Baltimore Shooter said:
Alex, first, I thank you for your frankness and willingness to tell us how it really is.
So Alex, I beg to differ with you, that the OMB and handycam format doesn't work at all for docs, magazines and cable TV, unless you're doing one of those "funniest home videos" types of shows.
Warren
Born into Brothels was shot on the OMB handycam formats. It won an Oscar last year for best documentary, and it was phenomenal.
You're arguing formats are blocking people. I know people that could take an Etch-A-Sketch and still turn out brilliant visual art.
Well, I think you're right. If you shoot on DV cameras, and use the DV format, it isn't as good as you would think it could be. However things are changing, and if you look around these days at the Sony Z1U that I carried at WKRN, or the Panasonic HVX 200 (which with P2 cards can shoot Varicam format) or the GY HD100U from JVC which has a smaller ENG lens on the front of it, you would notice that these little cameras turn a very fine image, if you make sure the workflow is solid. They all have XLR inputs, digital audio, and they all work in native HDV. The Z1U does 1080i, the Panasonic does everything, and the JVC does true 720p. I always bump around the camera websites, and whenever they offer up a DVD that has all of their new cameras, I put myself on the mailing list. So far I have gotten quite a few DVDs, and they don't just look good, they look great. HDV to HDV to HDV output is phenomenal, and cheap as can be.
If you're shooting a doc on an old XL1, then yes, it's going to look terrible and flat. A lot of people complained about the Z1U look when I was at WKRN. That was not the problem. The problem was the format. We were shooting in HDV, dumping out of cam at DV, and it was running through two compression schemes before hitting the air. I assume that KRON in SanFran is doing about the same. It barely looks passible. What did it look like? It looked like an XL1. What would it look like if you just went native all the way through with no compression? The Z1U shoots on 1080i HDV, and when you send it back native HD, and cut it native HD, it looks better than Beta. Beta is great, magnificent, but it's getting old. That's all. I bet you watch a lot of shows on the Discovery Channel about animals that you actually think were shot on film. Acutally, they were shot on Varicam, the new Panasonic HD format. It's a sweet cam.
So why use these little cameras?
Well, it looks so good that Steven Spielberg's creative team used a tiny Panasonic HVX200 to shoot plate shots for the effects in the movie Munich. That was to save time in processing, and remove the jaggies. It was mixed right in with the remaining 35mm stocks. It's a 6k USD camera. The movie Once Upon a Time in Mexico was shot on Varicam, and Collateral, the Michael Mann film was shot on a ViperCam system, which runs about 150k USD. Stephen Soderburgh just shot the movie Bubble using a Varicam, and he only used two practical lights throughout the entire production.
If you're interested, you should go check out
http://hd24.com/ if you're interested on what a Varicam rig looks like, without any post effects. A Varicam runs 90k USD.
What I am saying right now is, it has nothing to do with the little cam. I got some short embarrassment out of it, but I got over it. It was the cutbacks and attitude that forced me out, not the technology.
It's never been the camera. It's been the person operating the camera. I've seen people take digibeta and make it look like utter burning home video crap. I've seen work from a XL1 look like a Hollywood production. The camera world has a lot of artisans, but not a lot of artists. True artists could make an incredible photo with a carboard box and a pinhole.
So how do I know about all of this?
When I was out of work for six weeks between news jobs, I just did about a month's research into cameras, prices, values, and the new digital switch. I am a self taught on the subject. If anyone buys a non-HD capable camera these days, they're a fool. The prices are ten times better than the old days.