Driving To Georgia

[Tom Shirm]

Long time reader, first time poster

 

I am a Student at bournemouth university, and have huge aspirations of becoming a cinematographer in the real world (away from student films!) and my first foray into this is a microbudget feature length documentary. The basic premise is that a DJ friend lent a life times collection of rarities and promo records to a friend who lives in Georgia. This was not a problem until conflict erupted between Georgia and Russia, causing the friend, in a moment of fear, to flee the country, leaving this box of treasure behind. The documentary therefore follows the two friends driving from bournemouth to Georgia across Europe, and the Eastern block, with their strange outlook on the world outside of their hometowns, and the development of their friendship being the protagonist of the piece.

 

We are currently in the proccess of developing the film's package to sell to either investors or distributors (highly reccomend 'The Film finance Handbook http://www.fundyourfilm.info/) And have got to the stage of working out the budget. Therefore we are trying to work out which would be the best and most finacially viable format and, therefore, equipement to shoot this on? DV isn't really a possibility, as this would be hard to sell or distribute at the end of the project, so we were thinking more along the lines of HD, as it would be nice for the shoot to be a two camera shoot. As a rough estimate so far, we are looking to spend around the £25,000 mark. Would it be better to rent or buy? Has anyone done a similiar project to this? What sort of issues did you guys have to deal with, especially in the pre production stages?

 

Cheers for your help in advance

[Jim Exton]

If you are shooting in a large block of time, not on weekends, it would be better for you to rent. Especially if you want 2 cameras.

 

Based on what you have told, I would say for your project, I recommend HDV cameras. Having tape for documentary shoots is really nice.

 

Depending on your crew size, etc, you might be able to go with the Sony EX-1, EX-3. Having someone to be on hand to offload the cards will keep media costs down, that is why I mentioned the crew thing.

 

I would personally go with HDV for a documentary.

[Tom Shirm]

I would personally go with HDV for a documentary.

 

 

Are there any decent hdv cameras? I wouldn't want to shoot for 2 weeks with a little camcorder like the hv30s!