I Bought a Rig

There are a million things I want to write about at the moment. However, I just bought a rig and I am busy setting it up and learning. I hope to get a lot of material to write about.
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Production Value, Cheaply

Production value is a tough thing to nail down. It is one of those things that you "know when you see". Camera movement brings a very expensive feel to a film. I found these two tutorials today for cheap camera movers that bring a big look to your shots. Check out these two video tutorials for dolies and rails that cost less than $20 each in parts.




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Filmmaking is Storytelling, Nothing More

As usually happens, when I think about making movies, I tend to focus on gear. It isn't just me. One reason that some folks decide to be self-proclaimed DPs or Cinematographers or Filmmakers is to justify buying tons of cool equipment. But at the end of the day, the equipment is simply a tool to tell stories. Until you can tell a good story, you have no place making movies. This can be done in any manner, even vocally. When you can tell a good story, figure out how to tell it visually. You don't need a Viper or CineAlta to do that. You can do it with pen and paper, or flash, or a cell phone. Any time you spend "filmmaking" that isn't spent learning to tell a story visually is a waste. Use what you got on hand and learn to tell killer stories visually. Then cash that knowledge in when you can get your hands on better equipment. Taking the time to get the chops increases your ability to get your hands on the means of production.
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Cameras for Movies

WARNING: Sprawling post written over several days ahead. Generally I would edit extensively, but the sprawling accurately represents what I am feeling about this issue. Also, linking needed. This is really a brain-dump.

After a very long hiatus from reading every piece of camera literature I could get my hands on, I am off the wagon. It has been at least a couple of years since I spent anytime looking at the latest and greatest for making real cinematic images with birthday party cameras. Back then, the HV20 + 35mm lens adapters were displacing the DVX100s and HVX200s as the talk of indie lore. The former was a rig that combined one of the first consumer HD camcorders with a middle-layer interface for the 35mm SLR lenses. The latter were the first affordable—~$3k to $6k—video cameras to shoot 24p, though tethered to decent but non-interchangeable zoom lenses and small imagers. Each of these routes have their super-pros coupled with super-cons. Lest we forget the Red camera that everyone was dieing for. Guess what, everyone is still dieing for it. And while it puts MAJOR MOTION PICTURE cameras in more hands, it still does it for TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS. This is not an option for me or others like me.

At some point, maybe a year ago, video-capable Digital SLRs stormed the indie world. These cameras have HUGE imagers (well, compared to prosumer video cameras) AND interchangeable lenses to make cinematic progressive images. I think the DSLR cult is far more zealous than the previous two (but not the Red). Not to be upstaged, Panasonic—mother of the DVX and HVX cameras—recently announced a video camera with a DSLR imager and interchangeable lenses. Rumored price is $6k.

Honestly, I would love to jump on the new Panasonic camera, but I know full well that $6k may get you a body and nothing else. That doesn't take into account the waiting; this thing is still months away and workflow issues are never far behind the latest and greatest. Cult-wise, I am still stuck in 2008, with a lot of interest in palmcorder as video body plus lense adapter. An entire rig still costs less than the functional minimum HVX200. As for reality, I am stuck in 2004. My camera on hand was the first consumer 3-CCD Panasonic GS400. Less glass, slight manual control and some progressive faking functions.

All of my research comes down to features. Some of which are mandatory (for me), the rest are a trade off of ideal versus affordable. Here are the options:

1. The ability to obtain shallow depth of field. This is a must. Stu Maschwitz demands 24p, I demand tiny focus envelops. I know that lots of movies, even major ones, use infinite DOF. So do billions of home movies. Come hell or high water, I will have a means to shoot with shallow DOF.
2. Compression. This is a digital world, and true HD (or even SD) is expensive with respect to data. If you want to do any sort of effects, you need as much of that data as possible. I think this is undervalued in this sphere of filmmaking, but if you don't believe me, think back to the last time you photoshopped a point-and-shoot JPG. Without thousands of dollars of external recording mediums, we are going to have to rely on what the manufacturer provides us.
   • HDV: MPEG-2, options up to 25Mbps
     
   • AVCHD: MPEG-4 (H.264) up to 21Mbps, if you are lucky
     
   I have been a vocal hater of MPEG-2, so it may surprise that I actually prefer it in this instance. MPEG-2 requires more data for the same "quality" as H.264. While this is true for delivery, acquisition is a whole other issue. More compression is bad.
   
3. Recording medium. Since the dawn of consumer video cameras, footage has been captured to tapes—physical things that could be stored and saved and transferred to computers at real-time. One hour of footage can be captured in one hour. As far as I know, there is only one tape-based camera still being made. The rest use flash memory of one flavor or another that can be transferred instead of captured, a much faster process—unless the footage has to be transcoded. Guess what, most things (except Premiere CS5) can't natively handle AVCHD, and all flash-based cameras use AVCHD. While I wouldn't mind going tapeless, doing so at the expense of HDV is worrisome. Also, I like having a physical archive.
   
4. Imager technology. Back in the day, the CCD was king—by default, there was nothing else to choose from. They have draw backs, but we understood them. Along comes CMOS, and Mysterium and probably others. New chip technology that makes new things possible has been developed. CMOS is the new king of the camcorder and HDDSLR hill. For all I remember, CMOS may make all this hand-held HD possible, or at least for under thousands of dollars. The problem is that CMOS using a rolling shutter, something that rips blades off propellers and makes a lot of visual effects impossible. Also, the huge pixel count on DSLRs lead to crazy aliasing. Ideally we would opt for something CCD based, but there is really only one option for that left.
   
5. Cost. I want this to be as cheap as possible. Movies might be fake, but economics are real.
   

After weighing these factors, I am still firmly in the HV20 (or 30 or 40) plus 35mm lens adapter camp. The HV40 is the only tape-based, HDV camera out there. And it is on sale for $650. And people are hacking these things to flip the signal to compensate for the upside-down/backwards image the adapters create. And aliasing is totally unacceptable to me and video cameras compensate well for it. Given the exodus to DSLRs, second-hand rigs are flooding the market. This makes economics happy.

Gear is not a tool, it is an addiction. I have equipment to make something now. With a lot of post, it could even look a little movie-like, at least with respect to frame rates. Huge focus envelops are unavoidable. I have started to check eBay and Craigslist. My camera seems to be selling on eBay for $700. The third generation of the Canon HV line, the HV40, can be had for new for about the same. Older generations, minus native 24p, are available from the auctions for a $300-$1000 with some of the same "accessories" I would be looking to add. Lens adapters run, well, you can spend as much as you want—used for a few hundred and upwards of a couple grand plus follow-focus/rails/etc/etc. This DOES NOT include glass, which, will always be the most expensive component. However, the palmcorder cult has had a couple years to hammer out workflow and squeezing real manual control out.

But, if "no more excuses" is going to a be mantra, then I should just get off my ass and use my current camera. In the end, filmmaking is storytelling; the camera is just a tool. Hell, this weekend I made flipbooks with my toddler: I made "movies" without any camera. Also, my camera has the same sized lense as the HV20,30,40. So if I invested in a DOF adapter, I could use it now and "upgrade" to the HD palmcorder later. That would satisfy my gear lust and DP prejudice at the same time.
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