Introduction of ProfessorChaos :) Plz read

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ProfessorChaos

ProfessorChaos

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let me do a brief introduction of myself... my name is Colin...I'm a student at a high school in Toronto and I take what the school calls "Communcations Technology" and all you do is shoot commercials, edit them..now the stupid thing is...our teacher is a "burnout" from the TV broadcast industry turned teacher and he is either very lazy or he doesn't know anything about anything even remotely related to camera work. You see...last year, he spent around $6000 canadian on a Sony HDR-FX1 HDV cam...and he lacks the knowledge to know that we don't need any HDV yet because we don't use any HD displays on our workstations nor have HDTV's...so essentially it was a waste of money because we don't use it for its strong points...I recently suggested a Panny AG-DVX100A to him and he was like "why? we have an HD." and i replied "it's not even true HD...HDV is not even a professional codec" and I also said "It has what we need to do, which is true 24P for shooting short's and commercials and balanced XLR audio inputs aswell as very good low light shooting quality not to mention the plethora of manual controls" He says "well we can mimic 24P in using programs" and I showed him the three way shootout review between the DVX100,FX1,XL2 and it clearly only does 60i well and low light shooting is less than average. I told him that "using programs such as DVFilmMaker significantly lowers the quality of HDV and still is only fake 24P as it looks like something is wrong with the camera's movements...native 24P vs post-prod 24P = no contest...native 24P destroys it in all aspects...so then he just ignores me...

after all, what good is widescreen HDV when we don't even have the neccessary products to evaluate the quality to it's full potential...

We also have 3 other camera's available in the class...Sony PD100A's
Editing is done using Mac Dual core G5 2.0ghz w/ 2gb DDR Ram each and FC Studio...there's 5 of the mac's and about 7 other pc's w/ P4 2.8GHz HT and 1GB DDR Ram and Premiere/AE
Also, the class is a big joke ...i.e. a bird course...and I wish it wasn't so easy because we don't learn anything useful in the real world in case we ever want to do that..

And for our final project this year, my friends and I have formed a group of 7 and we need to shoot, edit, foley in audio on a short...maybe 3 minutes to 15 minutes...haven't decided length yet because we don't have any solid idea's...and this is all on a $0 budget so I don't know how we are going to make a short that doesn't look cheesy...we have access to a green screen and a few 4500K lights and a cam crane...a bunch of manfrotto tripods and a small dolly aswell...I really liked Smettli's short film about the blind friend and his roommate. Does anyone have plot idea's that maybe we could use? Oh, and we can shoot all around Toronto...from farmland to downtown..and anything in between.

by the way, how do y'all afford your DVX100's?
 
Yeah, you're teacher sounds like a know it all. I don't know anything about the 24p conversion software but I'm glad I don't have to put up with it. My film school just got one of those Sony HD cameras too. I think their going to ditch the DVX soon.

Welcome to the forums.:beer:
 
tehehehe im starting to feel right at home...yes...my teacher thinks hes a know it all when in fact he knows nothing...masters in communcations degree from CMichU...pshhh he's as dumb as a doorknob when it comes to knowledge relating to technology...you should see what the "best" that all the classes throughout the years has ever produced...its just sad..Smettli's short film about the blind friend and his roommate takes it to school....sad huh?

maybe if he could teach...

the sony hdr-fx1 is a sham...lures all the "think they know it all's"
 
Welcome to the board!

I don't know if the fx1 is so bad, I mean... I wouldn't buy one, I'm a Panny fanboy now, but I've seen some very impressive results with the fx1 and 35mm adapters...

I agree though, getting hdv now is like investing in laserdisks back in the late 80's. It's going to die once all of this straight-to-harddrive recording stuff diffuses into the market.
 
Yeah, I'd tone it down a little if I were you . . . lest you become of the "know-it-alls" you rail against.
 
im not saying that the fx1 is bad. im just saying my teacher is kind of a mooch...he puts all his expenses under the schools tab...he buys the most useless things like m$ fingerprint scanner's for himself and uses the schools money....meanwhile the english department can't even give out any paper because their budget is tiny...i dont know how the school admins run the place but having a tech dept. have 20x more funding than the math and english dept combined is just odd...
 
Let's hope he does not stumble across this board...you might get an F-. In-regards to ideas for your short, how about...A teacher, a nice guy, who find out that one of his students has been maligning him on the worlds biggest and best filmmaking forum...he takes the depts latest camera and bludgeons the student to death whilst filming it for his archive.... only joking welcome and be good...
J
 
My two cents- get over it and get to work.
You have a lot of nice stuff we never had coming up through the schools- not even in college. Ever try to haul around a 75 lb. 3/4 umatic deck AND a tube camera? Timecode? What was that? We had Microburst.
So your teacher is a weinie. That's just what you'll have to put up with to get access to the gear. Learn to give him what he wants, and get the gear and do your video. Take advantage of your situation.

Jeff Patnaude:thumbsup:
 
If it's not a teacher...it's a boss, or a colleague, or the guy who runs the film festival, or the client, or the agency, or the producer......

You get the point.
It's always someone.
That is, until you get older and realize that you are now that guy to someone else.

Forget about your teacher, be glad you have a camera you can mooch off of, and go make something cool.

Welcome aboard.
 
SilverWolf said:
You also asked how we afford our Dvx's ? 1 Answer = Sacrifice
Click to expand...

Another answer is for many of us our camera gear pays for itself through paying jobs.
Then again, that's a form of sacrifice.
Anyone who doesn't agree with that has never shot a car dealership spot for a local ad agency.
:)


"We need to make sure we hit on the low prices and the big inventory"
Yeah... that'll really set them apart from all the other spots on the air.
 
First off welcome to the boards.

Now, do have any idea how you sound? OK, so your teacher doesn’t share our views on the obvious superiority of the Panasonic line of cameras. So? Back in my day when we wanted to make videos we would have to take turns getting inside the giant box and drawing whatever the other students pointed the ‘lens’ at.

Seriously though, this guy is just a hurdle for you to overcome, its not about the equipment, its about learning to tell stories, learning to light, how to get clean audio, principals of framing, color theory, editing, sound design, etc, etc, getting that education is up to you, which camera you learn it on makes very little difference.

Oh and that thing about how the English department can’t afford paper? When I was in high school there was no video program and the English department still had the same complaint, I’m pretty sure they just use the paper budget on whisky and hookers.
 
I too, must chime in and say that you are incredibly lucky to have all that gear at your high school. Unless your parents pay a lot of money to send you to an exclusive private school, then I can't even believe they have all that gear for a high school.

You wanna know my choices for creative classes in high school?
Drama- stage acting
Art- painting with tempera paints on a piece of construction paper

Even as cheap as those classes are to fund, we were in constant danger of them being cut.

In my college film courses, we used ancient Bolex cameras and cut the film by hand on a flatbed editor.

So just chill on the teacher and be glad you are getting access to all this great gear at such a young age. We are apparently in a new age where schools are starting to offer digital media classes, and that's great.

As for affording the DVX, unless you have wealthy parents to buy one for you, it takes quite a long time to save enough for one. Renting the camera is a lot more realistic for most younger people, until you have an established need to have the camera around at all times.

Have fun and good luck.
 
We also have 3 other camera's available in the class...Sony PD100A's
Editing is done using Mac Dual core G5 2.0ghz w/ 2gb DDR Ram each and FC Studio...there's 5 of the mac's and about 7 other pc's w/ P4 2.8GHz HT and 1GB DDR Ram and Premiere/AE
Also, the class is a big joke ...i.e. a bird course...and I wish it wasn't so easy because we don't learn anything useful in the real world in case we ever want to do that..
Click to expand...

I can't believe that you're bitching when you have all this equipment. sounds like a kid that didnt get EXACTLY what he wanted for christmas. i had a comm tech class and we didnt have half the equipment you have listed. you need to learn to make do with what you have. plus- just because you dont have a dvx100a doesnt mean you cant make good stuff. bitching will get you nowhere. show people what you can do with the resources available to you, that will get you somewhere.
 
Must be Thanksgiving break.

How do we afford our DVX's? Do you think we're all a bunch of 15 year olds taking a videocourse? You seem to be doing alot of complaining about the course, your instructor (who happens to hold a Masters Degree), the cameras......................

You seem to have a perception of your instructor when in fact, it seems you are the one with the bad attitude and negative outlook. Your job is to chill, get an 'A' in the class and move on.

If you can't come up with any ideas with all of that equipment laying around then you probably have no business bagging in the first place little Spielberg.

If you're going to hang around here I'd suggest improving your outlook and not bringing that baggage in here.

I'm closing this thread as it's just a whinefest for some ingrateful kid
 
welcome aboard. .. to be fair to the subject of HDV id have to ask the question. "what makes something a professional format?" i would myslef think that it only requires the usage of the format in a professional environment. in other words.. there are plenety of pros using HDV to shoot stuff so therefore it could be considered a professional format.. same goes for plain ol DV IE the DVX100. now on the other hand neither of those formats whether we consider them professional or not will touch higher end formats such as DVCPRO HD or HDcam. but any way you slice it, roght now you shold be focusing on your storytelling skills through the medium of filmmaking. .. when the time comes to purchase your own equipment, youll have free reign to sort out the flowers from the weeds, but let your school teacher and all the others making what you might consider less than optimal choices fall by the wayside and dont get hung up on others personal choices. any camera has the ability to tell a great story if its in the hands of a great storyteller.

again. welcome aboard.
 
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