“Here’s the best tip you’ll get all year. Go to the RED Digital Cinema booth at NAB. Skip the demo—they’ll be doing them all day. Find the hidden line for deposits and line up early. Bring your checkbook. And if you’re smart—you’ll reserve two of them…”

That’s the short version of how I became the owner of two of the first RED ONE camera systems ever released. It would be another year before I could actually pick them up—but the wait was worth it.

I flew to Orange County on the specified date and met up with my cinematographer friend, Sean Fairburn. We spent the day with Jim Jannard and Jarred Land at RED in Foothill Ranch. Building the original systems was like assembling an erector set—grab a part here, "borrow" a part there. Some of what I’d ordered didn’t even exist yet; those items would arrive months later. But by the end of the day, I’d pieced enough gear together to have two complete camera systems. I flew home with systems #20 (Hobbes) and #21 (Calvin).

TSA wasn’t exactly amused by my “checked baggage”—to be fair, everything inside looked like a weapon. But the cameras rolled off the Southwest carousel intact, and I finally brought them home.

Now the question was: what exactly do I do with these things? 😂

At the time, I was building HD editing systems for the movie industry and wanted to be ready for 4K—that’s why I bought them in the first place. I wanted a library of 4K reference media I could leverage towards benchtesting new editing systems. But running a business left little time to sneak off and shoot with this pristine new format.

Still, I knew plenty of filmmakers. And they loved sending me scripts.

Some were incredible. Others…less so. But between paid rentals, I started partnering the cameras with filmmakers who otherwise never would have had access to shoot true 4K. Back then, the rest of the world was still shooting film or HD.

You hear stories about The Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity and their massive box-office success. We never had a runaway hit like that—but we made great films, gained invaluable experience, and my IMDb page grew faster than I ever expected. I got to work with respected indie filmmakers (along with the occasional villain) and walked away with knowledge I wouldn’t trade for anything.

One of my favorite projects from that time was Café, starring Jennifer Love Hewitt and Jamie Kennedy.
Click below to watch the trailer.