Sorry, that's non-sense. The Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 12k Rig alone, like it's adverted on their site, comes very close to that, and that's without any special additional accessories. Talking of € here! A single Zeiss Supreme Lens cost 17k€, if you decide to get two or three it sums up quickly, and the full lens set is 90k€. Of course not always all lenses is needed, but 1-3 is very common, which probably is the reason why you even used two cameras, swapping takes time and breaks the workflow, and with two decent camera setups you pass that even easier.
The statement was that no one needs to buy $90,000 worth of gear to use a $10,000 camera, not that no one could do so. No one is going to buy Zeiss Supremes to use with an Ursa. They just are not in the same league.
Sounds like you're not talking for a company, these kind of things are written off and helps to lower the overall tax.
Nope, that is not how film/tv production works. Studios and production companies almost never purchase gear. They rent everything because of how films are financed, they do not want to deal with disposing of assets post-production.
Renting is waste of money at long term, specially if the main business is film making.
Yup, 10 weeks of rental usually pays for a piece of gear, and yet even 16 week feature shoots rent everything. Almost every feature is made by an SPE - a company that exists only to produce the one project. Again, this has a lot to do with how films are financed.
Renting might worth for the occasional camera guy, or for the ones who "quickly" needs something because it's missing in his inventory, or can't put a higher amount of money on the table. Good Studios own these things.
Sorry, you are just incorrect. While 20th Century Fox had Grip and Electric departments on the lot that could rent gear to productions (and to be clear it was always rented to them), they had no camera department. All that gear was either rented from rental houses (or for some smaller productions from the crew operators themselves -
e.g. Stedicam operators rent their rigs to the production as a separate cost from their time). The choice of camera and lenses is made by the DP in consultation with the producers and director. While the Key Grip and the Gaffer might offer (or require) a kit rental to the production, that is not the norm for the camera department.
Just because it suit your needs, doesn't mean it suit all needs, and since you're renting, you're out of the game anyway. Must have been a quick small project, few weeks or months of renting two cameras would have exceeded that sum by far, regardless of the currency.
As it was described as a two day short film project, it seems pretty clear that it was short project. Again, your original statement was that one would require $100,000 in gear to shoot 8K footage and as I pointed out that is simply false. My statement was not that it was impossible to spend over $100,000, just that it was not required.
Sorry, but i think there isn't any case studies out there showing that cameras is primary rented and not purchased.
Anyway, the ones who rents need to purchase.
Over thirty years in film, television and visual effects production tells me that.
In any case a 699€ M1 Mac does not even worth mentioning for 8k raw footage recording and editing.
It goes down like a toilet paper roll between all that higher priced equipments.
Your problem is that you do not understand that these projects are all done by groups of independent contractors hired individually. That means that the cost of an editor’s gear is completely unrelated to the cost of the gear needed to shoot the project. Different people spending different money.
It is common for editors to own their gear as they usually decide their own tools and they are not constrained by others’ creative choices (
e.g. the look a director or DP want will affect the choice of camera and lens). The same DP will shoot with different lenses and cameras depending on the circumstances, while most editors use only one NLE.
