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Looking for a way to show a director the difference between the Varicam and HVX?
I’m about three weeks out on a 7 minute short narrative. It’s a western… so we’re going to be shooting 85% daytime exteriors in the desert and in ghost towns.
Originally we were planning on shooting with the HVX-200 in unison with a quality 35mm adapter and a set of high quality cooke lens. However, I’ve recently learned that the HVX doesn’t do well with wide landscape shots (like the desert)… apparently the chip just doesn’t have enough resolving power? And then there is always the fixed lens on the HVX that you can’t really get around. So I’m not sure if putting some nice cookes on the it would make all that big of a difference.
So my thought was to switch to the Varicam/Pro-35mm adapter/cooke lens as the “A” camera and then use the HVX more of a point of view camera and “b-roll camera”.
The director owns two of the HVX-200’s (so there is a financial benefit to using the HVX that he’s a bit connected too).The director is definately open to this Varicam solution, but he’s asking to SEE the difference…. so I’m trying to figure out the best way to show a comparison between the two cameras ON THE BIG SCREEN. This peice is festival bound (and I have a good feeling that it will be projected and will end up on the big screen). So a CRT wont do.
Does anyone have any ideas as to where I could see these two cameras projected digitally? This is something that I’m trying to pull of in the next several days.Any thoughts or advice on my sitution would be greatly appreciated.
Best,
Michael -
5 Replies
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Rent a varicam on friday afternoon for a one day rental that you will have ’till monday morning to return. Grab one of the HVX’s from the director, go for a drive into the desert and set them up side by side. Shoot the same footage at the same time, same frame rate etc. Bring that back and put them through the intended post workflow. ie. editing, outputing etc. then take the tape, DVD or whatever your output for the festival will be, to a small suburban theater that will rent to you for an hour in the morning before they open. IF you cant find a theater, shoot me an email. I have a friend with a screening room and I’d be interested to see the results.
fjnolan@pacbell.net -
There is no difference what so ever except for the fact the director can pocket the money for his HVX rentals instead of getting superior image quality and paying the rental house for the luxury of doing so.
Tony Salgado
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LOL– well said.
Noah
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HaHa.
No, really it’s not that it’ll be pocketed. It’s that it’ll be rerouted to another part of production. -
Do you happen to know where I can take the director to see some projected Varicam footage? E-Film has everything but Varicam (including HVX).
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