costs of a 5d and a lot of what RED says is still to come, plus the learning curve. It just was way too much deju vu.
Plus you have the feeling that at any moment, Canon can just say "watch this" and come out with a 8000 iso, 4k raw shooting dslr, that sells for 6 grand. (I'm not saying they will, but I think we all know they can).
Also in today's market, (finances, not the photography market) cash is king and spending on the hope of business to come is risky business.
I'm all for investing in my business and invested in the video learning curve all the way back to the xl1 days, but video/stills or still/video combination shoots are still in the their infancy in regards to a business model. Some clients pay quite well, some want video thrown is as an add on, but regardless, the business model is not yet set and who pays what is still an ongoing process, what takes precedent, the stills or the video is also very project dependent.
As far as VL's videos, they nice, Spielberg won't lose any sleep and by VL's his own admission the whole idea of a high iso, small camera is the price and speed of production, but you can't knock him for his 15 minutes in the sun, the trick is to stretch it to a few years and at that point your really busting heads with some big guys.
Still, I think all of this video stuff is in it's infancy. People want it, I get asked for it every project, though few clients have a real game plan on where it's exactly going to run, how it's going to be used, it's just a reflection of the economic times. They spend X dollars on still production so might as well add a few more bucks and get some motion.
They key to all of this is how the photographer makes it profitable and more importantly usable for a client. Having a photo assistant double as a sound technician doesn't cut it, using a still tripod with a 50mm Canon 1.4 lens doesn't lend itself to first rate movie making. Eventually it all evens out and whether your a still photographer or a commercial director, you've got to pay real money and hire the real pros.
Regardless, the professionals using the 5d2 are still spending as much on production as ever before, they're just using little cameras instead of big ones.
P.S.
Now what I really would have thought would happen with the internet/video/vimeo/youtube revolution would be some very smart, hip talents out there making some very smart, ground breaking videos. You know dropping a little ipod nano into a Martini glass and shooting in a club scene, mounting cameras on some hot chicks neck as she parties through the night, something that was different, something that traditional film making just isn't set up for.
Maybe it's out there, I've seen a few, but finding them on utube is kind of like typing in the words business on Getty One. You get about 10,000 links to a bunch of stuff nobody wants to see.
IMO.
BC
