If you’re a filmmaker, the camera is the eye through which your audience will see your story, and every film needs just the right camera to perfectly serve that story. Because of how fundamental the camera is to the film, it’s often the first item that a filmmaker rushes out to buy, but buying might actually be your first mistake.
The first question to ask is this: where will this film be going? Will you be selling the film to a distribution company? Posting it to YouTube? Making DVDs to sell yourself? Although these questions all pertain to the final steps of your film’s process, and the answers to these questions inform what your first steps should be.
So let’s talk tech.
Back when TV was invented in its cathode-ray tube incarnation (long before plasma displays, LCD monitors and DLP projectors), the idea of interlacing was developed to allow for smooth video with a rapid refresh rate and many of today’s standard-def camcorders use formats based on this half-century-old technology.
But as the line between television and computer monitor have blurred in the last few years and many of our screens became progressive scan, we’ve started to look at our interlaced media in a new way. Now, we can now see the horizontal lines that the cathode-ray tube used to hide, and it can be pretty ugly.
But virtually every editing system worth its salt has a de-interlace filter, which erases every other line of resolution in a video to eliminate those pesky horizontal lines. However, when you’ve only got 480-lines to start with, de-interlacing takes your true resolution down to just over 200 vertical lines, which can even look rough on YouTube.
The thing about interlacing is that if you’re making a film, you’re making something that has historically been a 24 frame per second progressive scan medium, no matter what Michael Mann tries to do about it. That’s what an audience is expecting. So if you want your film to feel like a film, you’ll do best to shoot with a camera capable of progressive scan, and a framerate of 24fps. That century-old 24fps film framerate does something quite subliminal to the human mind, making it perceive the visuals as a dream instead of reality. It’s a powerful place to come from with your story. Plus, when you watch it on a computer, upload it to YouTube, or watch it on a TV made this century, a viewer won’t be distracted by the interlacing.
Next up is resolution and you have a few choices:
Without delving into Red Cameras (we’ll talk about those another time) there is a range resolutions you can get a video camera for these days: Standard Definition (720×480), 720pHD (1280×720p), and 1080HD (1920×1080). The decision here will dictate the resolution of your finished film, which is called the “Master Tape” or “Master File”. Sure you can do an up-convert after you’ve shot, but you can be in real trouble in the quality control step (when the fine tooth comb hits your film); they can always tell and your distribution deal may fall apart if you shot a 720p film but sold it as 1080.
If your film is for the web than 1280×720 is ideal since it’s progressive scan already, YouTube and AppleTV don’t show full 1080. Also, most consumers don’t know the difference between the two different sizes of HD and when you cut the resolution down to one quarter, you’ve got perfect widescreen iPod resolution (640×360) and it looks fantastic.
But if you intend to sell a feature film to a distributor, then your best bet is to go with 1080p, since virtually no distributors will take films with standard def masters anymore and Blu-Ray is a 1080 format. (Be careful though, 1080i exists too, and it’s got that interlacing problem, too. Definitely to be avoided by filmmakers.) Just don’t be surprised when the distributor insists on an HD Master, but only ever sells standard def DVDs; they just want the ability to sell a Blu-Ray if they choose to. It’s protecting their long-term investment in your film.
By extension, you can get away with a standard def master if you’re planning to self-distribute DVDs of your finished film, most people still have standard def DVD-players, so you’ll be able to sell more old style SD DVDs than Blu-Rays for years to come, and they’ll cheaper to make for at least another five years. The final step is the codec, which is short for compressor/decompressor. A common codec for years was the Mini-DV codec, an evolution of the interlaced format from a half century ago, and has been widely available as inexpensive tapes and cameras since the 90s.
But since the proliferation of consumer HD cameras in the last decade, a format called HDV has become popular. It essentially squeezes HD info onto the old Mini-DV tapes with a heavy DVD-style compression. It may be cheap for tapes, but that compression makes it hard to pull a green/blue screen key in post production. I’ve tried and it’s messy. TV-stations also won’t play this format of HD and call it “Dirty HD” because of how bad it looks when it’s being compressed again for television transmission. That can make it hard to sell to a distributor, as well.
That leaves the popular DVCproHD and HDCAM formats. Both were originated as tape formats for big shoulder mounted cameras, but Panasonic has assaulted the pro-sumer market with a solid-state solution called P2. These cards cost insane amounts of money, but the cameras are relatively cheap, so with a good workflow you can shoot 1080p broadcast quality with a camera solution for under $10,000.
Which gets us back to the most important aspect to any indie film’s budget: do you really want to buy a camera for your film? Sure there’s the pride of ownership and all that, but you’ll find that is quickly off-set with the “d’oh” of owning an outdated multi-thousand dollar piece of technology that you used for 8 weeks of shooting and is now gathering dust.
Which brings us to the concept of rental. You can rent a camera pack for around $250 per day, or $700 a week, and some places allow you to put that rental cost toward purchase if you fall in love with the camera (or you go so far over your shooting schedule that you may as well have purchased it).
Once you know the format you want to shoot, and you’ve picked the camera you want to use, do the math on rental vs. purchase and do what is most cost effective. But remember: if a camera you own stops working, you need to repair it or replace it; when a rental goes on the fritz you wash your hands of it and they give you a new camera. I personally shoot upwards of four shows a week with my camera, so buying my gear was a sensible option; the return on investment has been favourable, making it a good business decision to buy.
At the end of the day, it’s show BUSINESS that we’re talking about and the books need to be in the black if you want to be in a position to make the next movie. So spend smart. And remember, Best Buy has a two-week return policy.
Matt Campagna is a director, writer, editor and new media producer from Toronto, Canada. He is known for his film Six Reasons Why as well as his work on web series BSGcast, Your Geek News, The Naked Wine Show and WHIRtv.
