Question

[Centwo]

Hello,

I am looking to do a found footage movie, something like the Blair witch project or Paranormal activity. The script is done and casting is finished and I'm looking in to what camera to use and would like to get some feedback.
Since this is Found Footage, it is not supposed to look great and most of the time it is a bit shaky footage and should have a digital look to it, so no Depth of field. The story is about some friends, doing a documentary, when they take a wrong turn and bad stuff happen to them.

I've been thinking to do this in a Red Epic and in post make it look bad, Does any one have any feedback on this?
Also If I use something like HVX200a If we wants to use it in a movie theater, can it be blown up to that size? How about the quality footage?
Also with low lighting shots, would you shoot them in the day time and change to night in post?
There are some shots where they're using the night vision on the camera. would you use the real night vision or change it to green tint in post?
What would you recommend using ?

Thank you

[marvinhello]

Red Epic is gonna be difficult for handheld shooting, and you have to use a dedicated focus puller to manually pull focus. If you are ok with autofocus, then I'd recommend Sony VG20 or JVC HMQ10, which is a 4K camcorder.

[Andrew Luczenczyn]

I think you need to filter out the camera "should do this" from others and really analyze how you want to shoot this film.

Found footage films, IMO, shouldn't be altered to much. Shoot at night when it's set at night. Use the crappy "night vision" functions.

I feel your trying to apply feature dramatic techniques to a film that's more of a documentary. RED would be overkill. Ya you'll get some quality issues when you blow up hd to a big screen, but the audience should accept that they are watching "real footage". If the image is super clean, I feel like that would ruin that.

[jax_rox]

Reminds me of Cloverfield - high quality images and vfx heavy trying to pass off as 'found footage'.
It can be done, but using a Red Epic would mean that you'd have to rehearse camera moves and really think long and hard about how you want to shoot each scene, and design each shot to work well, but still keep that look.
I also feel like it would be pointless to degrade the Red image. You'd be better off with a prosumer 1080 camera - if you're projecting in a cinema, the blowup from 1080 to 2k is marginal and acceptable to most audiences.

In terms of shooting it, if you want to keep that look, you should just shoot it as if you were the person in the story shooting it - shoot night scenes at night, shoot night vision scenes with night vision on.

[David Jimerson]

Most of the footage in Cloverfield was shot with an HVX200, so yeah, it can go big screen.

[marvinhello]

You should really take a look at JVC HMQ10 4K camcorder, I think it's made for this genre of film on the big screen.

[sonofaresiii]

It looks like I'm one of the few people here that's going to advocate quality over authenticity-- even in a found footage movie, people don't want to watch something that looks like crap. You can make it look fantastic, and people aren't going to stand up and shout "That's unrealistic!"
No, you don't want to get bogged down in classic hollywood lighting, but it's a tough skill to learn to light something well, and dramatically, and still make it appear as though it's "found footage."

Not to mention that with higher quality, you CAN degrade it in post exactly as much as you want to-- but something that already looks terrible, you can't make it look any better if you need to.

[jax_rox]

I have to disagree somewhat.. If you look at Paranormal Activity or Blair Witch, the part that makes it the most scary is it is shot like crap, on a crap camera with low quality. And that then makes it seem a lot more real. It makes it seem as if it actually happened. I know a lot of people who thought Paranormal Activity was actually real.

A Red Epic is going to take a lot more work to look like an HVX200 than it would to just shoot on an HVX200, not to mention that the depth of field wouldn't match, unless you light the scenes ridiculously, and then you'd run the risk of having it look 'lit'.

I suppose it depends what look you're going for - Project X and Cloverfield have a very clean look about them IMO; lit scenes, experienced crew and experienced DPs, almost looks like they're trying too hard to go for that look. OTOH, Paranormal Activity and Blair Witch are shot with smaller, and much moer inexperienced crew - the films were almost designed for their experience level and therefore look much more real.

[Egg Born Son]

Using a RED when in the best case scenario if everything goes to plan you'll end up with footage that looks like a HVX...hmm. Buy a named actor instead. That will raise the bar and the audience will have someone they recognise. Quality of the footage won't matter. One problem with so many independent films, made worse by lower quality lighting and footage is that the unknown actors always seem to look similar. Three guys with short brown hair and white shirts, unless you spend money on distinctive looks, hair, clothes etc...you can be halfway into the movie before you can recognise which one is which. The filmmaker can't see this in the edit because they are familiar with the actors but in the cinema the audience needs to follow first go. Along with the mind-bending convolutions I had to watch Primer 3 times before I could follow it.

[RyanT]

Honestly, the more important thing to look at here is sensor size. I personally don't think a 35mm sensor fits the project. Home videos, even when they were shot on film (super 8), had deep DOF. You'll end up suffering a bit with low light and other qualitative issues, but in the end it seems to me like a 1/3" camera is more suitable for the look of the film.

Sonofaresiii, while it's good to think that people don't want to watch crap, I don't think it's going to be the camera that determines whether or not the film looks bad. Spend time on production design, costumes, blocking, and framing. If you watch the BTS of cloverfield, it's pretty interesting how they couldn't rely on standard coverage. Since they were going off of "found footage" it's not like they can just cut into a closeup at the right time, instead the blocking had to make that come about and it had to make sense to the story. Figuring out how you're going to handle that will probably be the most interesting challenge you'll come across.

In the end you have to see what you like. I personally would try and shoot with available light at night and just pump the gain, or even find a camera with nightvision and use that.