[Bill Moede]

I use the anamorphic adapter as it’s the best way to get quality 16×9 from the DVX-100. Other than that my camera is stock, no other add on stuff.

As for looking like film… I don’t use that term, I prefer to get a “cinema look”. Technically; 24p, and a gamma curve that will give you more shadow detail, and less noise in the blacks. And, know the limitations of the DV / video format that you shoot. With DV you only have a 4-5 stop range of exposure. Many times that means lights and / or scrims when you are shooting outdoors to bring up the light level on actors or reduce bright background levels. Or you need to limit your shot angles away from bright sky and other backgrounds. Indoors you may need to put some light in the shadows, with DV don’t let anything fall off to 100% black, you will see noise sparkles.

Once you have the tech stuff out of the way, light like a movie, shoot like a movie; cranes, dolly instead of zoom. Use only a few focal length settings, then move the camera to frame.

[Bill Moede]

I’m not sure what your max resolution would be. Anything I need to shoot 16×9 I shoot with the anamorphic lens adapter. I’m capturing with the FCP standard DV codec, anamorphic.

I’ve been outputting some projects at 720P using compressor and that looks pretty good.

[Bill Moede]

Well, I’m trying to stay away from calling it a “film” look, rather a “cinema look” But, to my eyes the DVX100A and B do much better job at this look, with both the color, shadow detail and contrast latitude. The XL2 also looks a bit too sharp sometimes. I’ve shot similar scenes with both my DVX 100, Canon GL2 and Canon XL2, and I always see better detail in the shadows and highlights compared to the XL2 where these details are either gone to complete black or are blown out. I still love my XL2s and those Canon lenses for a lot of work, but when I’m shooting a narrative “films” I prefer the look of the DVX100.

At this point my only distribution is SD DVDs or the web so from a business point of view, gearing up for HD will be a year of so off for me yet.

For the current film I’m working on, we tested some lower end HDV cameras, which we would need to down convert to SD anyway, and it was quite clear that SD with a great lens looks a lot better than HD (HDV) with a consumer – prosumer type lens.

The guy working down hall in the the next office from me is shooting with the HVX-200 and the images I have seen from that camera have much of the same qualities of the DVX100 but with HD resolution.

[Bill Moede]

Other that ADR, I not found that the voice talent needs to watch the video for a voice over. Plus, your talent will often give a better performance without the video distraction.

I’m doing all my voice recording on Soundtrack Pro on a Macbook Pro, with a Mackie 1204 mixer and a creative labs USB sound card.

[Bill Moede]

Thanks for the info.

I use all 4 channels because I can use three wireless body mics and a shotgun/boom mic and have those on 4 discrete channels without any external audio recorders on set.

[Bill Moede]

I get good results by carefully adjusting all audio levels to the overall target average level, then apply the FCP compressor limiter using 1.2 – 1.5 of ratio to take care of peaks.