Ed David

Maybe the dopamine hits of social media are to blame?

Is there a point anymore for a young twenty-year-old Herzog circa 2021 to beg, scrape, and steal to make a film?  When you can just make a tik-tok?  Get a million followers.  Move on?

Maybe social media takes away precious free-time that you need to concentrate to come up with, as David Lynch says, "catching the big fish?" 

Or maybe the social anxiety of life pre-Covid - the mental-health insanity of it all - left little time to be happy and creative?

Or maybe with the movie theatres all about to die and the rise of netflix and movies being "content" as Scorsese calls it - maybe that has sapped everything that forces someone to work so hard to make their own feature.

For me I was born in 1981, and movies were the only thing I knew up even past college in 2003 when I could have started a filmmaking career. Netflix was just a mail-order DVD service. There was no social media yet, except maybe Friendster.

Now nearly twenty years later - what do young people who want to say things do?  Do they have that precious time to be creative?

Especially now when in 2021 young people graduate with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt vs the 1970s when young people had barely any debt and could have a decent life and buy a home with little money and had room to wander and explore?

3 hours ago, Kino said:

I think the Mavo LF image quality also owes something to the robust ProRes 4444 XQ codec that is available internally. It is better than many of the proprietary RAW formats that are partially debayered (e.g., ZRAW, BRAW). The Mavo Edge 8K should be an excellent choice based on what we have seen with the Mavo LF 6K. However, it is about to get very competitive in that price range. Lower down, even ZCAM is doing some impressive things with color and internal ProRes:

 

That is great look and skintones. Super impressive. Would love to see a komodo vs e2-f6 vs mavo lf vs mavo edge vs red monstro vs etc shoot out ( when the edge comes out).

mavo edge just interests me more personally because it has more professional features like dual sdi out.

has anyone done tests between this lens vs like a lomo or kowa or SLR magic lens vs like a Kowa B&H lens?  

very excited about this lens for affordable anamorphic

Yea mavo lf certainly looks like it has a much better skintones and iq out of the box. More than all the reds... even the monstro.  I put in a preorder for the mavo edge, which seems to iron out some things in the mavo lf. Hopefully sensor is still good in low light and dynamic range is still good.

and yea thats funny about vincent laforet being treated so poorly. He really help put red on the map.

whats next? Is Shane Hurlbut even safe? 🤗

On 8/10/2020 at 4:07 PM, Kino said:

I'm not sure about Pocket 6K, but it's true that Komodo is noisier than Gemini and Helium and doesn't have the same DR:

Then again, for $6K, you are getting a "discount Dragon," so no complaints!

I'm curious how it compares overall to the red epic mx that you can get used for around the same price.

Seeing some comparison tests on reduser, between Komodo and the alexa - I like the curve of the footage - feels nice and rich.  But definitely - and I don't know if its the grade - still has that trademark red handling of blue.  Which kind of feels more electric or magneta than natural blues, and not the same quality of green that the alexa does so well with to make skintones and environments feel so natural.  

But hey, it's a 6k camera.  But hey, also, I never, in a larger discussion figure out why Red never modified their sensors or color science to get away from this.  I love the smoothness and look of red footage - that just convinced me to sell my red epic mx and my 2 red one mx when I had them and never get back on the red train.

Andrew and all: this is awesome reporting and a great find. Thank you for doing this teardown and an analysis of it.

@rawshooter  from your link here is co-founder Elle explaining it all. And also earlier you said db16 was really not a homebrew product but the work of some large Canadian company. Which implies that they lied and were deceptive with their kickstarter backers. 

“6  cameras have shipped so far. We have more built, but they each need to be hand tested and calibrated before they ship. After the holiday it should be faster and probably 3 cameras a day. There are many factors that go into shipping that have nothing to do with whether the camera is ready, like customs forms, verifying addresses, printing up invoices, physical packing, that kind of boring stuff.

This pretty much says what the roles of everyone at the company are: http://www.digitalbolex.com/about/

Joe partnered with the executives at Ienso, a preexisting camera company, to create a new company called Cinemeridian. Cinemeridian has existed since 2011, which is when hardware development of the camera began. Joe, Mike (our CTO), and I essentially do the concept development of features both hardware and software, and Mike executes those. Joe is the CEO of the company. He is the actual boss. He works with Kish and Pomfort to design our lenses and software and to seek out new relationships with other companies who might want to make products for the camera, works with Mike and the engineering team to problem solve issues, does the hands-on thorough camera testing on the LA end, writes blog posts, answers questions on the forum, and does a lot of banal business stuff. Mike is a rockstar. What's funny about the suppositions in this thread is that Stelio is actually the least involved in day to day stuff on our project, as he manages the business side of Ienso and all the other projects they've done, and chimes in when we need more heads on an engineering problem. They are all awesome guys up in Canada and everyone in the company has put in a ridiculous amount of work.

Source of development funds is that Ienso is financially invested in the project, and Joe has put in the funds he received from selling his half of the successful business he founded years ago. He sold his half because his previous business partner did not want to branch out into developing new imaging technology, and he believed in the future of raw. He would not have put his own money, his financial future, into this thing if he didn't believe in it 100%, and that's a very brave thing to do.

Warranty is 1 year standard warranty like most consumer electronics, and will be serviced in Toronto. A few rental houses have asked if we would be interested in local US based warranty and servicing, and we'll definitely be looking into that once the first batch of cameras is out.

I think it's a great accomplishment that we've done what other big camera companies have done in a shorter time with far fewer resources. That's not to say that we're perfect, we've had many problems and delays, but that's all part of starting a business. But I hope that someone who has watched our journey and decides to try something they wouldn't have previously thought possible might learn something from where we've gone right and wrong.”

In summation, the company practices of digital bolex is pretty much an inverse of red. They aren’t a company that exists as a patent troll. They don’t bully or harass or threaten to sue their customers. They don’t threaten bloggers or filmmakers with legal action. And they most likely probably label their products country of origin honestly.

1 hour ago, rawshooter said:

I shouldn't even reply given the tone in which you write.

None of what you state above disproves (or is in contradiction) to what I wrote. Here's the company registration info on Cinemeridian:

https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_ca/C3626603 

The registered company address is: 

20 MURAL ST UNIT 7
RICHMOND HILL ON CANADA L4B 1K3

...which is actually the company address of Ienso Inc.. That means that Cinemeridian (the company that produced Digital Bolex) was a full subsidiary of Ienso. The company registration page also tells Cinemeridian is: 

Branch of CINEMERIDIAN INCORPORATED (Delaware (US))

i.e., using a matroska puppet construction for the company.  If we're looking up the registration of Cinemeridian Inc. on https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_de/5047665, we get:

108 WEST 13TH ST, WILMINGTON, New Castle, DE, 19801

 

As I wrote, this was probably done for tax reasons, since Delaware is considered a tax shelter state within the U.S.: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/092515/4-reasons-why-delaware-considered-tax-shelter.asp

A company "Digital Bolex" never existed, since the trademarks for Bolex remains with the original Swiss Bolex company, and their trademark was only licensed for the D16.

One of the launch videos for D16, which was posted here in this thread before by someone else, was uploaded and advertised as " the first film shot on the new Digital Bolex" (it still says so on the Vimeo page):

 

...but if you only look at the very beginning of the video - actually right at 00:01 -, you see that it was shot with the Prosilica GX2300:

 

 

 

So, if you would use moral categories (which I didn't do, but many people here in this thread), then Digital Bolex lied to its customers. (The statement "the first film shot on the new Digital Bolex" is objectively untrue.)

But I also wrote that in the end, the D16 was a real camera and people were happy with it - in fact, I wouldn't mind having that camera myself! 

 

@PannySVHS  Agreed - Iḿ sorry.  Itś just difficult to hear @rawshooter make acquisations that my friend Joes company was committing fraud and deception.  It felt extremely personal.  And was an emotional response by me.  Iĺl tone it down.

Okay @rawshooter maybe DB16 has an explanation for having in their BTS that they are using that camera.  Maybe it has a modified firmware or  chip or sensor that makes it the precursor to the DB16.  I can ask Joe. 

But really, again, you accused them of so many other things.  Like their kickstarter campaign was fraud and the founders were just puppets and social media influencers.  I cant, because of my weird OCD, sit back and see these words go on eoshd as public record and easily searchable by google.  

I really dont want to get Joe involved in asking him about this, but go for it if you want to ask him, I can give you his email.

20 minutes ago, rawshooter said:

I haven't written this, and you grossly distort what I wrote. Please read carefully. I only wrote that Jinni Tech's disclosures are not having the shocking news value that many people here think they have.

You even distort and wrongly paraphrase what I wrote about Olympus. 

And if you think that what I wrote about Digital Bolex is factually wrong, prove it.

Oh, and one of your comments to accuse Digital Bolex of shadiness - they re-registered their company to Delaware, you say?    Well guess what - that's legal to do.  You can register your company anywhere you want.  Apple is registered in Ireland! And that is legal!!!   Unlike Red - which is doing things that are illegal.  Like putting "made in the USA" on their cameras when they are made in Asia (most likely Singapore) as well as unfair practices against competitors, harassment, doxxing, etc etc.

Dude, rawshooter, you are cornered.  And I understand, this being the internet and all - and a public forum - all we want to do is defend our ideas till death. Like the Warriors you mentioned earlier.   Fight fight fight against the dying light!

12 minutes ago, rawshooter said:

I haven't written this, and you grossly distort what I wrote. Please read carefully. I only wrote that Jinni Tech's disclosures are not having the shocking news value that many people here think they have.

And if you think that what you wrote about Bolex is factually wrong, prove it.

I already started to.  I showed you the linked in and twitter account of Joe, the co-founder of DB.   He has 1000 followers.  That's not "social influencer" status which is 100k subscribers or more.

And here's more about digital bolex from wikipedia that, unlike you, has citations.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Bolex

Digital Bolex was a partnership between Cinemeridian, Inc. and Ienso Canada, an engineering company, to develop the Digital Bolex D16 digital cinema camera. Development was funded via a successful Kickstarter in March 2012, raising $262,661.

From Wired magazine: https://www.wired.com/2013/12/bolex-digital-16mm-film-camera/

"The camera is being produced under the name "Digital Bolex," but it's actually a joint venture between the original manufacturer, Bolex International, S.A., and Cinemeridian, Inc, a young company of digital wizards that was formed to bring this idea to fruition."

More about Cinemerdian, INC via google:

Company: Cinemeridian Inc. (Lauren Schneider)

Address: 707 S Broadway #1223 Los Angeles CA 90014 US
Phone: +1.2136283191
Email: info@digitalbolex.com

Who is Lauren, the co-founder of Digital bolex?  And also, her name is Lauren but she goes by Elle.  

Here's Vice to help:

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/aej9x8/work-in-progress-the-digital-bolex-camera-is-a-crowdfunded-filmmaking-revolution

"Elle: I started working on the project last August. Joe and I met just after Comic-Con last year, which seems kind of crazy because of how much we’ve been working on this project in the past year and how far it’s gotten.

Do you both identify as filmmakers?
Elle: Both of us went to film school and have a deep interest in film. We shot the first film on the new camera together, and we’re going to be doing another film in the fall. We’re interested in producing or helping other filmmakers use our camera to create films as well."

>>>>>>

So Joe and Elle are filmmakers who met at Comic-Con.  Joe is  DP, and Elle is a director.  And they had the idea for DB16.  Do they say they did the whole camera design themselves?  No.  

Your comment, if you wanted to argue it, but of course, who does, is completely wrong and full of falsities unless you can back up your controversial statements with proof that they are secretly social media influencers and the Canadian company came to them to deceive everyone and steal people's money on kickstater with this false premise of a homebrew-style camera that used a CCD chip instead of CMOS and recorded CinemaDNG (opensource) instead of mp4 or whatever.  

I mean, seriously, man, you might have instead said that they seemed heavily influenced by the Ikonscope DLii - or whatever it was called.  And then you could look into it.  But, come on, dude.

Anyway I gotta go back to my vacation.  EOSHD always seems to get me during the SUMMER!!!! AHHHHHRHRHRHGGGGGGGGGGG.

4 hours ago, rawshooter said:

You're getting me completely wrong.

What I'm saying is: In a civil war where warlords are fighting each other, take it with a grain of salt when a small warlord accuses a bigger warlord of his crimes, don't think that those crimes are singular or exceptional - and if you want justice, put all the warlords out of business.  (And, if you go to an investigative journalist, or even to the United Nations, to make them aware of the small warlord's YouTube accusations against the big warlord, expect to be shrugged off.)

That's why I compared to Jinni Tech's videos to truther videos. They're literally repeating the Joseph Kony YouTube meme (- sticking to the warlord analogy).

I don't think any of us is going to convince Rawshooter of anything.  But, and I say this in kind of jest, your acquisation of Digital Bolex, which is so extremely farcical and bizarre, is the closest thing we have gotten to Qanon or Trutherism on this thread.  

Come on, dawg.  

6 hours ago, rawshooter said:

Speaking of which:

Apple just took legal action against a small company for its "Prepear" app that allows to plan meals, arguing that its pear logo was an infringement of Apple's logo:

"Prepear says that it is a 'very small business' with only five team members, and explains that legal costs from the dispute have already cost thousands of dollars and the layoff of a team member."

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/08/08/legal-action-against-company-with-pear-logo/

 

So, here you have the equivalency of the hot dog stand. I'm not saying that RED's business practices aren't despicable, I'm only saying that they're common in the industry.

Suing over a logo is fine.  Apple has legally trademarked their logo.  Suing over technology that you don't own a patent for - that is shady.

5 hours ago, Shaocaholica said:

Ah yes. Jinnitech, a ‘company’ run by a single person is just on the same moral standing as Red.

 

If Apple decided to crush a hot dog stand ‘company’ of one employee operator well that’s just the business world for ya!  Nothing to see here.

Yea but to use your example.  Imagine if Apple decided to  sue a hot dog stand for patent infringement, and didn't even have a patent at the time.  And the hot dog stand won in court.  And is now counter suing Apple for libel, defamation, etc etc.  I think most people would be on the side of the hot dog stand.  With the David vs Goliath parable, I feel like most people root for David 🙂 .  Only recently do we seem to have a pop culture that sides with Goliath.  

8 hours ago, rawshooter said:

You brought in the moral category of the "good cause"...

Anyway, we could also extend the cause to other small-scale camera manufacturers. Take Digital Bolex, for example. When they were still in business, they pretended to be a filmmaker-run Kickstarter grassroots project. In reality, however, a company "Digital Bolex" never existed,  but the actual company was the large-scale Canadian electronics manufacturer Ienso. The people who posed, on fairs and in social media, as the "Digital Bolex" founders, were neither company owners, nor camera designers, but hired social media influencers.

On top of that, the supposed Digital Bolex D16 prototype presented at the SXSW festival to launch the Kickstarter campaign was a disguised third-party camera by another manufacturer (the Prosilica GX2300). Later, the company registration was changed from California and Canada to a letterbox company address in Delaware. Enough material for shocking YouTube revelations - objectively even more shocking than what's currently being 'revealed' about RED.

Nevertheless, the D16 turned out to be a real product, wasn't exactly affordable, and people were and still are happy with it.

Bottom line: I still fail to see how RED's business practices are categorically worse than those common in the industry. (And if you want to pick a really bad case, just take Olympus with their corruption scandal and past ties to Japanese organized crime.)

Digital Bolex - whether this is true or not-  and I am now friends with Joe the founder- yes I would love to see a video about all your revelations which I have never heard about until you wrote this.  Do you have links to this info?  I'm happy to ask Joe about this.    

here's his linked in:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/politeinpublic

If he's really a social media influencer in disguise, he doesn't seem to have the biggest following for that:

https://twitter.com/theycallmejoe?lang=en

But the difference between digital bolex and red is that red is a patent troll with a patent that does not hold water, that is keeping your Sigma FP from having Pro Res RAW. And furthermore, The DB16, to the best of my knowledge, never sued or harassed or threatened litigation against filmmakers or bloggers.

One more thing, @rawshooter.  We all just want compressed raw on our cameras that doesn't cause massive overheating and record limits of 20 seconds.   Don't you want that on your panasonic s1h or non-BMD camera to have this option?  Pro Res RAW is like 10x more efficient that 4k Pro Res 4444.  It seems pretty amazing.   Don't you want to give all of us that?   Come on, man.  Let us just have this one thing 🙂  It's my birthday soon.  Pretty please!

6 hours ago, rawshooter said:

Out of my head:

• How HP and other printer manufacturers shut out third-party ink cartridge suppliers by putting DRM chips into their printers that would cause the printers to stop working and spew out error messages if you used a third-party ink cartridge. HP (and other "original" printer manufacturer) ink is several times more expensive per liter than Chanel No. 5 perfume and vintage Scotch whiskey. In fact, RED only copied the HP business model with its RED mags.
• How practically all camera manufacturers use DRM chips in their batteries to block the use of third-party batteries, and spread FUD (fear/uncertainty/doubt) that third-party batteries will damage your camera. - Just this week, I'm struggling with third-party battery error/warning messages from a Sony mirrorless camera after I installed a firmware update. 
• How Amazon sues all web stores that implement 1-click-buy buttons.
• How Apple sued everyone who used the word "App Store". 
• How Microsoft earns more patent royalties from Android licenses than from its own operating systems.
• How the MPEG-LA sues everyone who uses the h264 codec without paying them license fees.

 

To paraphrase you, @rawshooter

your defense of red is:

"Every other tech company has done illegal and/or bullying tactics before (including Olympus hiring the Yakuza) , so there is precedent for fraud and this makes it okay.  That is completely normalized behavior.

Here in America, in the 19th century, slavery was not just common, but built into the fabric of the Southern US economy.  It was the accepted form of the economic output of America.  And yet, slavery, I think we can all agree is not normalized today.  In fact, slavery is illegal today in the United States.

Therefore activists and journalists and filmmakers should exist to point out the problem of this, just as filmmakers in our cases exist to tell stories that empower and bring awareness to different conditions and issues facing our modern lives.  We should thanks filmmakers and journalists when they bring issues like this to the forefront.  For example, the filmmakers who made Black Fish, completely changed the public's understanding of Sea World.  So did Gasland, as it brought awareness to the danger of fracking.

One more thought from me about Red.  When Red started, they were a massive innovator.  They changed the face of digital cinema with the red one.  Before that, the closest digital cinematic cameras cost $400,000 or more. With the red one, as well as the Canon 5D, everything changed.  High end cinematography became within reach of many more people.

Now it is red that is trying to hold back innovation.  That alone makes the story of Red via Jinnitech, to those who remember the incredible story of Red even the more fascinating.

39 minutes ago, rawshooter said:

Just checking:

- Linus Torvalds - I couldn't find any mention, not even on LKLM.org (the Linux development mailing list). Do you have a pointer?

- Newsshooter: a single mention in an article one year ago on the "highly inflated prices" of the RED mags, https://www.newsshooter.com/2019/07/17/red-drops-prices-on-mini-mags-media/, no mention or coverage of the new video.

- CineD/C5D: same as Newsshooter, https://www.cined.com/red-mini-mag-and-redmag-controversy-second-video/

etc.etc.

I could find no coverage of the recent video anywhere on those sites. 

So what do Jinni Tech's supposedly so disruptive revelations actually tell? That RED uses inflated prices for its hardware, that it has a shady history of re-registering its company in different states and with different legal constructions, and that it puts EULA clauses into its products that give it a free pass from liability which is likely in violation of laws.

Yes, I agree that this is shady business practice. But you know what? This is how the entire tech industry works (actually, how capitalism works but I don't want to get into a political debate here). Look at Apple, for example:  grossly inflated prices for its accessories and replacement parts, shutting out third-party repair technicians by legal clauses, throttling its iPhones with older batteries without telling customers (i.e. actually having lied to customers for years), locking you into its EULAs with the iCloud tie-in of its products (just like Google, Microsoft and everyone else - only taking Apple as one example here). And guess what: Until recently, Apple was officially not a U.S., but a Dutch- and Irish-registered company for reasons of tax evasion. 

So I stand by statement: Jinni Tech's revelations are on the level of truther videos and are only shocking to people who must have very naive and idealistics concepts of how businesses do business.  

 

Can you give some examples that Red.COM llc is a very normalized case of a tech company?  I find they are more unique and acting exactly like patent troll companies.  They bully, silence, and accuse and DOX publically a competitor - in this case, Jinnitech, with their own SSDs that work in their camera.

As the video shows, red had no patent at the time on their interface - they just had a patent application.  

And how many companies switched from a INC to a LLC and declared zero assets?  I could find no precedent of this.  Imagine if Apple, INC or Alphabet, INC (Google's parent company) did this because of class-action lawsuits.

This is an exemplary news story.  And one that will get wider coverage in business and tech and entertainment news sites, once they get the info they need.

It's an investigate journalism story - and sadly - now a days - very few publications can do this kind of work.

You should be thankful of Jinnitech - they are exposing corporate fraud that seems to have in its business model - litigation vs innovation.  

That's not healthy for our industry.  That's not healthy for us, the end users.  

Innovation is a beautiful thing, and the reason why we have now an industry so affordable in its quality goods for such a low price that it has launched a whole new younger generation of voices that would not have been possible 20 years ago.

Before Covid, I just came back from a job in Kenya at a refugee camp.  I worked with an amazing cinematographer and filmmaker who was a refugee!  His imagery is more impressive by far than mine.  A refugee who made around 40 dollars a year.  Through youtube on his mobile phone and a canon 5d given to him by a UN film program.  Their voices are finally being heard from their perspective, not from westerners.