robgordon.com - blog:

Through a series of random events, I ended up with a Sony Handycam TRV460 It’s a digital 8 video camera. It has a 1/6″ CCD and only 290,000 effective pixels, so it’s not exactly high resolution (I think the resolution ends up somewhere around 500 by 480). However, I was pleasantly surprised how good the picture quality was when lighted correctly.

Some more pros:
Firewire compatible allows streaming as a webcam or direct recording through iMovie/FCP.
Excellent optical zoom (though maybe lacking in wideangle range).
Built in microphone provides pretty good sound.

Cons:
Small CCD.
Manual focus requires using the touch screen as a spot focus (why?!!!!)
No microphone jack so the camera requires use of the built in microphone.

Anyway, I had to give it a test run, so I recorded a little music video of me playing two of my favorite Bob Schneider songs, Metal and Steel, and Big Blue Sea. I connected the video camera to iMovie through firewire, allowing me to bypass using a tape. This method worked great, but it did take a while to convert the signal back to letterbox on my iBook G4.

I recorded both of the songs in close up shots to be used as the master shots. Then I went back through and filmed some insert shots while playing each part of the songs that are different. Lastly, I filmed a wide shot. Notice the music taped to the mirror in front of me; hence the reason my eyes move around and don’t look at the camera.

After I thought I had all the shots I needed, I laid the two songs next to each other in iMovie. I trimmed the shots, extracted the audio, and made sure the audio and video transitioned well. That was the foundation. After that it was just a matter of going through and inserting the insert shots anywhere there was a problem with the master shot, a chance to be creative, or just to break the monotony. NOTE: It would have been much easier with multiple cameras because the video and audio would be in sync on the insert shots, but since I only had the one camera, I had to use beats and visual cues to line up the insert shots to the audio from the master shot.

The last thing to do was add the effects. I added a couple of fade ins and fade outs, some text, and color corrected a couple of shots (even though there was no way to color correct the two master shots since it went from day to night as I was shooting). And after that I compressed the video for youtube and now it’s embedded on my blog. Ignore the stupid picture that’s in the youtube player. Youtube automatically uses a frame from the middle of the video to use as a cover picture.

Overall, I am happy with the way the video came out considering that I didn’t really plan anything about shooting, editing, or directing it. I didn’t even know what songs I was going to choose till just before shooting.

I was less than impressed with iMovie in terms of actually editing. It seemed counterintuitive to me at times. Maybe if I used it more I would like its simplicity. In fact as I’m writing this I think I just realized a couple of tricks that would have saved a lot of time and effort. IMovie does have a fairly “impressive” array of effects for being a free program that comes on every Mac.

Alright this post is long enough.

We shot a short film last Saturday. It was about a guy who collects vases and the woman who loves him. If you don’t like quirky, this one isn’t for you. It was a five page script with three scenes, 4 lighting setups, and a dolly made out of a baby carraige. The shoot went amazingly well. Here’s the details:

The script was started exactly one week before shooting, and the shooting script (authored by Trey Dudley, Mike Mihovilovich, Pete Ohs, and myself) wasn’t completed until 2:00 am the night before shooting.

After 4 hours of sleep we shot for 14 hours straight - minus the 15 minute lunch break.

We shot 720p 24fps on the Panasonic hvx200. The P2 tapeless workflow was incredible. We were able to check the smoothness of our baby carraige dolly shots with the click of a button. The takes are individually selectable on the LCD. (If we’d been shooting film there would have been no way of knowing whether or not our dolly shots were usable. And if we were shooting on tape, it would have taken much longer to rewind the footage and check it out.)

We had two P2 cards, so whenever one was downloading to the Powerbook the other P2 card was available to shoot on. Meaning there was virtually no camera downtime. (Side note: You can stick the P2 card directly into the PCMCIA slot on the Powerbook. Unfortunately, newer Macbooks/Macbookpros require additional hardware or the camera to download the footage.)

Overall, I can say nothing but good things about the camera package we used. The Panasonic hvx200 could very well be the most bang for your buck when it comes to a camera.

Mike Mihovilovich, the director of the short, is editing the film on FCP and hopefully soon I’ll be able to post a copy of the film on the site. For now, I’ll just post a screen shot taken from the camera. It’s of some of the vases under match light. The only lighting in the shot is from a match. We didn’t really know if this shot would work when we put it on the shot list. Click on the thumbnail for the full size.

Special thanks to everyone who worked on the film - especially Aaron Godfred for providing the camera and operating it.

PS. I do realize that I keep refering to our film as a film when in truth I should call it a video because it was not shot on film. But I can’t bring myself to say “short movie” or “short video.”

No really.  This time I really do plan on keeping my website active and full of content.  At least that’s what I’m telling myself after spending hours just trying to remember how to write html.  That’s it for now.