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Long-term doc shot on 24p SD: pick-up shots 24p SD or HD?
Looking for advice about on which camera to shoot pick-up shots for a (very) long-term doc..
Been working on this project for about 13 years (many reasons for delay in finishing). I started out shooting with a combination of 24p and 24pADV on a Panasonic DVX-100a. Used a plug-in to convert 24p to 24pADV and shot remaining footage on 24pADV. Sequences at 23.98. While HD was emerging, I made an aesthetic (and budgetary) choice to not shoot in HD.
When I started all that 24p/24pADV stuff was new, but now I’m clearly feeling obsolete, scrambling to finish the film and use software/hardware that supports my OS (currently Lion, afraid to change that) and FCP version (7). I plan to upres the final film to HD, and realize I’ll lose some framing – from what I’ve read I should not use FCP to do that final upres. So I’ll probably export at 23.98 and then upres that final project. (I am not an editor, but director doing as much as possible before reconvening with editor)
Here’s the thing: I will be getting a few pick-up shots and doing one final follow-up interview in the next few weeks. Should I just shoot it using the same Panasonic DVX-1000a at 24pADV or should I shoot it on my Nikon DSLR in HD? I shot some HD for my website/Kickstarter/Youtube clips but have not as yet imported any HD footage into the FCP 7 timeline. Not even sure if I can…
Any advice/warnings/suggestion most definitely and gratefully appreciated.
Claire MP
https://lightyearsfilm.com -
4 Replies
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You still have the same camera gear, and it works, so it will match all the way through.If it indeed still works, I’d be hard pressed to want to make a change at this late date: a change that has to be compensate for, and the newer HD footage just won’t match up to the originals. Me, I’d stick to keeping everything consistent, if possible, and having a consistent look across the entire thing.
Your decision may depend on aesthetic and philosophical issues we don’t have the back-story to weigh here, versus purely technical ones. If you look at the making of “Hoop Dreams”, for example, that was shot on a bunch of formats, including a lot of 8mm or hi-8, but also on higher-quality formats. Everybody made allowances because the story and subject matter were compelling enough to make exceptions. I don’t know enough about your project to say if it’s the same situation.
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I’m with Mark…stick to the older gear for consistency in look. If you use the HD gear, and then have HD footage in an SD project, not only will it look different, but then you really complicate your upres workflow. Because you don’t want to downres your footage, then upres it again. You’ll have to separate it out…and then it’ll still look REALLy different.
Yeah…stick to the DVX0-100. Keep a uniform look. Upscaling can be done really well. 28 Days Later was shot with that camera. Or…was it a canon one? ANyway…it was shot DV.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
People tend to rag on DV25 these days, saying horribly offensive things about it. Lots of them forget they all shot a ton of it, back in the day, and made quite a good living from it. Did it have shortcomings, heck, yes. Did it completely revolutionize our workflows and lead to the NLE HD 2k,4k, 64K world we live in now? Heck yes. I still occasionally shoot in DVCPro25 anamorphic for certain low-budget projects, and the clients like it just fine.
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Thank you all!
I have received great advice here in the past and this proves no exception. Very grateful for your feedback. Hoping to finish the film this year!
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