[Thomas Miller]

I forgot to add one additional idea. Secure professional teams at each of your locations who will do it all for you. Then you save a ton of money on air travel, AND the camera, which can then be applied to the production.

Here’s how that works: Find a team who will shoot and ask the questions for you. You will usually want to hire at least a 2-person crew. (A Director/DP and Sound Person) We’re doing this here in Denver on Monday for a client from Canada. They just sent us the questions and the contact info of the subject, and we’re taking care of the rest. In this case we’re shooting onto P2, so we’ll just send them a drive filled with footage ready to edit. They get high quality footage from professional people and equipment, save the time and money of flying, and don’t have to deal with owning, insuring and traveling the gear.

Their costs: Our dayrate, a Lacie rugged drive, and Fed-X charges. Done!

Now this will require research on your part to find capable crews wherever you are shooting, as well as a bit of coordination. But in my opinion, this is a small price to pay to get what you’re looking for.

Good luck, and please report back what you end up doing!

Tom Miller
Big Pictures Media
Denver, Colorado

http://www.BigPicturesMedia.com

[Thomas Miller]

Trying not to gang up you here – anybody that knows me knows that I advocate hiring professional specialists whenever possible. But after carefully reading you first email, it sounds like you are just trying to shoot some quick interviews at various locations by yourself. And there is not a budget for any other way. Is that true? And it also sounds like it doesn’t need to look that good, and indeed you want it to look a little rough. So you need to travel with a high-end consumer level camera (I don’t know this world but you can probably find one) that will shoot in HD (720p or 1080i) and be easy to transfer to your computer (think SD cards.) You also want to buy or rent a high quality lav mic, and figure out a way to get that into your camera (most high quality audio gets into high quality professional cameras with XLR’s, but the kind of camera in your budget will probably have RCA into it for audio, or worse force you to use the camera mic.)This is all doable, but I’m not sure where to lead you with the equipment. Maybe someone out there can.

As far as broadcast v non-broadcast, Scott is right in saying that this is very much a moving target. We sometimes supplement our primary camera footage with a $300 GoPro Hero, which makes TV on a regular basis. But don’t use one of these for what you are trying to do, it’s a specialty camera for sure!

I would NOT recommend going the DSLR route, these are harder, not easier to use alone. These are best left in the capable hands of professionals, and are WAY overkill for what you are trying to do.

Just buy a $1000 to $2,000 consumer camera. They all shoot on HD now, and it will look like you want it to look – amateur video.

OR consider this – you will be playing the roll of Producer/Director, DP and Sound Mixer – usually three distinct jobs. The Director deals with the asking of the questions and the content of the interviews, the DP worries about the camera and the lighting, and the Sound Person handles the mic-ing of the subject and seeing to it the camera records great sound.

You might want to play the producer/director roll only, use the money you would spend to buy the camera to find capable and equipped crews in each location. Maybe you can find a good camera person who will do a half day rate and go one man band (meaning he or she will do audio). You will also save money not traveling with any equipment. And then you get to concentrate on being the director!You can find professionals to do this from many sources, agencies and directories. Let me know if you need a few resources.

Just a couple of ideas!

Tom Miller
Big Pictures Media
Denver, Colorado

http://www.BigPicturesMedia.com

[Thomas Miller]

You tight shot camera should go center, back from the stage as far as your lens will allow. For example, if you want a medium shot of the speaker, how far back will whatever camera/lens you are using allow you to go and still zoom in enough to get a medium? Wherever you end up, try to get a riser for this camera so the operator doesn’t have to deal with the audience getting in his or her way. Also, if you are on a very long lens, you might want to keep the cameras riser isolated from the operator, as every move the operator makes might be seen in the shot! But usually you don’t have to go back that far.

The wide shot camera could be in the back corner. I find wide shots look much better off center of the stage. This allows multiple shots – a big wide, a medium or wide with a pan from the audience to the stage, and then a nice medium side of the stage. You can also send that operator to a front position on occasion if you want audience shots – wides, groups and closeups.

Have the CU be your go-to camera, and coordinate tape changes (if any) so that one is always rolling.

Send good sound to both cameras so that one backs up the other.

Tom Miller
Big Pictures Media
Denver, Colorado

http://www.BigPicturesMedia.com

[Thomas Miller]

These are rather broad questions. For example, I’m not sure if you need filters. What are you shooting? What’s the nature of the documentary? Who is shooting it – are you hiring a professional DP or are you doing it yourself? Will there be a sound person, other crew? Why do you need a second camera? What are you using that for? etc etc.

Tom Miller
Big Pictures Media
Denver, Colorado

http://www.BigPicturesMedia.com

[Thomas Miller]

We’ve had good luck lately with the GoPro Hero Camera. It’s about $300 and is full resolution. You can mount it on anything. Difficult to monitor the shot though.

Tom Miller
Big Pictures Media
Denver, Colorado

http://www.BigPicturesMedia.com

[Thomas Miller]

I think I misstated. What I actually need to do is right it on, but record it. So after a little poking around, I discovered the Right-on” tool, and it looks like it will work with the pens as I need. Thanks for replying.

Tom Miller
Big Pictures Media
Denver, Colorado

http://www.BigPicturesMedia.com

[Thomas Miller]

I know this is an old thread, but I wanted to chime in here. We actually have an HDX900, but there is no longer a qualified engineer in our market. When our pixels light up, and we can’t eliminate by black balancing, I finally took it upon myself to learn how to dig into the menu system and do it. I spoke with our out of town service rep at Abel, and she was able to talk me through it. I think it’s important to know this, and in fact I will teach our team, as well as keep the instructions in our camera bag. Please let me know if anyone is interested, and I will be happy to share what I learned. Not sure if the HDX900 is the same as the Varicam though.

Tom Miller
Big Pictures Media
Denver, Colorado

http://www.BigPicturesMedia.com

[Thomas Miller]

I agree with Jeremy. We have both types and see no difference. They are both reliable. We have two 32’s and 1 16Gb that we keep with our 170 and have yet to need more.

Tom Miller
Big Pictures Media
Denver, Colorado

http://www.BigPicturesMedia.com

[Thomas Miller]

If at all possible, hire a professional sound person to work with you. While many people work as one man (person) bands, I think there is great value in a 2-person crew (at minimum).

Tom Miller
Big Pictures Media
Denver, Colorado

http://www.BigPicturesMedia.com

[Thomas Miller]

Agreed. I just used the Hero for an underwater shoot a few weeks ago, and it did fine. It’s not as sharp of course as the higher end cameras with housing, but for our purposes it was good.

Tom Miller
Big Pictures Media
Denver, Colorado

http://www.BigPicturesMedia.com