Movie Shot with HD Camcorder
[Update: see comments - this isn’t an HD camera]
The action thriller “Throttle” was shot entirely with an HD camcorder. Sure, it’s an expensive camcorder ($26,750.00 MSRP), but still a camcorder.
Director James Seale said that he needed a camera that “allowed us to shoot fast and that looked terrific without having to rent a huge lighting package.” The amazin part is his next statement: “By using just the available overhead lights in the garage and blocking the actors accordingly, we were able to get tremendous results.” Whenever you go to a movie set you see lots of lights shining on actors faces to make them look just right. James Seale didn’t need these lights, making it easier to set up each shot and reducing costs. Two things he had to be very conscious of working on an indie film.
Link: Creative Mac - Action Thriller “Throttle” Shot on Panasonic AJ-SDX900
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July 28th, 2005 at 1:45 pm
the SDX900 is NOT an HD camera - it’s DVCPRO50, which as a format is like DV on steroids. It does shoot 16:9, it does shoot 24p, but it’s only 720×480 resolution.
The SDX900 costs nearly $30K because it has nice glass, a serious sensor, and professional controls.
-mike
July 28th, 2005 at 1:58 pm
Ooops, I guess I thought it was HD because it was going to premiere on HD Net. How odd.
July 28th, 2005 at 6:45 pm
Yeah, that would have been a perfectly fair assumption - my understanding was that HDNet only ran HD stuff, and at one point I heard they only took 1080 res stuff (no Varicam) - clearly they’ve backed down on their standards.
-mike