Posts from — January 2007

There are standard image effects built into most camcorders. I think of the amateurish sepia-tone or the actually useful black & white color option. These are all in-camera effects. There are also digital effects, such as the wipe function on the Canon Zr 500.

Camcorders also can be manipulated by changing the white-balance, the shutter, & exposure settings. Or you can opt to switch to Auto-Mode or the “Easy” setting. With these automatic settings, a camcorder can create optimal images. It’s like setting up a middle-ground of skill for the user. There are sometimes even other pre-selected setting modes such as Portrait, Sports, Night, Snow, Beach, Sunset, Spotlight, or Fireworks.

But if you are looking to make a more professional type of image, you can do tons of effects with a computer. Black & White color & other effects are a snap with Avid Xpress or even iMovie. And then, with editing you can add transitions like Fade In/Out, wipes, or none if you prefer to use hard cuts. If you want to manipulate green-screen footage or do other advanced effects, Adobe After Effects is a popular software available. You can do motion graphics and 3-D compositing. It’s helps the user animate the camcorder footage.

With camcorders & After Effects, you can experiment in other genres such as horror or sci-fi. You can add ghosts and superimpose images to bring a fictional world to life.

I’ve been researching how dvd camcorders compare to DV. To my surprise, I found that editing the footage from dvd cams is very frustrating. The optimal editing procedure is to do everything in camera! Otherwise, you must use Adobe Premiere Elements or Sony Vegas DVD specific editing software. Apparently, this is something most people do not know when they buy a dvd camcorder. If you were thinking that you would be able edit footage right out of the box with a dvd camcorder, this may prove to be very difficult. So any miniDV camcorder has an advantage over a Sony Handycam DCR-DVD201 Camcorder.

Jake Ludington, a media expert who answers tech questions, figured out how to manipulate the dvd camcorder footage. The biggest problem is uploading the dvd footage content and transferring it to a manageable editing format. All of his instructions sound extremely complicated and doesn’t make me want to run out and buy a dvd camcorder.

I agree with his assessment of the dvd dilemma.
“I like the idea of DVD camcorders. No hard drive, theoretically affordable media, considering full-sized DVDs cost less than fifty cents each in most cases. The reality is a series of frustrations for anyone who wants to edit movies after shooting. I have some experience with Sony’s Handycam DVD7, which is an entry level unit, but representative of the experience for all DVD camcorders. The dirty secret of DVD camcorders is they aren’t designed for editing on a PC. You are expected to record to disk, edit on the camera, finalize your project on the camera and at best make copies of the DVD for sharing with other people. If you are more familiar with the process of realtime video capture over FireWire available via a more traditional DV cam, this is especially frustrating. None of the Handycam DVD models include FireWire (or as Sony calls it, iLINK).”

This issue can be navigated, but I feel like I’d rather stick to buying dv tapes, even though DVD discs are less expensive. I’d rather have less hassle on the post-production end. Still, dvd camcorders are a great deal if you want to record family memories and don’t care to edit very much after the fact. They are remain a viable product on the market despite these technical issues.

Are we living in Orwellian times? I bet Nicole Kidman thinks we are. Her accident on the set of her new movie, Invasion ended up on the internet in a matter of hours. I’m sure they expected it to wind up in the news, but probably not on video. Much to the surprise of the studio, there is clear footage of the accident (imo it’s not all that interesting).

It seems anything remotely interesting or unusual ends up on tape, and thus on the internet. It seems there are paparazzi spies following Kidman and other celebrities everywhere. Like a modern version of Big Brother.

I think TMZ is getting a bit out of control. Do they just equip a team of paps with Gs500 camcorders? And then they set them loose on the city to tape anything they see? I’ve seen them lurking about on Robertson Blvd in Beverly Hills. It’s very creepy. I’m glad that I’m not famous. I don’t think I could handle all that attention.

There are these videos on You Tube of people who decide to take a picture of themselves everyday with a camcorder or webcam. This parody is my personal favorite.

If you want to take the idea further, you could do a daily video journal and capture it on disc. With a panasonic vdr m50 digital camcorder, you can record a dvd track entry everyday. Then, when you fill a disc up, you can just import it onto your computer. It’s just like a when you fill up a paper journal and file it away. And with a dvd camcorder, you are able to have your footage already in MPEG-4 format. Then, uploading it to YouTube or Revver.com is a snap.

These daily videos are most likely only entertaining to the filmmaker. But it is a way to track one’s progress and develop camcorder skills. I think it would be great to have a writer or even filmmaker to track their daily progress on whatever project they are working on. I know the video diary on the Magnolia dvd was pretty self-indulging of PT Anderson. Still, it was fascinating to see what was happening from his own POV on a long-term basis.

The camcorder allows you capture your personal behavior without a huge film crew following you around real world style. And even on the “Real World”, they have the confessional booth where the roommates essentially film themselves with a camcorder. I always found the confession tapes to be full of the best parts in the early years of the show. Lately, the confession segments seem overly fabricated. It’s more like they are being interviewed instead of speaking aloud to themselves.

Skateboarding & other extreme sports have become more popular over the years. And with the use of camcorders & unique stylistic coverage, the X-games have gotten national exposure. ESPN broadcasts the events every year. And in the early years, they experimented with camcorders to capture the action instead of huge broadcast tv cameras.

In 2002, ex-pro athlete, Todd Grossman used a sony camcorder vx2000 equipped with a fisheye lens to shoot the X Games. The size of the camcorder allowed for a new detail of action to be captured by the camera operator. It gave the event a whole new feel. Grossman also used a modified camcorder to shoot the Gravity Games.

With this groundbreaking work, he has smoothly transitioned into a documentary filmmaker. He has shot dvd documentaries for Stealth & other major films. He shoots most his work with a professional camcorder instead of on film. It gives him the ease of editing on the fly right there on set. (source article)