My Equipement(Get those dirty thoughts out of your head!)
So, I was able to raise some money and will be buying a light kit soon. Probably sometime next week. Lately, what’s been holding me up on some projects is that the shooting schedules are all over the place. To rent lights for that many individual days would be insane. I could probably buy a set of lights for the amount that it would cost to rent them for that many days. The way it works is, you could pick up a rental on a Friday, then keep them for the entire weekend, and only get charged for a one day rental (roughly $200). But the shooting schedule is sort of like “Alright, we’ll shoot this on Friday, then this next Monday, and this Wednesday, and then this Thursday. $800…… Maybe we should rethink this?” Truth is that lights have been the only thing holding me back from shooting anything whenever the hell I want to. I’m excited, to say the least. I’ll probably go with a soft box kit, again get those dirty thoughts out of your head. I’ve rented them the last 3 times I’ve shot a short film. They are incredibly versatile and easy to use. I could probably get away with buying 2 of them, which I might end up doing. So what’s next in my equipment list? I want to go HD.
Right now I use a Panasonic DVX100B.
Sexy, isn’t it? For the price, this camera fucking rules. It’s a work horse. We used to use them in Film School and some of them had well over 1000 hours logged on them and still worked fine. As far as prosumer goes, for a standard def camera this is probably the best you can get. Although the Cannon XL2 lets you switch lenses. But screw that, I bought the DVX100B, so therefore it’s better. Now that I’m going to buy a light kit, I’ve started looking at the next step, which is going HD. It makes me shutter thinking about it. HD is a whole new game. I need more Hard Drive space and a HD burner. Well, I don’t need an HD burner. But what the hell is the point of shooting in HD, if you can’t burn it to some sort of HD format? That’s like buying condoms without having anyone to have sex with. Sure, the cashier thinks you’re getting laid, but if it’s not true, it’s an empty victory. Both are costs that I am not looking forward too. Hell, who looks forward to any cost really? So, what kind of camera would I choose to shoot HD? The Cannon XLH1.
Why not the Panasonic HD camera? For one it uses P2 flash cards. What the hell would I care? Well, a 16 GB P2 flash card is $800. Because it’s HD, 1 minute of footage takes up about 1 gig. So, I could record roughly 16 minutes of footage on one card. Yeah, that’s not going to work. At least as far as I can tell, that’s the case. I use up 3 tapes usually in one shoot, which hold 1 hour of footage. You can buy 32 GB cards or a portable video recorder for a shit load of money. Of course I could shoot in 720P and probably get more on a 32GB card. But screw that in the neck. I’m paying over $5000 for a camera. I want to get the highest possible resolution out of it that I can get. Now see, the Cannon shoots on Mini DV tapes, which record an hour of footage HD or not. While it’s probably more maintenance and all that, for a real small time film maker, it’s really the only viable option. Plus, I can change out the lenses on the Cannon, but not on the Panasonic. I love my Panasonic right now and would like to stay faithful, but unless I hit the lottery, it’s not happening.
So, will I ever have enough equipment? Probably not. I’ll always be saving up and drooling over some billion dollar thing that will make my films better. Sigh, fuck me.
This is all based on research that I’ve done. If I’m wrong on something, let me know.
Tags: camera, cannon, DVX100B, film, HD, High def, memory, mini DV, movie making, P2 flash, panasonic, short, storage, tape, XLH1