Love Panna but not down with P2

Nathyn

Nathyn

Low Budget Ninja
Yep, I love Panasonic but I'm not down with P2. I'm an indy filmmaker as you guys know and from the price of eight minutes on P2 I could make a film. Maybe not a great one but a film still. I don't know why they would make a camera that couldn't do HDV to tape plus P2. I hear an HDV Firestore is coming for the JVC so I figure it should be compatable. I'll simply shoot and use the firestore then dump it on to my computer. But now all I need is a terabyte HD system and a G5.
 
To each his own, however I still can't understand why people glaze over THE most important aspect...the first area of comprimise...HDV vs. DVCPRO HD. HDV is so obviously a consumer like medium. DVCPRO HD is an actual honest to goodness professional medium that's used very widely currently.

How many rainbow sprinkles do you need to put on dog crap to get someone to eat it. Apparently not many.

It looks as though the Z1, HD100U, and the HVX will be all in the relatively same ballpark. The nice thing with the HVX is there are going to be more options for recording, and will benefit in technological advancements. It seems to be more thoughtfully future proofed than the competition.
 
To put it another way, in 5 years Z1 and HD100U owners will be looking at their cameras and thinking crap, how do I sell this and buy something real. HVX owners will probably just keep making more movies. Of course, no footage yet, but just a hunch. (If you work for Panasonic please move on to the next post) I can't imagine needing another camera for quite some time.

BTW Nathan, I would think as a filmmaker, the HVX workflow would make sense. If you're changing shots, P2 is really not a hassle. It's a hassle for people shooting weddings and events.
 
Future proofed? Cameras are like computers...outdated in 6 months. The HVX has about a year to shine upon release and then its a dinosaur.
 
I have to add that, even if you buy the camera and can only afford one 4 GB card, when the time comes to make an actual movie, with a budget and a locked shooting duration, you can rent 4 8GB cards for not a lot and be done with it. I am going to pioneer a new long term rental program in my rental department that will allow filmmakers to rent P2 cards very cheaply, seeing as though they have no moving parts and will last forever. That will always be an alternative for filmmakers on a tight budget. I can see renting out 4 of those cards for a few hundred dollars for 3 week. If you are a filmmaker with a bonafide indie production, it will be a Godsend. Much cheaper than even DV tape, then, since it goes straight to your NLE's HDD every night. I am also working on different packages too.:thumbsup:



Where there is a will....
 
Editor321 said:
Future proofed? Cameras are like computers...outdated in 6 months. The HVX has about a year to shine upon release and then its a dinosaur.
Click to expand...

Thats why I support my local rental houses.
 
braw said:
To each his own, however I still can't understand why people glaze over THE most important aspect...the first area of comprimise...HDV vs. DVCPRO HD.
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Because HDV is better then DV, period!

THere are some down-to-earth, thinking in reality and not beliveing the hyped up internet press release type people that actually still realize that they were perfectly happy with shooting with a plain jane CANON XL1(lol) just last year..... so who in the hell are they to say HDV ain't good enough today??

HDV blows the doors...and I mean BLOWS THEM CLEAN OFF the image that a souped up XL1s can produce, so why all of a sudden do they need to spend $3,700 on two flash cards in the name of 'image quality' that is un-noticable to the average human eye when that same human eye is deeply immersed into the storyline of that movie or documentary or wedding ceremony??

Shiieeeettt, comin' from where i'm from, $3,700.00 bucks is 2 short films 1 commercial and your buddies music video!

and I can't remember ever hearing my next door neighbor, who happens to be a restaurant owner who collects 1000's of DVD's and watches movies for the content and enjoyment ever say "Shannon, I really loved this-or-that movie, but the luminence on the colors were a bit off and the lattitude in the dark blacks were not what I expected Shannon, so i returned the dvd back to Circuit City and got a refund!" Sorry, but he ain't never said that to me, and I doubt he ever will. Either he liked the story and the acting and the directing, or he didn't.

So basically....we can diss HDV and disect it and crunch numbers and shoot resolution charts and compare codecs all we want...but the fact is, HDV is better then most digital video users EVER had, and the smart ones realize that.
Therefore, these smart people route their $3,700 bucks to paying for the best actors or best DP or best location or best editor or best composer, and 'settle', if you wanna call it that, for shooting HDV.

I'll tell you this... What would you rather do....

1. Shoot with a HD100 in Pro HD and give Barry Green $3,700 to be your cinematographer for the weekend while you concetrate on Directing your actors...

or

2. Shoot with an HVX and spend $3,700 on a pair of 8 gig cards and be a 1-man crew doing everything yourself

*smile*

You take your pick....i know what mine would be.

- Shannon W. Rawls
 
Sahnnon, from Beverly Hills? 3.700 is not even a week´s catering for VinDiesel in his last movie in your area......just kidding with euro-american clichees.
I fully agree with you: content is 1000 times more important than the camera.
But I only see that customers will ask for HD sooner than we thought. Not because they see a difference, but because their competitor will have an HD spot. And their is only the P2 road with the HVX right now . but then again, we are 6 months from release, so who knows what pana brings.....
 
Really?

How ironic... because Vin Diesel told my producer partner that he will give us 5 days free on anything we come up with, as long as it's creative and inspiring. Vin Diesel is one cool dude, and I doubt he eats as much as you say. *smile*

- ShannonRawls.com
- From South Central Los Angeles (where i'm from)
- In Beverly Hills (where i'm at)
 
ShannonRawls said:
Shiieeeettt, comin' from where i'm from, $3,700.00 bucks is 2 short films 1 commercial and your buddies music video!
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Damn Shannon; is that all you get for $3700.00 ?

:grin: :cheesy:
 
John_Hudson said:
Damn Shannon; is that all you get for $3700.00 ?

:grin: :cheesy:
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is that all I get??

What?

You get more??? LOL

What does a couple 5-page short films a 30-second flower shop commercial and your buddies music video cost where you come from? less then that????

I was actually being exagerative....i'd be lucky if I can shoot 1 1/2 decent short film for under $3,700 bucks......

I dunno *shrugs* California must be overrated and overexpensive.
Or maybe, I just like paying my crew real $$$ rather then insulting them with copy/credits and the "this project is the best you've ever read and everyone involved is working for free because its so inspiring and awesome" speech that I hear so many shaddy producers give out here. *smile*

Either way, yes, that's all i get for $3,700.00......if I'm lucky.

- ShannonRawls.com
 
You'd be lucky to get a 35mm spec commercial done for that here in L.A.

Hell, almost a third of my budget went to the local police force and fire dept, to sit around and do nothing.

Now i see why people want to shoot outside of California

Escape from L.A. is my new motto, when filming.
 
Sorry to go off topic for a sec, but Shannon Rawls? Your site is like a shrine. I thought I had seen everything... I especially liked the Genius label you gave yourself. :P

And about Vin Diesel, you do know that producers lie for a living, right?

Anyone that jumps on the HDV bandwagon is just asking to get smacked. Panasonic has bent over backwards to give us an alternative for 6Gs that nobody thought possible for that price range. Definitely not Sony and JVC. Ancient MPEG2 based compression or uncompressed pristine footage in all it's HD glory?

It's your call.
 
Rush said:
I have to add that, even if you buy the camera and can only afford one 4 GB card, when the time comes to make an actual movie, with a budget and a locked shooting duration, you can rent 4 8GB cards for not a lot and be done with it. I am going to pioneer a new long term rental program in my rental department that will allow filmmakers to rent P2 cards very cheaply, seeing as though they have no moving parts and will last forever. That will always be an alternative for filmmakers on a tight budget. I can see renting out 4 of those cards for a few hundred dollars for 3 week. If you are a filmmaker with a bonafide indie production, it will be a Godsend. Much cheaper than even DV tape, then, since it goes straight to your NLE's HDD every night. I am also working on different packages too.:thumbsup:



Where there is a will....
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Not a bad idea Rush
 
Don't have any clue how people make money in LA. Met a guy at the airport this week who owns
a lighting company. Tells me the business is really competitive right now, so much that a weekly rate
is based on quarter days... quarter days!! Said they raised books prices to appear competive, but
still long form projects with reduced margins make for bad business. Oh well. I'm not an LD.
 
Content rules, that much is a given. But other than the format of use, P2 has much more advantage to it than compression ratios. Even DVCproHD is not the best compression ratio. But it IS much better than HDV, and is a format that has been used in professional environments for many years.

BUT the big advantage of using P2 over HDV is simply the amount of time you save by not having to manually go through all your tapes manually logging which are good takes and then capturing them. Instead you can mark good takes while shooting and only transfer those to your hard drive. So not only do you save time by not having to capture footage anymore, but you also make much more efficient use of your hard drive leaving more room for other projects.

As you know because I keep going on about is (and I apologise) I use xdcam on a daily basis, and I can assure you that once you use a camera that works in a NLE way that you will never want to look at a tape ever again. Even if you can only record 8 mins of footage per card that will be an inconvenience you will put up with believe me.

Something else to consider with P2 is that although each card may only hold 8 mins of HD footage, that isn't the whole story. Like xdcam if a take is really bad or you know you will never use it, like xdcam you can delete it right away. Thus it is possible you can make 8 mins go a long way. When I have been working on projects other than indie movies with my co-director- he insists on keeping no-good just in case. Arrrggghhh - I have been able to delete no good takes right away and have barely used any of the disc in some cases.

Imagine making a 10 minute long short for example. If you are sensible you will aim for a 4:1 shot ratio max. You can go higher with video, but as you will know that usually means loads of useless footage to sift through. With P2, as long as you can make a firm descision at the time as to whether a take will be used or not, you could reduce that ratio to 2:1 or even 1:1 simply because you can delete no-goods straight away. So for a 10 minute short you could get away with using two P2 cards.

Now something else to consider is that if you are making things sensibly, setting things up to look really good etc, 10 minutes of usable footage in a day is a reasonable amount to aim for on any production unless it really is a run and gun. So for most productions that involve set-up time two P2 cards is probably more than enough for a days shoot on a fictional piece. Documentary and interviews may be a different matter.
 
Shannon, I don't really see your problem.
If you don't want to spend 3700$ on P2 cards, buy a firestore. It WILL be made possible to use things like this. Simply because the demand will be so high they won't be able to resist the sales. :)
But if you want to make movies on HDV you've got another thing coming. Try to pull a chroma key or do some color correction on HDV footage and I'll hear you swearing all the way over here. And that's Belgium!
I actually put off my order for a Sony Z1 to wait 'n see if this Panna delivers. And if it does, you've got a camera that does 25 mbit SD, 50 mbit SD, and 100 mbit HD for under 6000$. Well ok, undr 9000 if you add two firestores. But the footage you end up with is way above HDV!
You're right when you say hardly anybody will see the difference between 1080i HDV and 1080i DVCPRO HD. But the DVCPRO does 1080 24p aswell. And has variable framerates for super slowmos! So you're comparing 2 things you can't compare.
If you want to film HD, just cut and then deliver; go for HDV. But if you're planning on doing some decent post on your image, I'm sorry but HDV won't deliver.
Besides you'll never get a filmlike feel to interlaced HDV. Cause the mpeg2 artifacts will make it virtually impossible to make it decent progressive, even with Magic Bullet.
If the HVX200 does what Panna promised, it'll do anything. And for me, that's wort the extra cash.
 
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