Joshua Provost

D.C., You hit the major ones that must be done with a filter: ND and polarizer. If a scene is just too bright for the camera, even at smallest aperture (and you wouldn't want to work at that extreme anyway), you need an ND to cut the light into a manageable range. Of course, you have built-in ND's that can usually handle this. A polarizer is essential for cutting glare and reflections and often for making skies look more pleasant. You can't do that in post. An ND grad can be helpful in certain situations. Other than that, most color correction can be done in-camera or in post. However, there is a limit to how far you can push the camera and the DV codec, so it may be desirable to do some of this with filters, but not required. If you find your video is overly sharp and want to generally soften it, look first to the detail setting of your camera for a fix. If you are after actual halation of highlights, a ProMist might be helpful. Josh

David, There are some film festivals that split shorts and features at 45 minutes. Others, like Cannes, as has been mentioned define shorts as under 15 minutes and features as over 60 minutes, with no category in between. Best to shoot for around 10 minutes (10 pages generally), since you're just getting started. Actually, it might be to make a number of much shorter films, just a few minutes each, it might be more managable and better variety of practical experiece. My friends and I have made about twelve short films in a year's time, more under 3 minutes, with a few at 5 to 7 minutes. Josh

Each year, tens of thousands of films are produced worldwide. Of those, a couple hundred films (maybe that's too many) are shown in the megaplexes. Those are there because the people funding the multi-million dollar films have connections with (or are the same as) the distributors who feed the megaplexes. If you are just watching mainstream movies, the ones at the megaplex, that's less than 1% of the films that are out there, and you can hardly claim to have any real perspective on the world of film. You may be quite the expert on mainstream movies, but in the big picture... The mainstream films will, by and large, entertain in some way. Will they impact? educate? inform? enlighten? give you a feel for a foreign culture? present a new viewpoint? Rarely. The rest won't find you, you need to find them, at the art house theaters, film festivals, art galleries, local groups, people's livingrooms, the net. If you aren't exerting effort to find the films you watch, you are probably missing out.

David S., Hang out in these forums for a few months and just read... and you will learn a ton! My advice would be to take your script and review it again thinking about lighting specifically. What are the motivations and emotions of each scene, and how can you use lighting to accentuate them? Almost every scene will look better by adding some controlled lighting, even if you don't know exactly what you're doing. Josh

Actually, Adam, PAL is 1.33:1 (4:3). In the case of PAL on digital video, the pixels also have their own aspect ratio, pixel aspect ratio (PAR), in this case 1.066(:1). So, the pixels are not square, but slightly fatter, expanding it out from the 1.25:1 frame aspect ratio you figured to the 1.33:1 that is displayed. Also, other PAR: 1.42 for widescreen PAL, 0.9 for NTSC 4:3 and 1.2 for NTSC widescreen. So, yeh, it is convoluted, but there is a method to the madness.

Corey, Check out the dvxuser.com review. They also say "nearly identical," though they do mention that the B has better signal-to-noise ratio and the video is noticeably "cleaner," with less video noise. Other than that, I am sure Panasonic has gone to great lengths to keep the image consistent between the revisions. Josh

If memory serves, it was simply very easy to shoot moving backgrounds (for which detail is not a concern) on the PD150, then project them digitally behind the actors while shooting the actual 35mm takes. Ease of use and speed.

CJ, The 85B is neither a polarizer nor a UV filter, it is redish, it's own beast. Search B&H Photo for 85B. You may also need a variety of ND filters, which are neutral and simply cut light to the lens. When you are outdoors, you will likely get an exposure of F/8 or higher. There will be huge depth of field and everything will be in focus, not very film like. You can throw an ND.9 on there and get it down to F/2, which will have shallower depth of field (not like film, but an improvement). You'll need an assortment because you can't predict in advance what the sunlight will be like. Josh

David, The obvious is that the HVX200 shoots HD and the DVX100A SD. You'll have to consider what your workflow will be like, since you need to use P2 memory cards for shooting HD. HVX200 also has some cool features, enabled by the memory cards, such as variable frame rates. It shoots a lot of HD formats, and can record to miniDV tapes for SD. Perhaps you can pick up an HVX200, and shoot SD, until the HD workflow works itself out? Otherwise, it looks like Panasonic has done a good job of making the HVX200 very familiar in operation to anyone who has used the DVX100 series. Josh

Federico, See Adam Wilt's explanation of CineFrame mode. You throw away half your vertical resolution using this mode. You are better off shooting 50i and using an intelligent deinterlacer like DVFilm Maker. You can edit in 50i and run your final cut through the deinterlacer. Josh

I have been using Premiere since version 1.1 on the Mac, back in 1994. Now up to Premiere Pro 1.5 on PC. I tried using FCP and Vegas, and I was lost. Longing for my Premiere. With NLEs it seems what you learn on is what you live with.

The Bogart film is "Dark Passage," one of my favorites. The first half of the film is POV, until he heals from the surgery and sees the big reveal. (Not to be confused with the really horrible spoof film "The Man With Bogart's Face"!)

Brandon, Beg, borrow, or steal (OK, maybe not), and get your hands on any video camera you can. That and almost any computer, and you can start shooting and editing your own films. Forget about technical quality, just get the experience. Just keep making films, and studying the films you see, and hone your technique. If you make ten to fifteen short films between now and graduation, you may end up a better filmmaker than most of the people graduating film school (where they might make a handful of films). Josh

Vedran, you will only see the interlacing while editing. It will not show up on TV playback. This is true of any interlaced material, SD or HD.

Deinterlacing is the process of removing interlacing artifacts from interlaced footage, and hopefully applying some intelligent algorithm to reconstruct the frames. There are many ways to do this and each software package has a slightly different approach with its own unique pros and cons and sweet spots in terms of the type of footage it can best deinterlace. However, any deinterlacing is only a compromise solution if you can't acquire footage in progressive format, such as progressive video or film. It is a last resort, and there if progressive is an option, then it's a no brainer. The only advantage interlaced has is for slow-motion sequences, when the higher number of sample points in time (50 vs. 25) can result in smoother slow-motion footage.

Are you looking for different shot types, like this: http://www.mediacollege.com/video/shots/

I saw this the other night in IMAX, and it was spectacular, even the SFX. I first saw it (unwittingly) as a DLP projection, and that was horrid. Flat, muted, and even had some digital artifacts.

An XL2 or DVX100A have more than 4 stops of latitude. The DVX100A, I believe, has more like 6-8 stops, and there are ways to tweak the gamma curve to get even more. Here is an article comparing the XL2/DVX100A/FX1, including information on latitude.

Sean, The DV shooting seems an unnecessary step. Good planning in drawing stroyboards, drawing overheads, and listing out your setups and cross-referencing the shots from each setup with the boards will get you the efficiency in shooting you are looking for. If you plan it right, you should never have to move the camera back and forth to the same spot, you'll get all the shots you need from each setup. Josh

There is a procedure for determining the ISO rating of a video camera that has been discussed here or perhaps at dvinfo.net/conf. I believe it goes like this: 1. Light an 18% gray card. 2. Allow the video camera to auto-expose and read the F stop 3. Take an incident reading in front of the card and adjust the ISO sensitivity of the reader until the F stop it gives you corresponds to the F stop the camera adjusted to 4. You now have the ISO rating of the camera I think that's right.

Constantine, The Black ProMist can't do a whole lot to take the edge off of video. After all, the edge enhancement (sharpening) is done in camera, after the images has gone through the filter. Does your camera have any manual controls for contrast, sharpness, and saturation? I have found that I was able to get a stop to two stops additional exposure latitude out of my Panasonic GS400 camera by reducing the contast setting all the way from the default. The result is certainly not low contrast, just a better image. Also, I turn sharpness down almost all of the way, and saturation a bit. Most cameras oversharpen, overcontrast, and oversaturate by default. Josh

If you are already in the midst of your project in a normal NTSC 29.97 timeline, you're in big trouble, since your 24pA drop-frames are likely mixed up all over the place. You won't be able to remove them later if you've already made some cuts. You probably need to ditch the project and start a new one with the right settings. :(

Or, output an uncompressed AVI at 24p (23.976, actually) for your final output, and encode that to a 24p DVD, for best results.

Remeber, it's 24p embedded in NTSC 29.97 video. Premiere Pro 1.5 has a project preset called Panasonic 24p for this. Use that preset, and it should auto-detect how to capture the video, and drop the extra frame on the fly when you place the footage into a timeline. It will also default to output 24pA when you Export/Movie.

24 doesn't go into 60 evenly, so each method of conversion, each software package of set of open source tools to do the job, has to make some compromises to get the job done. They all do it different ways, and the results are all slightly different. Some investigation is in order, and a certain method may be better or worse for any given type of footage (locked down shots vs. handheld, etc.). Also, there is a subtle psychological problem with the conversion. If you have been working with the 60i footage, and convert to 24p, you will perceive it as being very jumpy or stroby. In fact, it may be no more jumpy than any other 24p footage. It's just an effect of seeing the same footage smooth (60i) and naturally stroby (24p). Give it some time and come back to the footage fresh, and it may look more natural.