The sunglasses billionaire who got Hollywood to leave film behind
A tale of disruption, of outsiders breaking in, and of how a single piece of technology can rewrite the rules.
Welcome to The Rough Cut by Eddie AI, a newsletter for people who think about video and storytelling as much as we do. You may have signed up to Eddie AI and already know about us or today is the first time. Either way, we’re glad you’re here.
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Every week, we will break down the trends, techniques, and shifts shaping the production industry.
And once a month, we go deep. Our long-form story—think of it as a magazine in your inbox—dives into the creative and technical forces that shaped the way we make and watch video.
This month’s deep dive comes from Efosa Osaghae, a filmmaker and storyteller who knows the industry inside and out. It’s the story of how a sunglasses entrepreneur and his band of industry outsiders changed cinema forever. It’s a tale of disruption, of outsiders breaking in, and of how a single piece of technology can rewrite the rules.
As we stand on the brink of another major shift in filmmaking, let’s look back at a moment when technology redefined how we tell stories.
What would you say if we told you that one of the most influential camera companies of all time—RED—wasn’t just created by a Hollywood outsider, but by someone with zero film experience at all? Nearly 20 years ago, Jim Jannard, the billionaire founder of Oakley (yep, the sunglasses brand), and his team of industry bandits changed cinema forever. And hardly anyone knows what really happened behind the scenes...
An exit from Oakley and the start of a new frontier
There are a few key dates we need to establish from Jim Jannard's career:
He founded Oakley in 1976 — naming the company after his English setter, he took his first steps in business by selling motorcycle parts out of his van.
In the 1980s, Jannard turned his attention to sports equipment, apparel, and the sunglasses Oakley is famous for today.
By 1995, Oakley had gone public, raising $230 million in the process.
And lastly, in 2007, Jim sold the company for $2.1 billion to Italian eyewear manufacturer Luxottica.
Somewhere between Oakley’s IPO and its eventual sale, Jim started looking to the next frontier. As a bonafide camera nut, ideas man, and entrepreneur, he set himself a new target:
To create the world’s most powerful (digital) cinema camera.
“Insane.” “Crazy.” “Stupid.” These were the words lobbed at Jannard when he first spoke of his dream — and they weren’t exactly wrong. Film cameras had a 95% share of the cinema market at the time, while digital hovered around 5% at best.
Jim seemed to be dreaming up the impossible, but that didn’t stop him.
The Heist (or making the impossible, possible)
The objective: Creating an impossible digital camera — comparable in image quality to film but for a lower price and in a smaller size.
The target: Making digital the dominant mode of Hollywood filmmaking.
Chances of pulling it off? Next to nil, until...
Frederic Lumière (of no relation to the Lumière brothers) was a camera enthusiast and IT expert who created Lumière HD: the first plug-in to allow users to edit HDV. His software provided a simple, feature-rich high definition video editing tool intended for the low-budget filmmaker.
Lumière HD had built a legion of supporters after years of exhibiting their products within the tech world. Their supporters included Apple, Sony, JVC, and one eccentric, idealistic billionaire...
Phase 1: The billion-dollar email
"I was helping out with IT support for Lumière HD, and one day I got this email", Fred explains.
Jim and Fred continued to chat over email for the next few days. "What started as a support chat escalated into a discussion of crazy ideas. It was relentless."
Like Jim, Fred dreamt of creating a camera that could rival analog. After all, a movie shot on an ARRIFLEX 35II made in 1960 could still provide a great image 60 years later. Why couldn't digital do the same?
"If you're interested, I would love to partner with you to build this camera. Give me a budget on how much you think it would cost," said Jim, before asking Fred to meet him — the very next day.
Jim lived in southern California, and Fred lived on the East coast. A good 3,000 miles separated the pair, but the following morning, Fred was on the next flight out. Little did he know he was about to embark on the greatest heist in cinema history.
Phase 2: Assembling the O-Team
Fred arrives in California and gives Jim a figure. The figure was the budget to undertake the entire project from start to finish: camera development costs, costs of the crew, everything.
It was a large number, but Jim wasn’t expecting to hear a small sum. The deal was agreed.
Despite the emails, Fred flying cross-country, and meeting Jim in person, it still didn't seem real. The next day Fred's wife — who was the CFO of Lumière HD at the time — called Fred and said, "Honey, we've just received a sh*t ton of money, do you know about this?"
Jim had sent the money straight to the company account. No contract. No invoice. Just sent...
And so the job began. The task was simple on paper: to create a digital camera that would not only compete with film but render it obsolete. The only way to steal film’s Hollywood customers was to ensure that digital was the hands-down better option.
So who were they up against?
Between the prices and specs, you can see that the O-Cam’s early prototypes ‘ULTIMATE’ and ‘Pro’ were unrivaled. The cameras would offer 4K resolution for less and yet were still comparable with the smaller HDV cameras in size and price.
To pull it off, Fred couldn’t just assemble the best camera tech individuals. He had to hire experts that defied categories and challenged the status quo. He needed people who were in-betweeners. Outsiders.
He needed to put together The O-Team:
Graeme Nattress
Ted Schilowitz
Frederic Lumière
Jim Jannard
Graeme Nattress fit the bill as an engineer who pushed boundaries. The ability to record 4K resolution up to 60fps on a chip without compromising size simply did not exist — but Graeme did. As a qualified mathematician and a camera scientist, he joined the team as their resident “Problem Solver.”
In early 2005, Fred flew to Tokyo and ran into old friend Ted Schilowitz who ran a booth for AJA systems. While Ted had an encyclopedic knowledge of cameras and software tech, developing the O-Cam was a challenge the likes of which he’d never faced before. And yet he was the perfect candidate in Fred’s eyes.
Ted was asked to create a digital camera that could output an image as good as…..be smaller than…....and cost less than…..film. All three elements needed to happen at the same time and Ted was skeptical.
Even if it were possible to create all the camera components, the real trick was creating a light-sensitive chip powerful and compact enough to replace film’s output. It wasn’t impossible, technically. But achieving this required two things:
A billion-dollar electronics company with the resources to let genius camera scientists experiment in labs for months on end.
An owner brave (or brilliant) enough to let No.1 take place.
Ted declined politely, assuming that neither was in scope.
After months of dead ends, Jim rings Ted directly and says: “It’s time”. While hesitant, Ted wasn’t going to say no at the chance of potentially making history. Ted joined and became The O-Team’s in-house “leader of the rebellion”.
No joke. That’s what his business card actually read.
By the time mid-2005 rolled around, each of the O-Team’s members had been given their role:
Graeme: The Scientist
Ted: The Rebel
Fred: The Connector
Jim: The Madman
And RED was born.
PHASE 3: Inventing MYSTERIUM and REDCODE
Graeme knew cameras on a scientific level better than anyone else. With him on board, the team managed to invent the groundbreaking MYSTERIUM sensor. It enabled 60 frames per second at 4K (and even up to 120fps if shooting in 2k resolution.)
The sensor was only half the battle, though. The team still lacked any hardware capable of reading the output — until Graeme helped invent REDCODE RAW.
Without REDCODE, RED does not exist. REDCODE enabled 6K footage to live on a disk a mere 5cm long and 1cm wide. And while the RED ONE camera could have shaken up the industry on its own, it was the ability for users to record cinema-level HD footage onto such a small disk that changed the game entirely.
RED now had the team, the tech, and the camera — the big day was fast arriving. The last step was to reveal the camera to the world.
Phase 4: The grand (faked) reveal
At this stage in the process, Frederic ‘The Connector’ Lumière had stepped away from RED for around half a year — he needed to focus on other commitments. But when Jim called him up and said, "We're ready to unveil RED to the world, and I want you to present it.”... Well, Fred couldn’t turn the opportunity down.
However, all the camera tech and best crew in the world wouldn’t sell a single camera. They needed a grand reveal.
And what better place to do that than the NAB show?
NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) is the premier event for US camera technicians. It’s where the Sonys, the JVCs, and now the REDs of the world exhibit their new video gadgetry. In the months leading up to NAB 2006, early fans of RED’s mission had no clue what the cost of the first camera would be. Jim and the team decided to keep it a complete secret. As the crew flew to Las Vegas for the show, Fred created a fake price for the RED ONE as he feared other passengers would see the actual cost (Goodbye, big reveal, hello fresh competition!).
Fast forward to the presentation, though, and Fred’s about to deliver the slides when he realizes he didn't remove the fake price: $57,500.
“Tell the truth,” says Jim. Fred’s nervous, but he concedes.
As he hovers over and highlights the ‘5’ ready to make the change, the bustling crowd has no idea what the result will be. The expectation was that a number towards $100,000 would feel about right for a high-end digital camera at the time, but who knows — after all, this camera is revolutionary. Fred reveals the last digit.
$17500
The floor ERUPTS. No one could believe what they were seeing. And yet, quietly, people knew they were witnessing a new era of change. A digital revolution was well on its way.
While the camera was still a prototype, more than 500 people slapped down $1,000 deposits to join the waiting list. The industry still didn’t know if RED was a genuine company yet. Word on the street said it was all smoke and mirrors.
Jim and his team had the support of the camera techies, but that wasn’t enough. To complete the job, RED needed Hollywood to leap on the wagon.
And that was a mighty leap indeed.
Phase 5: Hollywood: the final frontier
Hollywood Hall of Famer, Peter Jackson, was one of the first big hitters to transition over. In 2007, he got a hold of the RED ONE prototype to film his WWI short ‘Crossing the Line’.
More high-profile directors followed. And while RED was performing its own ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ style heist in hijacking Hollywood, the film’s director, Steven Soderbergh, was also one of RED’s early adopters.
He saw Jackson's short and immediately got himself two RED ONEs to shoot his biopic ‘Che’ in 2008. By the end of the year, RED had been used on more than 40 Hollywood feature films.
Just five years later, Hollywood’s biggest films were all being shot on RED — including Transformers, The Hobbit trilogy, and The Pirates of the Caribbean. Today, nearly 70% of Netflix original productions are shot on a RED device.
Without RED, digital cinema simply would not exist. It allowed indie filmmakers to produce cinema-ready films at a-tenth of the cost.
Film cameras had a stronghold on cinema for well over 100 years, and we are only about 10 years into the digital revolution. There is so much more to come — and that's thanks to RED.
They didn't just create a camera. They created a culture.
Epilogue: Where are the O-Team now?
Jim Jannard took a step back from RED in 2013, with Jarred Land taking his place as CEO. In 2019 he decided to retire completely, following "over 45 years of innovating technology through art."
Ted Shilowitz also left RED in 2013 and is now the resident "Futurist" at Paramount Global. He explores new forms of technologies — with a focus on virtual reality and Augmented Reality.
After 16 years, Graeme Nattress is still RED's in-house "Problem Solver". It’s his mission to keep RED innovating throughout the years — and he also runs his own plugin company, too.
Frederic Lumière took a back seat from RED soon after it launched and now runs APIANT. He went from connecting the key players at RED to creating a company that allows users to connect systems.
We hope you enjoyed the story behind RED. Let us know what you think. Reply to this email or message Shamir (Eddie AI’s CEO) directly. (Twitter/X | LinkedIn).
Such a fascinating read!
GREAT BTS ARTICLE!
Over the years, the development of the RED camera has been instrumental in my professional success. As a byproduct of the RED camera’s creation, a startup company from Slovakia filled a void by developing the world’s premier video assist software, QTAKE. Today, QTAKE is utilized on virtually every major feature film globally. My company serves as a primary supplier of QTAKE in the United States, and I had the privilege of serving as the Video Assist operator on Pirates of the Caribbean, which was shot in 3D using RED cameras. I extend my sincere gratitude to Jim and the team at RED Camera for their invaluable contributions.