[Ryan Mast]

Get the VIXIA. Very nice camera for its price range — one of my clients is using it for a web series right now. It plays nicely with Final Cut. Get a decent shotgun mic, too.

Get one of these:
https://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=11030

Don’t bother with converting Flip video to ProRes HQ — it’s overkill. Vanilla ProRes or ProRes LT sufficient.

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Meteor Tower Films
We make music videos, design video for live theater, and build interesting contraptions.

[Ryan Mast]

So what’s your bottleneck right now?

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Meteor Tower Films
We make music videos, design video for live theater, and build interesting contraptions.

[Ryan Mast]

Well, if you’re already editing with FCS and shooting with your dad’s pro gear, it sounds like you’re pretty much set.

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Meteor Tower Films
We make music videos, design video for live theater, and build interesting contraptions.

[Ryan Mast]

Find a good community theater in your area and go learn how to build sets, light, run sound, and act. Live there until you graduate high school. Make promo videos for them, to show of your work. Learn pacing, working with a crew, and problem-solving in high stress. This will make you a better videographer, and it’ll introduce you to other jobs that you might like better than making videos.

Tech doesn’t matter, as long as it’s not holding you back. I edit on a 4-year-old G5, because it just works. If you want some more toys to play with, get a couple halogen worklights at Lowes to experiment with. Get Final Cut Express — your young brain learns quickly, and you have time to play with it. Knowing how to work quickly and precisely in Final Cut Express will make you much savvier when you jump up to FCS, CS5, Avid, etc. If you want a new camera, save up for a decent Canon consumer camera or a T2i.

Find a couple of older editors/directors/etc who will give you harsh, precise, and constructive criticism. Take your work to them often, and ask them for homework.

Keep doing your thing. 🙂

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Meteor Tower Films
We make music videos, design video for live theater, and build interesting contraptions.

[Ryan Mast]

[Gav Bott] “”Do you have a budget set aside for this one? Roughly what kind of level are you thinking of?” “

And if they don’t want to answer that, I ask, “Just give me a ballpark — $20, $200, $2,000, $20,000, or $200,000?” It’s enough to tell what order of magnitude they’re thinking.

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Meteor Tower Films
We make music videos, design video for live theater, and build interesting contraptions.

[Ryan Mast]

Looks a little out of focus, but I’m not seeing anything abnormally grainy. Can you a few seconds of footage? What do you think is especially grainy in the image?

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Meteor Tower Films
We make music videos, design video for live theater, and build interesting contraptions.

[Ryan Mast]

The EX3’s sensor is higher resolution and performs better in low light than the HM700. I decided against the EX1/EX3 because of rolling shutter and form factor, but if you’re not shooting high motion, it creates a very pretty image.

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Meteor Tower Films
We make music videos, design video for live theater, and build interesting contraptions.

[Ryan Mast]

black toe == black stretch
master black == master pedestal

Leave them both at default unless you have a really good reason to change them.

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Meteor Tower Films
We make music videos, design video for live theater, and build interesting contraptions.

[Ryan Mast]

User’s manual, pages 68 & 77.

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Meteor Tower Films
We make music videos, design video for live theater, and build interesting contraptions.

[Ryan Mast]

Have you tried swapping the cable between the HM700 and the receiver? Does your wireless receiver give you this same noise when connected to a mixer?

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Meteor Tower Films
We make music videos, design video for live theater, and build interesting contraptions.