Low-budget filmmaking
We’re in a pretty low budget here (well, pretty much “zero” budget). But nowadays you can get very good quality video for not that much money — at least without spending nearly as much in cameras and hardware as you used to have to do back in the day.
After doing quite a bit of research and talking to several people, we had narrowed down our camera selection to just two HD-capable miniDV cameras: the Canon HV20, a top-of-the-line consumer camera, and the semi-pro Sony HVR-A1U. The Canon was much, much cheaper, and according to what we heard and online reviews, had excellent video quality. It also has a great online community of users, hv20.com, who share lots of tips on using the camera, accessories, and editing.
In the end we went with the Canon HV30, the slightly updated version of the HV20. We had done a few test interviews with a borrowed HV20, and were very happy with the video quality (including its 24p mode, which makes it look very film-like). The price difference ($750 vs $2200+) is such that we can still buy other accessories (good microphones, for example) for less than the price of the Sony.
As for editing, we recently got a new 24″ iMac with plenty of disk space (and a fast backup hard drive), and with that and a program like Final Cut Pro we can do pretty much any kind of editing we’ll need (provided we actually learn how to use Final Cut properly).
The one thing that is still pretty scary is sound quality. Obviously, in a documentary with lots of interviews, sound is pretty key. But it’s a whole new world of technical jargon and concepts, and endless variety and quality of equipment; we have a $25 lavalier mic for now, but of course you can also buy $500 lavaliers; we’ll see what we can get away with on our limited budget.
There’ll be more on sound, and using 24p mode, on later posts.