Red Digital Cinema is an American camera manufacturer specializing in digital cinematography headquartered in Foothill Ranch, California, United States.
The company has studios in Hollywood, Los Angeles and has offices in London, Shanghai, and Singapore as well as retail stores in Hollywood, New York City, and Miami. In addition it has various authorized resellers and service centers around the world.
History
Red Digital Cinema was founded by Jim Jannard, who previously founded Oakley. As a self-described "camera fanatic" owning over 1,000 models, Jannard started the company with the intent to deliver a (relatively) affordable 4K digital cinema camera. Jannard dates the idea to a time when he bought a Sony HDR-FX1 video camera and learned that the files had to be converted with software from Lumiere HD and were not viewable on Mac OS. Lumiere HD's owner Frederic Lumiere collaborated with Jannard on developing an alternative and introduced him to Ted Schilowitz who became Red's first employee.
The early team members engaged in undisclosed research on how to make a digital camera feasible for Hollywood productions. Part of the process involved using 4K resolution instead of 2K which was most common at the time. Another technical hurdle was to achieve the focusing quality of DSLR cameras without sacrificing frame rate. Part of Red's solution to this problem was developing a sensor with a physical size comparable to that of analog film. At the 2006 NAB Show, Jannard announced that Red would build a 4K digital cinema camera, called the Red One and began taking pre-orders.
In March 2007, director Peter Jackson completed a camera test of two prototype Red One cameras, which became the 12-minute World War I film Crossing the Line. On seeing the short film, director Steven Soderbergh told Jannard: "I am all in. I have to shoot with this." Soderbergh took two prototype Red Ones into the jungle to shoot his film, Che. A short documentary, Che and the Digital Revolution was made about the Red camera technology that was used in the film's production. The Red One first shipped in August 2007. One of the first television programs to shoot with it was the medical drama ER.
In 2010, Red acquired the historic Ren-Mar Studios in Hollywood, and renamed it "Red Studios Hollywood". By 2011, it had over 400 employees. 2011 was also the year in which Panavision, Arri and Aaton announced that they would no longer be producing analog cameras. Red Digital Cinema and the Red One were widely credited as accelerating this transition in the industry. Schilowitz responded to these reviews by saying "It was never our goal to kill film. Instead, we wanted to evolve it."
On August 19, 2013, Jim Jannard announced his retirement from Red, leaving Jarred Land as president.
In 2010, 5% of the top 100 grossing domestic films that were shot on digital video used Red cameras as their primary system. Their share increased to over 25% by 2016, but has declined since then.
Cameras
Red One
The Red One first introduced in 2007 was Red Digital Cinema's first production camera. It captures up to 120 frames per second at 2K resolution and 60 frames per second at 4K resolution. Its "Mysterium" sensor was acquisitioned for use with the proprietary RAW format called Redcode. By 2010, Red began selling upgrades to a 14 megapixel sensor called the "M-X". The Red One has been reviewed as having effectively the same quality as 35mm film. The Red One was made out of aluminum alloy, and the body alone weighs 10 lbs (4.5 kg).
It was used to shoot Che, The Informant, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. In 2010, Red released the Red Epic, which was used to shoot The Amazing Spider-Man, The Hobbit, Prometheus, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and The Great Gatsby as well as many other feature films.
DSMC system
In 2009, Red began releasing new cameras with an updated form factor compared to the Red One. Designed with the goal of facilitating either still images or video, depending on the mounting setup, Red called the concept DSMC for "Digital Stills and Motion Capture". The first camera released for this system was Epic-X, a professional digital stills and motion capture camera with interchangeable lens mounts. After this a new camera line called Scarlet was introduced that provided lower end specifications at a more affordable price. Initially equipped with a 5K imaging sensor, upgrades were later offered to a 6K sensor with higher dynamic range called the "".