Who wins? • content or technology

Coco Bermudez

Coco Bermudez

Well-known member
I find myself in a conundrum...I am getting ready to shoot a documentary in the next couple of months and now I am dealing with choosing my tools. I am in love with my DVX100A. I have used it for so many years and I just feel it is an extension of me.

Yet I hear people telling me If my documentary by any chance gets picked up by a distributor I better have it in HD or I will limit my chances of selling it. i am one that hates to shoot in any format just because I have to. As far as I am concerned, if the material is compelling and shot well, who cares if it was shot in a Fisher Price Pixelvision (ok maybe I am pushing it here)

Anyone finds themselves in the same dilema? Any thoughts or suggestions?
 
Super8 said:
I find myself in a conundrum...I am getting ready to shoot a documentary in the next couple of months and now I am dealing with choosing my tools. I am in love with my DVX100A. I have used it for so many years and I just feel it is an extension of me.
Click to expand...

I'm looking at the Panasonic AG-HMC150 to 'upgrade' from my DVX. I'll be renting one in a couple of weeks to test it out.
 
You simply need to do some homework. Figure out who your potential buyers are and ask them what they're after. As far as I can tell, there's a huge number of standard TV shows still playing everywhere, nevertheless knowing ahead of time and being well prepared will not hurt.
 
If I am not mistaken, the film listed above was shot on the DVX and won the Oscar and I think that there was one other film that did the same? Content trumps technology always. If you are a talented filmmaker with a compelling subject, and all you can afford is SD, so be it. SD has plenty of life left in it in general, especially when it comes to docs and projects with archival material.

I have been producing projects this year for Paramount that have about 60% SD archival footage (classic film titles) and although we shoot in HD for our material, if we were shooting in SD, the end result will still have to be delivered as an HDCAM SR master. It would just mean that my interviews and tabletop would be in SD and would look as good in quality as most of the archival material.

If your content is not very compelling to your buyers though, the lack of HD origination is one easy excuse to turn you down without hurting your feelings though. You might want to look into acquiring the 16x9 add-on lens for the DVX though, I think it is sheer folly to shoot anything these days in 4x3. Good clean anamorphic SD can uprez to HD surprisingly well if the correct procedures are used.

My .02

Dan
 
I saw Iraq in Fragments projected from the 35mm blow-up and it looked fantastic. It was even shot in 4:3 letterbox and still looked good.

Why was the documentary successful? It had very little to do with the camera used (DVX100a), but everything to do with the subject matter and style of the film.

Go for the DVX, content wins.
 
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thanks guys for your input...content is always king to me...

by the way...Have any of you found yourself in this new dilemma?

What happens now that we are going to HD in Feb 2009? Any of you are in the midst of producing commercials that will play on local television or cable after Feb 2009? Do we need to start shooting in HD rather than SD?

Does it mean that anything that we shot earlier this year if it is still playing after Feb 2009 it wil look like crap? I am confused about this one.
 
We arent going to HD in 2009. We're going to a digital broadcast signal. Not HD. Shoot in what fits in your budget. If given the choice I'd take HD over SD, but there's no way SD will keep a good program from distribution. Look at Murderball or Mad Hot Ballroom - both didnt do too bad having been shot on the DVX. Content is King.
 
Nope. Just how they broadcast it over the air. Now slowly local networks are making the switch to actual HD broadcasts, but even those are still showing plenty of SD content. At the moment there is no deadline or requirement for broadcasters to switch to HD, only to broadcast a digital signal as opposed to analog.
 
so now i feel like an idiot...confusing as heck....so why all the push to shoot everything in HD. I keep on hearing Feb 09...Feb 09 HD is coming...I was like...HD is here..I guess it makes perfect sense...no need for me to change gear if it is just going to be delivered digitally...my dvx productions should still look good
 
Yeah lots of marketing hype out there to sell more HD TV's and cameras. And whatever else they feel like calling HD :) For the record though a downconvert from HD to SD generally looks better than just SD given similiar quality (say a DVX vs the HVX). But you do you need better when you have something that already looks great?
 
Super8 said:
I find myself in a conundrum...I am getting ready to shoot a documentary in the next couple of months and now I am dealing with choosing my tools. I am in love with my DVX100A. I have used it for so many years and I just feel it is an extension of me.

Yet I hear people telling me If my documentary by any chance gets picked up by a distributor I better have it in HD or I will limit my chances of selling it. i am one that hates to shoot in any format just because I have to. As far as I am concerned, if the material is compelling and shot well, who cares if it was shot in a Fisher Price Pixelvision (ok maybe I am pushing it here)

Anyone finds themselves in the same dilema? Any thoughts or suggestions?
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What kind of Doc is it?

I ask because I shot one on storm / tornado chasing and Discovery Channel will not buy SD footage anymore, they required hd.

If your not going to try to market it to a network I think you'll be just fine staying with your dvx100. After all dvd's are standard def.
 
Super8 said:
so now i feel like an idiot...confusing as heck....so why all the push to shoot everything in HD. I keep on hearing Feb 09...Feb 09 HD is coming...I was like...HD is here..I guess it makes perfect sense...no need for me to change gear if it is just going to be delivered digitally...my dvx productions should still look good
Click to expand...

Just get out there and shoot your film and make it great. All of this stuff you are worrying about is more for people who stall on creating great content because they are worried about all of this technical BS. DVX100 is totally capable of creating Oscar winning content, the question is, are you?

HD has come in because it's been waiting in the wings for decades now and manufacturers know that there is a lot of opportunity and profit in it. Yes, HD does look better but as far as I am concerned, politics and greed kind of took the air out the potential of what HD could have been. I recall going to NAB in the mid 90s and seeing HD gear all over the place. Politics and greed kept HD from being rolled out and price reduced for the consumer years and years ago. It is all coming to fruition now but they blew the opportunity to fix and innovate a lot of things that they could have because all of the companies and broadcasters involved were greedy and wanted to "own" HD.

And it has only been recently that HD broadcast has even sort of looked decent. A year ago, if you went to the local Best Buy and looked at their walls of HDTVs, as an engineer, you had to laugh at how bad and inconsistent the signal looked. Sony's massive push of MPEG 2 for all forms of HD has had it's effect in how the signal is processed and broadcast by most channels and in most cases, it looks like crap. Blu Ray can look really good but as a producer who produced content for Disney BD releases, I can tell you that they won the battle but lost the war. A format war between HD DVD and Blu Ray was also put into place by stupidity, greed and politics. The blew it, Blu Ray sales have never even come close to fulfilling the potential of the format. Software is still outrageously expensive, hardware has come down quickly but it is too little, too late.

Most consumers are quite content with their existing DVDs ran through an uprezzing DVD player via HDMI, they don't want to drop hundreds or thousands of dollars on replacing all of their DVD collection with Blu Ray versions.

Be a filmmaker, all of this other BS is just that, BS.

Dan
 
great points you all...very very true!

I feel like a huge weight has been lifted. All i want to do is continue with my creative...sometimes I just get bogged down by outside influences that have their more than 2 cents to impose on any production
 
ChipG said:
What kind of Doc is it?

I ask because I shot one on storm / tornado chasing and Discovery Channel will not buy SD footage anymore, they required hd.

If your not going to try to market it to a network I think you'll be just fine staying with your dvx100. After all dvd's are standard def.
Click to expand...

It's just a narrative short following someone around. All pre-pro has been done. We are just going to submit it to the festival circles...maybe to Cannes short corner. Hopefully it will be good enough for someone to pick it up.
 
Oh ya, you'll be just fine with the dvx for character driven content, as long as you're not trying to shoot a planet earth or a mount everest type doc.

The dvx100 is perfect for what your doing!

FYI I have had several doc producers tell me they prefer the 100a over the 100b, not sure why but I keep hearing it.
 
ChipG said:
Oh ya, you'll be just fine with the dvx for character driven content, as long as you're not trying to shoot a planet earth or a mount everest type doc.

The dvx100 is perfect for what your doing!
Click to expand...

Phew...now rather than spending the money on a HD camera all I got to do is get the anamorphic adapter for the DVX100 like it was suggested.

By the way...if the content is great...does the Discovery Channel care which camera shot the HD documentary? I mean does a HV30 stand any chance against something shot in a HVX200? To them is HD...HD no matter what?
 
I know of an aviation program made for the discovery channel, they used a sony f900 as the a cam and about 10 hv20's for the b cams. The b cams had 75%+ of the footage in the show. If the content is good they will bend the rules from thier spec sheet of camera requirements. A few years ago they said an hvx cannot exceed 20% of the footage in the show, now they are buying shows that are 100% hvx. I think Iditarod is 80% hvx's.
 
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