Indie Entertainment – The Production Hardware

In this article series, we’re looking at how you can successfully run an independent self-published entertainment company by looking at the example of video production.

The technology of filmmaking has changed enormously in recent times. A lot of that is thanks to a man named Jim Jannard, who openly stated that he was out to reinvent the camera industry. Of course Mr. Jannard had the advantage of drawing on his experience founding the company Oakley. As recently as 2006 the Red One camera was released by Jannard’s new company Red Digital Cinema Camera Company.

The Original Red One Camera

The Red One was a total revolution in filmmaking. Weighing in at only ten pounds, it was tiny and highly portable compared to film and high-end digital cinema cameras. Moreover, it used an interchangeable lens system that allowed for PL mounts (a common lens mount for cinema lenses) but also allowed 35mm still-camera lenses to be used. These lenses, while not ideal from the standpoint of traditional feature film production, nonetheless produced images of great beauty at vastly reduced lens costs. Moreover, the Red One is an extremely modular camera, which comes with the base camera body and can be built up with optional viewfinders, recording devices, etc. It can be had for $25k compared to the $150K or more that cameras for feature and television production were costing. With a downpayment of $2500 you can get started.

The Indie Loves Modularity

A lot of people criticized the Red One for it’s pricing model, pointing out that with all the accessories available the camera could soon cost the same amount as more expensive cameras. This is missing the point. The Red One allows filmmakers to get started and scale up with modules as they need them, which is much more cost-effective than outlaying a big pile of cash up front. It was this initial outlay of money that prevented a lot of people from getting into serious entertainment filmmaking.

The Epic and Scarlet are are more modular

Since the Red One came out, the company has gone on to produce two more cameras, both released within this year. They are called the Epic at the high end, and the Scarlet at the lower end. Both are amazing cameras and most indie shooters I know would love to get their hands on them. Yet the cost is still prohibitive for many to get these cameras. But Red did indeed set the camera industry on it’s head with their “DSMC” philosophy – the merging of the digital still and motion camera. And other companies have picked up on this, lowering the barrier still further for indie filmmakers. Enter the DSLR.

Rise of the Digital SLR for Video

A year after the Red One came out, Canon corporation were issuing an update to their Canon 5D digital single-lens reflex camera used for shooting high-quality still images. The camera can take images up to 21 megapixels, and has a wide array of lenses available both from Canon and other manufacturers. But the SLR market is a competitive one, with many cameras vying for sales in the space, and Canon added a small addition to try to stand out from competitors. They added the ability to shoot short video sequences in high definition. They had no idea what they were about to set in motion.

Primed by the Red One, filmmakers began to experiment with the 5D MkII in shooting video, and found that the images had a gorgeous quality. Moreover, the high quality of the 36×24 mm CMOS sensor in the camera allowed for shooting in much lower light conditions than would usually be possible. And the wide array of lenses allowed for manipulating the depth of field in ways quite uncommon to filmmakers shooting on film and even high-end digital cameras. Even experienced directors began to bring the camera along on productions and shoot experimentally with it. A whole new style of filmmaking became possible, as camera moves that would have been awkward or impossible on large rigs began to find their way into productions. Best of all, the price point to shooting with the 5D began at around 5K for a very good setup.

Despite the excitement, the 5D had never been intended as a serious video camera. Ingenious methods were found to deal with it’s limitations, and third party companies like Zacuto introduced accessories like rails systems that allowed a variety of stabilizers, mounts, viewfinders and the like to be added to the camera. These brought up the price tag, but again in a modular way that allowed filmmakers to get started and scale up as funds and scope allowed. The biggest problem with the camera was the firmware – the software that it ran upon. It was very unprepared for the popularity of video shooting, especially in the area of sound recording (which frankly is garbage on the 5D).

Canon figured out they were on to a good thing and released a second camera highly equipped for video work, the 7D. The 7D came with a similar ability to shoot high definition video, but with a slightly smaller APS-C sensor. Effectively this meant the 7D could shoot high-def like the 5D, but the effective range of any lens used with the camera would be reduced compared to the more expensive 5D. Many came to prefer the 7D as a very good video shooter with a rugged body, more options in frame rates, and better firmware.

In the period between 2008 and 2010, the entire process of shooting video has been turned upside down, a condition that usually favours the independent producer. (When everything is stable, the established players benefit the most). Other camera companies scrambled to produce their own video-capable DSLRs and there are now a wide variety available at various price-points and feature sets.

Despite the popularity of the video DSLRs, one limitation has remained firmly in place. No camera maker has allowed a clean signal out from a DSLR. By this, I mean you can’t get a full-quality video signal out of a DSLR directly into a computer, free of on-screen graphics at the correct frame rate. You must record to memory cards and transfer to your computer. This would seem like a natural feature, but the camera companies are not willing to do this, as they all sell high-end video cameras and chances are very good that their sales would plummet if the DSLR was merely the light-capturing instrument and all the recording could take place on a relatively inexpensive computer.

So where does it go from here? Shooters have realized that the high-end cameras used in feature film and broadcast production are overkill for video bound for self-publishing on the web and a variety of other digital formats like mobile devices. Yet the DSLRs still lack some of the features necessary for proper video production (despite their gorgeous image quality) and production values are steadily climbing for web video. This has spawned a new in-between class of cameras that are brand new. This class is still being figured out by manufacturers, and we’ll examine some of the early entries in the next article.