The very first RED Epic shipped to a customer, Mark L Peterson from OffHollywood in New York has been stolen whilst he was staying in a French chalet in Meribel with his family in the middle of the night. Nobody was harmed thankfully.
This is an historic camera and is obviously seen so by Jim Jannard as he is offering a $100,000 reward for the return of the camera, media and the conviction of the thieves. You can find details about that here. This is NOT a ransom payment!!
You can read the blog post about this with more details about the theft here
It will be pretty much impossible for this camera to be sold on to someone as you don’t get a more noticeable camera than this out there and it will of course be impossible to be privately sold to someone wanting to use it as they will never be able to get it updated, fixed, repaired or have any support whatsoever. Even just using it will arouse so much suspicion as the RED community and the filmmaking world is pretty small. Most likely the camera was stolen without the dumb thief knowing what they had. They would have been better off stealing Mark’s T2i (if he had one) or iphone as that’s easier to sell!!
So let’s hope it gets back. I know how he feels, almost. This is my dream camera and one day I hope I will own one. This for me is the ultimate filmmaking tool. Let’s hope she gets back to her rightful owner!
19 comments
time to don my dog the bounty hunter outfit and head to france. i’ll keep you all updated.
I feel for the guy. Had my RV broke in to on a shoot this summer and got cleaned out. Epic or not, it just sucks. What’s even more, the guy who stole it probably has no idea what it is!
Stupid, Stupid, stupid!
The only thing the thief can do with this is put it in a case in their basement! You can’t sell it, you can’t even shoot anything on it, ’cause people will know!
Best of luck with the search, and it’s a damn shame.
As said on Reduser :
I am really ashamed by that stuff.
Am glad anyway that no one got hurt. But the thieves are pretty fucking bastard.
I’m also ashamed that it happened in France. I hope this incident won’t give everyone a bad feeling about us french.
I’ll put the info on myspace and in my cinema school on monday.
I hope that someone will find the camera.
I didnt know that the RED Epic was your dream camera.
You dont talk about it much. Why haven’t you bought a used RED one to play around with? $14000 you can find them for these days with all the trimmings… Or asked RED to give you a demo RED One to test out. Im sure your community would be super interested to hear your thoughts about it etc..
My film club is 100% buying an Epic-S or Scarlet, we have set aside the budget already…
Francis, Check out my posts. I tend to only talk about cameras I actually own or use. I don’t do speculation.
I know ive read almost everything haha.
Why not use the RED every once in a while though??
Im sure you know people who own them, I will ask RED to personally to lend you a loaner if you would do some publicity on it.
You tested the Sony F3 which is in a similar price bracket to the old RED.
Id like to hear Philip Blooms take on shooting in 4k, and your experience using the camera compared to other equipment you are used to, problems etc.
lets see a Bloom 4k RED film.
Fran
can you get me a red please?!
Let’s just form a Bloom search party and find these b*stard’s.
My fear is that it was stolen by a competitor….
well, if hopefully it gets back to its rightful owner. Interesting though that the Red head quarters were broken into when developing the Red then some mysterious thefts following.
Doesn’t the owner have an insurance for this kind of expensive gear?
of course he will have insurance. but this is the first Epic! Not easy to get another one they are all hand made for now!
hmmm, if it finds it’s way to Cape Town South Africa – then I hope that I can be of help.
And the worse thing is that there is no tracking GPS system or locking mechanism. I think the thieves know exactly what they stole, it seemed like some sort of heist. They were tracking their subject through twitter updates etc and made an elaborate plan to steal the RED. And i disagree, i think they could sell it, as much as there are a lot of honest people out there like ourselves, there is still a lot of demand for something like that.
Philip, I can’t post on the Hoax article. Just wanted to say this stupid little fact, here (latinamerica) and in Spain the Fool’s day is not on April 1st but on December 28, maybe that was the reason the conman decided to throw that rumour. It sucked but at least there’s pretty funny parodies of the hoax meaning that it did went without creating any harm and the guy will be forgotten while people really working hard is not, like yourself.
Thanks for the awesome blog.
Thank goodness somebody has finally called attention to one of the most important tragedies facing humanity! Forget about the suffering in Darfur and all of that other nonsense. When a Hollywood luminary has his 6-figure camera stolen while vacationing in his chalet, it’s time for the world to stand up and take notice!
I, for one, cannot sit by and accept this horror: I will cancel my donation to prostate cancer research immediately and help up the reward. I also pledge every cent of 2011 royalties on the film that I will shoot with my Red Scarlet. Since that camera will be out any day now, my royalties for 2011 will certainly be massive– after I recoup the sub-$4,000 sticker price. 🙂
Hi Philip,
Very interesting to her you confirmig your interest on the EPIC, I had already read you comente on some obscure video in vimeo where you said you wanted it…
Are you planing on by the EPIC-S? The hole package will be under U$ 20.000,00 and you will be abel to use your canon lenses… If you sold your câmeras (your EX1, Your recently aquired AF100, and some of your canon bodies) it would be affordable..
I also wanna ask you what are your toughts on the ALEXA? ARE you curious on testing it? How would you like to shoot directly into ProRES 422(HQ) or 4444 ?
I read your blog since early 2009…
Best Wishes
Rodrigo Prata
Its probably on the Starship Enterprise by now! Or being used to recharge a Flux Capacitor.