Red Digital Cinema
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Red Digital Cinema

Red Digital Cinema is an American camera manufacturer specializing in digital cinematography headquartered in Foothill Ranch, California. The company became a subsidiary of Nikon in April 2024.

Red has studios in Hollywood, Los Angeles, and has offices in London and Beijing, as well as a retail store in Hollywood. Additionally, Red has various authorized resellers and service centers around the world. The company was founded by Jim Jannard in 2005 out of a side interest in digital photography, previously Jannard had founded the eyewear company Oakley which shares a similar industrial design language.

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 with accelerating this transition in the industry. Schilowitz responded by saying "It was never our goal to kill film. Instead, we wanted to evolve it."

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.

On August 19, 2013, Jim Jannard announced his retirement from Red, leaving Jarred Land as president.

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