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I am looking at shooting soon and I was planning on using a sony DCRTV900 which is a 3 CCD chip camera (Broadcast standard). From what I understand most of you are using just plan old handycams. What sort of quility are you getting from them? Do you enter festivals with films shoot on them? From what I understand the quility is quite crap in comparision but please tell me something.
Mikey
The camera you plan to shoot on sounds wonderful. There is no comparison between VHS and Digital Video. DV wins out everytime.
My advice is stick with the camera you have, only light and blck the scenes properly and professionally, use it as if it was as expensive as film and you will get good shots that you will be pleased with.
By the way the film Im finishing at the moment was shot on VHS video. A very nice camera, about as good as you could expect but VHS is fundamentally shite quality.
I dont care about this in the slightest because it hasnt cost me a thing and dirty grotty images suit the subject matter. (its a sort of nightclubbing horror film). Its also in Black and White, which is kinder than colour, you dont notice the terrible quality so much. I dont think Id ever try and pass off a colour film that was shot on VHS to anyone. I would be terrible.
Having said that, its the story that you choose to tell and the way you tell it that is most important, more so than the film stock.
I'm glad that you asked that question because we're gonna shoot at the end of November. We'll be using 2 DV-Cameras and I'm glad to hear that the quality will be acceptable.
Thanx!
- ThomasB
It doesn't really matter what type of camera you use these days. But just make sure the reason you are choosing DV (as well as VHS) over film is for aesthetic reasons, rather than economic reasons. If it's the type of movie that should be shot on film, then it should be shot on film. Shooting video will only make it look cheap. Video has it's own aesthetic quailities....find them and use them to your advantage.