Matt Irwin

I just read an article in InCamera about Half Nelson... Perekh shot "almost entirely handheld" on 7229 with a Canon 11.5-165 zoom. He mentioned that he likes the "light the room, not the faces" approach. Not my favorite style (isn't it about the faces?), but I thought it worked for this film, though I agree-- a little toned down would be nice. The deliberate shakey-cam thing is a little much for 100 minutes straight.

The 7" Marshall R70P-HDA is a common choice. Not an HD screen, but takes an HD analog signal and is fully calibratable. I've used it before, and it works well for exposure/color and focus. No waveform though. There's definitely much better out there, but hey--- $1300.... (BTW, a normal 7" hoodman won't fit- they make one specifically for this monitor)

Hi Sam, Not sure what type of time lapse look you're after, but the HVX can do a lot. If you shoot 720p Native you can over/undercrank. You can also tweak the scene file settings in a text edit program to undercrank as much as 2fps. If you want to shoot 1080, you can use the intervalometer to shoot 1 fps or even slower... If you have some time before your shoot, I'd recommend getting a copy of Barry Green's The HVX Book-- it explains in great practical detail every function that camera has, in much easier to understand terms than the user manual. I shot a short a while ago using only two 8 gig cards... we were shooting at a film ratio, so it wasn't really a problem. But hey, a few extra cards couldn't hurt. One 8 gig card will hold about 20 minutes of 720/24pN. At this point, I would put more trust in the P2 cards than I would a firestore. I understand that many people have been getting dropouts due to either the FW connection or some internal problem. You also can't shoot native frame rates to the firestore and therefore can't over/undercrank... Hope this helps.

Abel Cine Tech rents both the MovieTube and the HVX200.

This might be something to watch, but they haven't been released yet: http://duel-systems.com/ As far as I know there isn't a simple FW/USB PC card reader that can read the P2 cards other than the P2 Drive... yet. It's a pain, I know. FWIW, I shot a short recently with an HVX using a PB G4, 2 hard drives, and P2 Genie for offloading and no problems whatsoever. Hope you find something that works.

You could try Visual Products (www.visualproducts.com). Definitely reputable, IMO.

Does anyone know of a stills lab (prefereably in the LA area) that processes short strips of motion picture film? I know Elite Labs had the chemistry for this, but I don't think they exist anymore (or they're very hard to find). Thanks,

I'd go for the Modern stands. I've used Avenger (and Matthews), and I like the Modern stands the best.

I thought "Fog of War" was very well shot. Lots of slick table-top, slow motion, and persicope shots. The interview with McNamara looks great as well, as interviews go. "Winged Migration" falls along the same lines as "March of the Penguins" IMO. It put some friends of mine to sleep, but I thought the shooting was great.

Criterion Collection's release of Videodrome.

Nice work! Did you cut the holes in the back of the container (behind the band), or were they already there? Either way I liked all the light-play that you got with them. I might have added a bit of atmosphere to get some shafts going over the band, as well as put up something white outside the holes in order to "blow out" the exterior. Loved the color contrast and the swinging bulb. Also liked the B+W stuff inside the conatiner (although I agree it was a bit hard to figure out the story). Again, nice work.

Audio is recorded in native mode. The only time audio is not recorded is if you shoot over/undercranked. I didn't really see any deviation in the look or performance between the 24p and 24pn settings. The only difference with native is the extra record time on the cards and the over/undercrank abilities. The way I see it, there's really no reason not to shoot native unless it conflicts with your post workflow in some way.

Haven't shot with one but from what I understand, that has been an ongoing problem with Firestore. Focus Enhancements has been catching a lot of flack lately about problems with the FS100. I think it has to do with the fact that firewire plugs are not designed for production/ field use, whereas more robust connections like BNC are. Might be worth sticking with the new Cineporter (which actually uses the P2 slot and reenforced cables) until Focus works out their issues, IMHO.

I just finished a short with this camera shooting in 720/24pn. (To clarify, that is DVCPro HD, not Pro50. You can only shoot MiniDV format to tape.) As mentioned above, the "n" stands for "Native." If you were shooting 720/24p on a Varicam, which uses tape, the camera still records the footage at 30 fps and then flags 24 of those 30 frames each second. When you capture the footage, the NLE only takes the flagged frames resulting in 24p footage. Because the HVX uses memory cards and not tape, and there is no need to be tied to a tape speed, only those flagged frames are recorded when in "native" mode. This will save space on the P2 cards as well as your work drives in post. Don't know anything about a horizontal line problem with pn, although there is such an issue with HDV. There really is no difference in the look of 24p and 24pn, it's more of a practical consideration. Maybe you are referring to a studder that can sometimes be seen in fast pans? If so, that's just a characteristic of shooting 24p (or film). As for capturing... The setup we used was a PowerBook G4 with a pc card slot, two firewire hard drives of equal size, and a program called "P2 Genie." You can setup P2 Genie to offload the footage to two hard drives at the same time for redundant backup (HIGHLY recommended), so basically you just insert the card, click the "offload" button in Genie, wait, and then erase the card. When you bring the footage into FCP, click File>Import>Panasonic P2, then find the "reels" on the offoad drive and import. Make sure you are on the current version, and also make sure you import to a work drive that is NOT the samedrive you offloaded your footage to. Those offload drives are essentially your "negatives", so if they are damaged you have no masters. There are of course other workflows, but this is what we used and it worked well. There is also another offload program called "P2 Log" that has a lot of features-- your choice. Hope that helps some...

When I was a camera trainee, I worked on a film with Charleton Heston. What a pro! He knew everyone's name by the second day, remembered some of the crew's birthdays, always ate lunch with the crew, and rarely went to his trailer. All around very down-to-earth guy. Similar experience with Bill Murray-- He insisted on helping me push a loaded camera cart up a steep hill... I'll never forget that.

The HVX is native 16:9, so there is no need for an anamorphic adapter to achieve "true" 16:9. Or are you referring to 2.35/2.40 anamorphic? The Mini35 works with the HVX-- you just need the mounting kit from P+S. see: http://www.pstechnik.de/en/digitalfilm-mini35-connect.php

Nice! I've done something similar: -4x3 plywood, painted black, with metal loops on each corner -furni pad -ratchet straps -hi/low hat Put the furni pad on the hood with the plywood on top, ratchet straps on each corner. Take the hi hat off the base and screw it on to the plywood wherever you want. It's really fast for changing camera positions since it's just three screws. I actually like it better than those speed rail rigs bacause of the speed and simplicity. A friend of mine actually made a hostess tray out of PVC and angle brackets.... and then used it on a Ferrari! Solid as hell too. I love cheap rigs, heheheh.

I'm shooting a short right now with the HVX that has a considerable amount of night exteriors. We tested 1080/24 and 720/24n shooting modes and found that the 720 has noticeably less noise in the camera's "problem area" (between 5 and 20 IRE, roughly). We're shooting 720/24n, and overall I've been very happy with the footage, night shots included.

Hi Shannon, Yes. I own both the HVX and the Marshall. The HD signals (both 720 & 1080 output) have significantly more color and tonal information than the 480i signal. I've also gotten the same results using an HD CRT w/ YCbCr in. Resolution aside, YCbCr output will give you a more trustworthy image than S-Video, and is worth the extra money IMHO.

Look into the P+S Mini35 Adapter and the Redrock M2 adapter. Both will work with the DVX. The Mini35 is geared toward cine lenses (PL, pana, etc) and the M2 is designed for stills primes, but can also be bought with a PL mount.

The Marshall takes an HD analog signal and downsamples/converts it to 480 digital. The resulting image is going to be much sharper and have better color information than the SD S-Video image. You can see a very significant difference on the Marshall when you switch between 480i output and HD output from the HVX. For those who want to monitor an HD signal but can't afford to spend at least $3-4K + on an Astro or HD CRT, the Marshall is probably the most affordable solution.

I second what David and Hal have said. As far as using Diffusion-In-A-Can for atmosphere, I find it to be a real pain. In order for the smoke to hang you practically have to seal off the set from drafts or outlets. Better to ventilate the set and use a real smoke machine. It's alright for small sets though..

Not exactly. That monitor is SD so it's safe to say that the SDI board is SD as well. If you added an HD-SDI card, the monitor would be able to recieve an HD signal, but the screen resolution is still only 450 and won't give you a WYSIWYG HD image.

Hi Pierre, The Marshal monitors seem to be the favorite among many, but unless you need HDSDI output from the camera, the R70P-HDA (same monitor, but HD analog instead of SDI) would save you more money. To use an SDI monitor with the HVX, you need an analog-to-digital converter like the Aja box. The R70P-HDA monitor converts the analog signal to digital before display so you don't necessarily have to spend the extra cash on a converter and SDI monitor. If money is no object, I'd go for the Aja converter and an Astro monitor w/ built in waveform... but unfortunately money is usually a very large object.

Oh joy. It seems like AVCHD is being geared toward consumer markets, but there's been talk at NAB that Panasonic will include a higher end version of H.264 recording in the next generation of HVX cameras. Now it's time for all the NLE companies to play catch-up! ....again!