Movie Camera's and programs??

[BUFFJEDI]

this I think would mainly be up CMJ alley:) But i welcome any insight .Ok I have said before I want to be the next Ed.Wood, and after seeing the film Twice the other day I decided to get off my duff and do it. I finished three of my screen play's (well what I call a screen play :( ) heck I'll be directing it so it doesn't matter.I have just about all the cast and crew (for what I'll be doing set up.I have all the locations and 75 % of the props .Yes all in one day and hlf. But now comes the problem (so far :( ) No Camera.I had access to one when I was doing my workout video , but since I stopped production ;) on it and the fellow moved away I'm left with nothing:( I need a Camera !!! But what to buy?? No 8mil.I was thinking on the line of Digital/cam but what kind of qulity will it be and can it be formated?? to look like a film??And what kind of program will I need to edit on the Mac I will have to buy??Any Suggestions?? and keep in mind MONEY IS an object for now. Yes I know i'm going into this half cocked but Hey, it's me:D But I can alway's Find the money :smokin

i'll learn as i go .

I can get lights in a snap of a finger so need not them. Anything else anyone can come up with Fire away. But keep in mind I'm not planning on making a Motion picture so to speak. Just something after I'm done I can put on Dvd/vhs and it look almost professional :x



anyway sorry mods if in wrong place BUT noone ever reads the Misc.:(


hey, and NO bursting my little Bubble:lol

[Mu Satach]

Only thing I can say is have one you can control the appature settings, hook up a directional microphone & headphones for the boom man. Also if you get a digital make sure it has a firewire port if your going to be doing your editing on a computer.

Oh yeah... and planning, planning, planning, planning.
Have your shot lists in order before you do any filming & don't overlook the importance of a script girl. Very important to remember what your filming & in what order.

[Jedieb]

Where is this opus being filmed buff? What kind of locations are you going to be using?

[Lilaena De'Ville]

:wave I'll be your script girl! What do I have to do? *strikes a confused Catholic Schoolgirl pose*

Seriously, souonds great, but I don't know what kind of camera to use.

[JonathanLB]

Catholic School Girl, uhh... nevermind. ;)

Well Buff, haha, if money were no object, you should get what I have, the Canon XL-1S. Best digital camcorder available to the public.

Otherwise, umm, well... I honestly would recommend renting. You cannot find a good digital camcorder besides the XL-1 or XL-1S, so you should either buy/rent one of those, or go with 8mm and just rent the equipment. If there is anywhere you can do that, I mean.

You don't necessarily have to shoot the scenes in order anyway, of course. BUT the advice here is good, you need to plan what order works best, which may be totally out of order, if you are using a location more than once in separate scenes, for instance.

Non-linear filmmaking is the only way to go. In fact, I cannot imagine anyone filming a movie in linear fashion unless it was a documentary. Every movie we have made so far, which is just three or four I guess, we have filmed out of sequence and then done some retakes and pickups later on.

So far, though, I've never made anything remotely worth watching, IMO. I want to make a real movie of course, but that can wait. Patience is vital here.

I wish you well on your project here, should be cool! :)

I hope to spend the next four years productively going through movies and reviewing them, hopefully several thousand, and then when I graduate I will go to film school (AFI, NYFA, or Full Sail most likely), after which I will have at least $100,000 from my own projects and my trust fund (so that is pretty much guaranteed, hehe). I will use whatever I need to use out of that to film my first movie, which I'll write and direct, and hopefully that might be able to achieve some degree of success and I'll just see where I go from there. I know one thing, though, and that's that I want to direct, not anything else. I don't want to be the lighting guy and be 35 and still "hoping" my dreams will come true. I'd prefer to be a professional film critic / author and just make movies on the side, if it came down to that.

[Peter McCoy]

I'm going to become a director too (notice my optimism). I recently received a Sony IP7 MICROMV camcorder for my 18th birthday. I've got a production planned, but my PC doesn't detect the camcorder when I link it using the USB cable - nor does my friends PC (which is far better than mine) - which suggests that the cable is faulty and needs replacing.

I've got a lot of ppanning to do before filming starts in January, but that's what pre-production's all about!

LB's advice on the camera, though, is sound indeed. Canon really know their stuff when it comes to camera's, and the XL-1(S) is the best on the market in terms of what you get for your money. I would have liked to get one, but the interest on weekly installments was far too much - one of the reasons I actually got the IP7 was because it was on interest-free credit over 3 years - Mum, Dad and Nan all chipped in together to get it for me.

[Mu Satach]

Originally posted by Lilaena De'Ville
:wave I'll be your script girl! What do I have to do?

Traditionally it's someone who sits with a copy of the script and keeps notes of exactly what is shot, in what order, where things are placed, and how long each take is...

Like, if you have a character who's smoking in a scene... did they exhale before they stood up? or after? cigarette in left hand or right? and little things like that...

keeping track of what you're doing when you're doing it comes in handy when it's time to edit.

Or so I've found out the hard way.
:rollin

[CMJ]

Mu, the official title is Script Supervisor..and MOST of the ones I've worked with have been guys(hell I've done it before as well). Not sure they'd like being called script girls. ;)

[Mu Satach]

it's an old timey phrase... ;)


(*I'd forgotten what the corrected updated term was as I'm not in the know... ya know. :D*)

[JonathanLB]

My friend Ben and I were talking about the absolute lack of female directors in Hollywood. Granted I can name maybe a few, but it's quite... odd.

I mean, there are obviously plenty of actresses, but the only director who comes right to mind is the lady who did The Peacemaker and a few other films, umm... her name escapes me.

Plus American Psycho, one of my favorite films, is directed by a woman. But none of the famous directors, like literally not one, is a woman. It'd be nice to see that change...

[Peter McCoy]

Sofia Coppola (daughter to Francis Ford Coppola - a legend!) directed "The Virgin Suicudes", for which she recieved an award in 2001 for "Best new Film-maker" or something to that effect - I think our very own George Lucas presented the award too.

I think it might have been the MTV Movie Awards. Don't quote me on that though!

[CMJ]

There's a few female directors that I can think of...but really the only big name is Penny Marshall.

Jonathan, you were thinking of Mimi Leeder.

[JMK]

She also did Deep Impact, no?

[CMJ]

Yes sir, and "Pay it Forward".

[JMK]

Well between American Psycho, Deep Impact and Pay it Forward, she's got to be one of the top female directors in Hollywood?

[Jedieb]

Nora Ephron
Doesn't direct as much as she could, but SIS was a pretty good romantic comedy. The "Dirty Dozen" scene cracks me up everytime I see it.

[Sene Unty]

I loved Virgin Suicides......so I guess I like Sophia Coppola :D

[JonathanLB]

The lady who did American Psycho is different from Deep Impact and The Peacemaker, but my friend and I did find it funny that a serial killer movie was directed by a woman, haha. I mean of course anyone can direct anything, but it totally violates the stereotype that you'd think a woman director would want to make a chick flick or a sweet romantic comedy or some nonsense like that. ;)

Instead, Mimi Leder (thanks, CMJ, I was really tired... and somehow slept through class today, or my alarm didn't go off, ugg, oops!) is an action movie director basically, hehe.

[CMJ]

Well if you wanna talk action flicks...Kathryn Bigelow directed "K-19". ;)

[JonathanLB]

Nice.

"Nora Ephron"

That is funny. That instantly reminds me of "Norepinephrin," hehe: "n : a hormone secreted by the adrenal medulla and also released at synapses"

Funny name.

[Mu Satach]

I love Penny Marshall's stuff.

[Morgan Evanar]

To the original subject-- Mac isn't the only way to go nowadays, although it would likely be the quickest route.

Honestly, I'm an x86 fanboi (Read - AMD/ Intel, in that order) and the PC has come a long, long way as an editing platform (from what I've read), especially with Windows 2000 Pro. You really should do some research beyond this forum. I'm a tech geek, but this is beyond my scope since I have little interest in this area.

But if you're a DIYer, an incredibly quick dual AMD setup can be had for very little money. One thing I do know is that duals is the way to go for video editing.

[BUFFJEDI]

Thanks to everyone's input, I ment to post thanks awhile back but it slipped my mind(sorry) i have everything I need on it's way:) :) :) Soon you can mention my name with the greats like ED WOOD :rollin


Thanks guy's

BUFFJEDI:wave

[Lilaena De'Ville]

BUFFJEDI! The next ED WOOD! ;) Keep us posted!! :D

[JonathanLB]

Nice, Buff. :)

I'm plowing my way through the AFI Top 100 list, which is a big project on my way to becoming a "real" film critic, so that I may, of course, be a real movie maker someday.

Last weekend and the weekend before I saw:

Rebel Without A Cause (3.5 stars)
Vertigo (4)
The Philadelphia Story (3.5)
A Clockwork Orange (4 -- loved it...)
Taxi Driver (4 stars -- wrote a 4.5 page review today)
Frankenstein (3.5 stars)

This coming weekend I hope I have time to make it through about 3-5 more AFI films. I have 3 from NetFlix that I just got (increased my subscription to 5 out at one time), including Network, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Platoon. I definitely look forward to these.

My AFI reviews take forever, though, it's amazing. I never did finish the Citizen Kane review, still working on that, hopefully Wednesday. I finished everything else first as they were shorter. Any AFI film takes 2 pages to review at least, if it's on DVD and has great extra features, 3-4 pages is a given, if it's a very thought provoking film and influential AND has a great DVD, ala Citizen Kane and Taxi Driver, then it's 4+ pages, anywhere up to 8 pages (Citizen Kane will end up in this range).

There is just a lot to say and it must be said or I will not remember and it should be presented in one area for people to research and review. My normal reviews keep short and I don't ramble in any of them, but the greatest films deserve the greatest reviews.

I saw 11 movies last weekend, my new record for a single weekend, 12 if you include AOTC in IMAX (and that was technically on Friday, the weekend). I reviewed 9 of them so far, still haven't gotten to Vertigo or Auto Focus (new release, limited). They will come Wednesday.

It's a balancing act between seeing as many movies as possible and keeping just a few behind at all times in reviewing. I'd say "keeping even on reviews," but let's face it I'm never even, I'm always behind, and I've concluded that a few behind is always acceptable or even healthy, haha, like a company being in debt is also "healthy" normally. I do need to catch up far more than where I am now, though, as I am too far behind. That should change after Wednesday *crosses fingers and hopes*

[BUFFJEDI]

I'm plowing my way through the AFI Top 100 list, which is a big project on my way to becoming a "real" film critic, so that I may, of course, be a real movie maker someday.:lol Are you saying Ed wood didn't make real movies;)

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Jon, what did that post have to do with Buff's topic?

*huggles Buff* Ed Wood made real movies, yes he did! :lol

[JonathanLB]

It had everything to do with Buff's post!

Buff is talking about filmmaking and his path to becoming an active participant. I was talking about my path and how that is going. Albeit mine is more indirect than Buff because I'm studying a lot of movies I need to see first, and he's getting right into making one, but both are equally valid. :)

[BUFFJEDI]

*huggles Buff* Ed Wood made real movies, yes he did! :o :o

I do see what jon was/is saying:
Jon is studing his art, to which when he does do his thing he will have the knowledge of the master's by studying the master's.In which I think is smart:)

Unlike someone we all know and love

;)

who is just trying to jump into it like a darn fool:x

[JonathanLB]

Well, I do not think that just seeing great movies makes someone have the potential to be a great director, but yes in my humble opinion, my approach is at least going to make me an educated student of film and with that knowledge I believe I will be able to go about film studies and becoming a filmmaker in a more efficient manner. Plus, it sets up a few career opportunities (solidifies my position as an author and makes that a viable career path in and of itself, plus film criticism for newspapers or magazines).