Talking the wife into it.

When I bought my DVX and my first lot of production gear, my wife was dubious and worried but I convinced her. I spent around $6500 and I had made enough money back doing weddings and a swag of TV gigs to pay it all off plus give her a stash of cash for her to play with. Give cash to wife = happy happy wife, but must be careful as to not create any more little ones!

2 months ago, I say to wife, its time to upgrade to HD as the TV show is moving up to HD and with the DVX, I'll get left behind,, plus I also mention that when I advertise the wedding thing with HD, we will in effect pick up more work, which we have.

So now I've spent another 7K or so building up my gear including green screen studio, boom poles, dolly track, a brand new quad core CPU, lighting kits, new tripods, heaps of stuff. But this time next year it'll be all paid off again, wife will have had a dozzie of a summer splashing cash around and everyones happy!

If you give her some of her own cash along the way and she see's that the cameras are actually making you money that you otherwise wouldn't have, she'll go for it!
 
The camera is maybe 25% of your setup cost and depreciates like a rock. The DVX can do GREAT work. What about a computer editing suite, light kit, audio kit, all the grip stuff, etc, etc. All the stuff I just mentioned will more or less last forever with care, and holds its value as well. Your organization, planning, and quality of content is much more important than a HD tag on the side of the cam. How many people want blu-ray output? If it's DV or web output, then you don't need HD. This probably isn't what you want to hear to justify buying HD, but it is true. If you spend all your money on a cam and forget the rest of the stuff, you will be pretty limited in what you can do. Don't get me wrong, HD is great and also where you will want to end up eventually, but this other stuff is more important, just less glam.

Best Regards,
Grant
 
Azmyth:

Video is a never ending money pit. You never have enough or the latest gear you think you need.

I think you need to find a helpful video junkie in your local area who already has a lot of gear that is under-utilized and would love to put it to work (theres lots of people) and start a relationship with them. If you are going to direct/produce anything, you dont want to get too tied up in the equipment end anyway.

Just read an article last night about independent films, summary:
1. Blair Witch 60K budget, 140M box office - all amatuer
2. Paranormal Activity (new) 11K budget, bought by Paramount - all amatuer
The article was essentially saying that the future will most likely bring more unknown independants into the box office than ever before.

I forgot to add: I have a wife & two kids and they are not that excited I spend Saturdays at events/weddings (thought to be having a good time, sometimes do) and usually get home after they are in bed. But she does realize we are making money from it. But IMO, video is a pretty hard way to make money considering the equipment investment.

I think shooting an independant film is a great idea. You want to shoot some beach scenes, just let me know.
 
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In my opinion I don't think you need HD. Yes, it is nice but unless you sell your feature you're going to have to do a bunch of weddings/events/etc. to pay for it. That involves getting a decent editing computer, tripod, wireless mics, on camera light, advertising, website, etc. I shoot weddings freelance for a company and while I just shoot the day and hand over the tapes, the company makes most of the money in the end. I bought a new HVX 200a and all the wedding equipment and it ended up costing me around $8k.

For this "hobby" camera you'll have to do a lot of work you probably don't want to do or would consider fun. If your DP really wants to shoot HD, tell him to buy it or find an investor that is willing to front the money.
 
"So, my main goal here is to shoot feature films."

If that is true then don't get sidetracked. Wedding vids etc are such a heavy responsibility, the days can be long and the material time consuming to edit. If your heart isn't in it it will show and you won't enjoy it.

A guy once showed me his 'box of dreams' - feature length scripts he'd written, beautiful storyboards, plans, schedules and so forth. The box was old and he had become a slave to wedding and corporate stuff that he didn't really enjoy - to pay for a bigger house he'd bought on the strength of his income. He urged me never to follow in his footsteps.

Secondly, I have always kept my family poor because I've always had cameras (Super 8mm, SVHS, MiniDV) that we could not afford. However when showing my kids old footage recently (for the first time), on DVD they were so excited and totally captivated. I practically captured their entire childhood on film or vid - school plays, first days at school (literally - back then I was allowed to capture images in class and I sat on the floor opposite their tiny chairs), sports days, holidays, awards ceremonies, graduations etc They are now adults but they consider this material to be 'priceless' something a lot of their friends will never have.

So get a cam, whatever you can afford, capture family history in the making and make a feature that your wife thinks is a great project - involve her in any way that you can and you will get a lot of co-operation if she is anything like my own wife.

Regards
 
Azmyth said:
Oooooh.. you just gave me a new angle to go with this.

I need to dig up a ton of awesome looking "kid" videos done with the camera I want.. and say "Look honey, see how awesome this looks compared to the ole Panasonic GS90"?
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It was my wife's idea to buy a camcorder three years ago. "We will be making videos of our son". Now she regrets that she have turned me into a video geek.

Look for older, less fancy SM's videos like this one: http://smcouples.com/blog/?p=186
 
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