By Ben Crosbie
Now I know this is probably where most people will have Ctrl+F-ed their way through the page trying to find all the juicy info on what equipment we are using (I’m a self-admitted gear-head also guilty of this) so I hate to disappoint you – but due to non-disclosure agreements with our funding partners I cannot divulge any specific information about our equipment…
Who am I kidding, I wish we had funding!
Finding the right equipment was probably the most time intensive task we faced, though I’m not saying that it should be. It’s not the camera that takes good pictures, it’s the person behind the camera – blah, blah, blah. I think this is true to a degree, but give a good photographer/filmmaker good equipment, and he will probably be able to do better work. Doesn’t mean he can’t do great work with crappy equipment, but let’s face it, pretty much all pros have some badass equipment.
The Camera
Most amateur filmmakers focus on the camera and visual side of filmmaking first. As I’ll get to in the next post, audio is just as important, if not more important, but I’ll go ahead and start where I first started myself.
Choosing between HD and SD was pretty simple for us, because the prices of most SD camcorders (Xl2, DVX100) right now are not much cheaper that the quality prosumer HDV camcorders (XH-A1, HVX200). Even though most people don’t have any way to watch HD content yet (TVs or HD-DVD players), HD is the future of home entertainment. Plus, HDV would look much better for theater projection, which is where we hoped our final product would be displayed (through film festivals). Also, all the new prosumer HDV camcorders recorded in some sort of progressive 24fps mode, making for a more film-like look. After reading many reviews and researching at the DVinfo forums, a really excellent resource for all things in digital video, I decided to get the Canon XH-A1. We didn’t get the HVX because the P2 system would just not be practical for our documentary in Israel. I worked on a music video where the HVX was used, and it was quite an amazing little camera, especially with it’s under and over crank abilities – but it just didn’t suit our specific needs.
We bought the camcorder in late February 2007, and started off just by playing with it around the house, taking test footage. The camera looked pretty daunting, with neither of us having used anything of similar quality, but it was pretty easy to operate. Again, using the dvinfo forums gave me a lot of good pointers for using the camera, as well as a wealth of camera presets that tweak the video image for various situations. Plugging the camera into our HDV TV and watching the test footage was a revelation. The image that the camera produced was incredible! I thought I could easily tell the difference between film and video, but the XH A1 was fooling me pretty well. The image was sharp, colorful and in HD! You can’t get much better than that. Film has much better colors and depth of field that the XH A1, but I was extremely pleased with the footage it produced. The main downside I found with the camera (for doco work) is that it is definitely a little front heavy, making it difficult to hand hold for extended periods of time (more on that in another post). All in all, we were very pleased with our purchase.
In the next post, I’ll tell you all about our audio equipment.
I am finding all of this very interesting. I did realize it was all hard work – but not how hard. Would you like me to try to set up a meeting with the the “Head of the municipality” – I don’t know how to call it in English – basically he is a public figure – voted for democratically by the whole area – and is in charge of all kibbutz interests in the whole area. And happens to be our downstairs neighbour – let me know