minimum gear standards for pro documentary production

L

lowep

Well-known member
Apart from the impression the size of a camera can make on a client - is there any reason not to attempt to make a "professional" documentary for a "serious" client with a prosumer camera like my Panasonic TM300 that I have used so far with good results to make short youtube videos like this one but not yet for more ambitous projects.

So far I am quite happy with what I am seeing and hearing in terms of image and audio quality but am no expert so would like to ask if I continue to work with this kit instead of investing in a fancier system what would I be missing out on that I could come to regret when it is too late?

My aim is not to do documentary work for mainstream distribution but to produce video packages with a documentary focus mostly for youtube and in-house presentations but that could in a pinch be of acceptable quality in terms of technical standards for broadcast on local television networks.
 
I thought you did a fantastic job with the gear you had. Your choices of framing/scene direction were spot on. The only reason you NEED to upgrade is if you feel the workflow or quality is being hindered by your gear. IQ wise the high end consumer Panasonics are good for this kind of work (with the right person behind the camera) as you have demonstrated in your film. The broadcast part of your question is always a tricky answer - it all depends on the specifics of the network, what they require codec wise, etc. etc.
I will say this....I think you have the eye to reward yourself with a higher end camera (just for the controls/audio/lowlight they would provide you, not really the picture quality).
 
well thank you very much pulpfiction or 007 (are you a spy or what?) - this is very encouraging, so maybe I will continue with this setup a little longer then consider stepping up a little but not a lot, as better performance in low light and more control over audio sounds like it could be useful and not too confusing.

Before buying the TM300 last year I looked at DSLR combocams like the Panasonic GH2 and 1DS Mark II but found they did not seem to be flexible enough in terms of audio and image control. When I start to look at what else is available in the semipro camcorder market it is hard to see the forest because of all the trees.

Any suggestion about what model camera likely to be available for a decent price on the used market could deliver the extra low light capability and better audio controls you mention without blowing up my piggy bank?
 
Well the Panasonic HMC150 is only $2669 new@ B and H...I'm not sure about used- maybe $2000 or less.(ironically your cam may be sharper than the HMC150 in good light though) Used Canon XHa1s have been on the marketplace here for like $1500...but I don't think you'd want to go with tape as an UPGRADE. You might save up for something like the Canon XF100 - $2999 brand new and a great codec that would help down the road as it's been accepted by some big Networks. Also since you're not buying right away, be sure to check out the NAB announcements in April - I think there will be some interesting new cameras there. My vote would have to be the XF100 for your type of work if nothing else comes at NAB. Sorry about the long post just thinking out loud.
Maybe you could go to Canon's website and look over the specs of the XF - it's a very well featured camera! (and it's not a tank either...just over 2LBs)
 
My friend, you have the eye of a film maker. I'm sure you would find a way to tell a story on an obsolete 16mm camera. Peter, the difference you'd find is more granular control of your filmmaking. The 150 might be a good step up. Better audio inputs (xlr) and more controls like zebras (the camera kind) and many others that the 3000 doesn't have. Your fabulous story telling would only get better. And you can still use the 3000 as a "B" camera.

Best of luck, your story is very unique, and wonderful. I look forward to more!

Al in PT USA
View Voices of the Strait, a documentary filmed on a HMC 150 I did at http://www.vimeo.com/12452315
 
8string said:
My friend, you have the eye of a film maker. I'm sure you would find a way to tell a story on an obsolete 16mm camera. Peter, the difference you'd find is more granular control of your filmmaking. The 150 might be a good step up. Better audio inputs (xlr) and more controls like zebras (the camera kind) and many others that the 3000 doesn't have. Your fabulous story telling would only get better. And you can still use the 3000 as a "B" camera.

Best of luck, your story is very unique, and wonderful. I look forward to more!

Al in PT USA
View Voices of the Strait, a documentary filmed on a HMC 150 I did at http://www.vimeo.com/12452315
Click to expand...

+1
 
nitty gritty

nitty gritty

8string, I look forward to looking at your video 'Voices of the Strait' on Vimeo when I get to an internet connection that is faster than the cantankerous one I am depending on here in Ghana today, as I certainly agree with you the only way to see what difference a fancier and more expensive camera can make is to see what ends up on the screen and mean this not only in terms of gear but also what a thoughtful human being not blinded and bloated from eating too much junk food (as I am) and watching too much HBO (as I don't care to) can do.


Meanwhile quite interesting exercise to compare the specs of the gadfly “prosumer” TM300 and the more “serious” AG-HMC150 big brother that I share here for anybody else who may be interested even though I guess whoever is immersed enough in the deep end of the pool to be still reading this thread by now probably knows this already:


The Panasonic TM300 does have zebras but looks like the AG-HMC150 has a lot of other useful features that I had not considered before reading your posts: 1080p as well as 1080i, 3 x 1/3 CCD instead of 1 x ¼.1 CMOS, minimum illumination 1 lux instead of 3 lux, built in ND filters and manual gain selection, Dynamic Range Stretch (whatever that is) and backlight compensation that I imagine should definitely add up as you say to better IQ and low light performance :-)
I can also see the AG-HMC150 has min shutter speed 1/15 instead of ½ and max shutter speed 1/2000 instead of 1/8000 though am not sure how this would make much difference; -150 + vectorscope (though am not sure how this would make much difference either); selectable frame rates; and a bigger higher-res LCD (that means it probably chews more battery power?) and (more durable and weatherproof?) magnesium alloy body.

Plus no dumb shooting programs, toy stills camera and useless flash; no whitebalance presets (one of the main problems I find with the TM300 is getting a good manual white balance that I expect would be easier with the 150?)


Looks like audio would also be better with Dolby Digital AC-3 (2 channel) recording instead of Dolby Digital 5.1 channel recording; 2 x Audio input instead of one; and I would hope easily accessible manual level controls? (one of the biggest problems with the TM300 is manual audio control can only be done via controls deep within the menu on the LCD touchscreen that is not easy to access)


TM300 has 32GB inbuilt memory and is about half the size, weight and less than half the price of the AG-HMC150


Yes the TM300 would probably make a good B camera that would definitely be useful -- if I had more than two hands!



So plenty of food for thought… thanks for that and apologies for the overdose of nitty gritty stuff in this long post!
 
Yes the HMC150 has independent channel audio level controls. The DRS should be used very sparingly (as it adds noise), but it can help in a challenging situation where you are trying to get more detail in the shadows. The battery life on the HMC will be better than on the prosumer cams especially with the bigger batteries. Also add to the list of HMC150 attributes - Gamma curves and image paramater adjustments that can help dial in the look you're after. I believe the native ISO of the HMC is around 500 vs the 50 of the tm300, so yes the lowlight will be much better.
Good luck on your next project!
 
once again thanks for the input. I can see dvxuser has a section dedicated to the hcm150 so will keep that in mind if I continue to scratch this itch. what I appreciate most is the positive feedback in response to the video I posted that gives me confidence to do more without fearing that my existing gear could be a liability I will come to regret.
 
voices of the strait

voices of the strait

8string said:
View Voices of the Strait, a documentary filmed on a HMC 150 I did at http://www.vimeo.com/12452315
Click to expand...

Gottcha Al,

Finally managed to playback your 'Voices of the Strait' this morning. Can see why you pointed me in this direction as your gentle yet provocative video has a lot of thematic and stylistic similarities with what interests me though in a very different part of the world. I liked the way you started off with the acoustic guitar music and entertaining historical anecdotes that I am sure interests everybody before moving on to more controversial issues then rolled over to raising the question of what can be done and Marlin’s really great seagull parable.



Howeve, what seems to be the most significant achievement is how you managed to sustain my interest throughout what for me is a very long 16-minute sequence of mostly talking heads with minimal support footage apart from old photos and panoramic shots of the landscape. What made this possible I think was how you found and brought out the strong characters and obvious enthusiasm of the people you interviewed in their own environments plus the way you seamlessly threaded them together into one long “monolgue” using the logic of the narrative as the thread.



By the end I was enjoying meeting old friends as they floated back into the narrative again and felt even though I didn’t get to see much of the strait (which I guess your local target audience gets to look at every day) I did have the opportunity to visit with and get a glimpse of life inside the homes and hearts of the local seniors (no juniors) as well as hear what they had to say.


Can also see why you recommend the HCM150 that really shows its capabilities in terms of IQ when you seem to catch the local light at its best in some of the landscape scenes (eg at points 00:43, 12:04) and also in some of the interview shots eg Bud & Marlin so am curious about how you lit Bud, Ray and Beverly? I can see you used a clip mike for many of the interviews but did not see any sign of it in the long shots of Bud and Marlin and wonder how you managed that.



Plus two more questions:



What have you done since then?


Was it you playing the guitar in the intro.? :violin:
 
You guys are dreaming. No-one is going to hire you to shoot a doc unless you are a pro. If making a living, paying for kids' college fees depends on your camera, you will not use a consumer cam. End of.

But if it's a self-financed/no-pay project just about any cam will work.
 
Last edited:
pwyll said:
You guys are dreaming. No-one is going to hire you to shoot a doc unless you are a pro. If making a living, paying for kids' college fees depends on your camera, you will not use a consumer cam. End of.

But if it's a self-financed/no-pay project just about any cam will work.
Click to expand...

Very useful advice that I will pass on to the clients who are paying me so they can save their money and use it to send their kids to college.

Once you are done hyperventilating it would also be good if you could explain why "you will not use a consumer cam" if you are a pro as this is exactly what I want to know.
 
pwyll said:
if you really want to know, you need to ask more politely.
Click to expand...

I would be grateful if you would advise on what you see as the specific limiting factors that constrain the use of prosumer camera equipment in a professional context apart from the impression they make on the client.
 
Last edited:
lowep said:
I would grateful if you would advise on what you see as the specific limiting factors that constrain the use of prosumer camera equipment in a professional context apart from the impression they make on the client.
Click to expand...

I think what he might be getting at is that when you have a lot of different jobs for different clients...you'll want a camera that can be relied upon for dealing with ALL those varying scenarios...bad lighting, shots where you and the camera need to react on a dime (physical controls/dials help there a lot). I don't think he was saying good work can't be done with the consumer cams, just that if you want to make a go of it ...make a nice living out of it, it would be BEST to have a camera that will meet those needs and your needs while you're doing the job. For instance my HFS200 does a great job with a lot of things...but I can think of scenarios where I would really need the flexibility/controls of a higher end cam like the A1s or HMC150. Particularly when everything is happening quickly....diving into menus and sub menus can be horrendous.
 
Pulp nails it. There are other factors but the main one is that if you represent yourself as a gun for hire you better be able to shoot straight. Even when it's raining. Even when it's 10 below. Even when the sun is in your eyes, or in a dark room. Or with the action shifting from light to dark. Or the subject is a long way off and you have to pull off steady tracking shots. To be fair you can set up a small cam to take good tracking shots - but not with a $500 Bogen tripod. It's not just the camera. Can you really hold that thing steady with a shotgun mic, a sungun, and a couple of diversity receivers? Can you finesse audio, focus and exposure without taking your attention from the composition.

Perhaps you are less ambitious? Maybe you will only attempt to shoot scenes that you can control or repeat. Shoot plenty of blah b-roll to cover yourself. Sure that would work. You can do that. But so can a million other hobbyists, and none of them are getting paid as pro doc shooters.
 
thanks for input. looks like main differences are in functionality, versatility and durability rather than technical attributes of image or audio quality that perhaps are more a question of shades or degrees of difference in IQ rather than quantum leaps once through the gate of the HD camp depending on what you pay for?
 
Last edited:
Two relevant quotes from highlighted thread at top of this DVXuser forum home page today:

"My company is bankrolling this documentary and hiring Terri to spend six months in and among Thailand, India, and wherever else Isara goes, to get the story of something truly amazing that's happening over there... the project will be shot using two Canon HV20s..."
 
Last edited:
Lowep said: "Plus two more questions: What have you done since then? Was it you playing the guitar in the intro.?

Thanks lowep, for the words, sorry I've been away a few days and forgot I had posted to this thread. We had a very low budget for this video, but high enough to allow me to interview a lot of people, and it helped to substatially pay off my camera, editing suite, and gave me what I believed was a fair amount of money for my hourly, given my limited background in production . The goal was to present to the non environmental audience here on the Peninsuala the things we've lost over the last generation. Yes, the audience out here knows the Strait of Juan de Fuca well, but doesn't understand that underneath that beautiful surface is not much left of the glory days of salmon fishing. what to do about it? Well, we didn't want to get into a debate with folks. This video is mainly being shown to small audiences of non enviros, churches, country clubs, Rotary, Kiwanis, etc. and generates lots of discussion that the following hour allows us to explore. Paid for by the Puget Sound Partnership's education wing. The interesting thing to me was the narrative evolved out of the interviews. It just showed up. An amazing thing to experience.

A skilled videographer would have done even better with the HMC150, as you can see I sometimes had to shoot against windows (don't do it!). I really was forced to do that, and since then have bought a Lowell kit (I' prefer hot lights over cool, they are just brighter), so I can light up the room better to balance the outdoors, and have also bought a backdrop for those pesky bad settings. I know that some of the shots were not what a 'pro' might shoot, but they were what I was handed. But sometimes, I just wanted to show the poorly lit, lower income setting that these real people live in, people who have done a lot to try and save the fish. Some of them are true heros. I shot 30 hours of interviews to get that 16 minute story. Editing was a real hard job of what to throw out. I have a lot of great stuff I'm shopping to find a funder for, and also plan on some podcasts (audio only).

Bud was lit with a combination of window light and a cool light I setup about 10 feet away. Ray was total window light, and Beverly was pure window light, but I struggled with that one. Her sister sitting near the window, and the changing sunlight really played havoc on the scene. I struggled with the clip mics as I had a very short window to shoot them in, and sometimes I succeeded getting it hid and sometimes not. I'm much more careful now. Bev also insisted on prepping with the notes, and I couldn't get her to put them down, so a bit of amateurish rustling of papers. I don't think it detracts to normal audiences.

Post was done on FCP and I really struggled with color grading. I HIGHLY recommend taking some video classes on it. I'm doing way more editing in Vegas Pro now, and believe me, for this kind of doc editing, it's way faster to use. Just a pleasure compared to the very picky FCP. Likely I'll migrate to Premier over time.

I was in the band that recorded the opening, it was our CD, done long before the video was shot. I only played mandolin on it, and you only hear me 'chopping' away in the clip. The guitar was Lou Allen. He also wrote it. The band is called Back Burner and we are avaiable on CD Baby. http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/backburnermusic

The video has done wonders for my budding career up here. It led to the husband of a woman in the environmental community, who was looking to do some home videos for his blog, as he is a somewhat well known folk singer, who works with the Brothers Four and has a solo career, Mark Pearson. We hit it off, and after explaining to him the complexities of doing his own work, he hired me on a monthly basis to do videos for his blog. I've worked him from some rather rudimentary work in his home to a green screen and multicam studio work. You can see the latest three camera studio stuff at his blog, http://www.markpearsonmusic.com/ and a holiday song at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Afw6TtCWI4 which included a green screen background shot with the 150. It seems to work ok. Folk music may not be your cup of tea but Mark is well known and sells well, in Japan as well as Korea. His slower delivery is somewhat his style, and also because of wanting to be clear to the non english speaking audiences. He was happy with the results, it's generating a lot more traffic, and that, my friend is what it's all about. I've also got a couple of other projects that are in early phase, one with funding. Can't discuss it yet as the contract is not yet signed, but immenent.

I've also shot a lot of other music stuff, and what is public is at 8stringthing at Youtube, including this, shot and edited on the fly commercial for Wintergrass, shot from 10AM to 2 PM, edited at 2PM to 3PM on a laptop and published for getting more people to the show in the evening. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWuLiq3JKtE This was real fun. 2+ Minutes.


I like the HMC 150 a lot, but also have a 7D. Different tools for different looks. I really like the lower light capability of the 7D. The 150 is a great all around camera. The two mix, well not great. I've now got a glidecam, portable teleprompter mainly for Mark's intros, and pocket dolly, which I've not used much yet. I'm in the midst of also shooting a season at a music camp here, and that will be much more 150 and doc feel. I really like the current footage I have on that one. It will be much more like Voices of the Strait.

As to the question of 'pro' gear vs 'consumer', this is more a thought of the client. Some clients are very impressed when I show up with a 150, others don't understand, and some few want a 'TV' camera gear and higher priced crew, but I don't really compete there, yet. It's really a function of what you are competing with. You can do great work if you have a good story to tell with cheap but good gear, just like you did. Sometimes, it's the only way to get the story told! Don't let the gear stop you. I own everything from a Bloggie (great 360 degree shots!), to the 7D and 150. Add to your kit as you can. Lastly, remember that having a 7D that is environmentally sealed is really crucial if you are out in the bush for months! Rains, mud will take a toll quickly!

Sorry for the long reply, but you asked... (G). Best of luck on shooting!
 
Last edited:
pwyll said:
Pulp nails it. There are other factors but the main one is that if you represent yourself as a gun for hire you better be able to shoot straight. Even when it's raining. Even when it's 10 below. Even when the sun is in your eyes, or in a dark room. Or with the action shifting from light to dark. Or the subject is a long way off and you have to pull off steady tracking shots. To be fair you can set up a small cam to take good tracking shots - but not with a $500 Bogen tripod. It's not just the camera. Can you really hold that thing steady with a shotgun mic, a sungun, and a couple of diversity receivers? Can you finesse audio, focus and exposure without taking your attention from the composition.

Perhaps you are less ambitious? Maybe you will only attempt to shoot scenes that you can control or repeat. Shoot plenty of blah b-roll to cover yourself. Sure that would work. You can do that. But so can a million other hobbyists, and none of them are getting paid as pro doc shooters.
Click to expand...

+1
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top