Hey everyone,

I have an upcoming shoot for a commercial for national Television, so a big deal for me. The shoot is going to be in a studio (normally for photography) with the use of a white background (round wall I think it's called). Just like in the MAC vs. PC commercials.

I am going to shoot in HD with the Letus 35 extreme and it's going to be wide-shots and close-ups but not to much movement in it. I will use a 32 G and 4GB P2 card (4 GB just because I have it :). I am still in doubt about which format I will use and there are no request from the client.

720p/50p, 720p/25p, 1080i/50i or 1080i/25p? What format would you recommend for this shoot?

What deliverable format does your client want it in? If they want it in 1080, shoot it in 1080. If they want it in 720, shoot it in 720.

If they want SD, you could shoot DVCPRO50, but if you want to shoot HD anyway you would probably be better off shooting a progressive format, not 1080i.

Second major question is: do they want the film look or the video look?

Assuming the film look, that makes your main choices 1080/25p or 720/25pN.

If they want the video look, you'd be choosing between 1080/50i and 720/50p.

If you have no input from the client (BUT YOU SHOULD!) I'd go for the 1080/50i

99:1 i bet the final distribution will probably be SD and by shooting interlaced HD you leave open all the possibilities. You can downsize to SD Progressive or SD interlaced and you have HD interlaced.
The only possibility you are not covering in this way is HD Progressive. In fact you can interpolate afterwards from 1080/50i to 1080/25p but as I said it will be interpolating and not real resolution.

Still I think this is the best solution. If you shoot in HD 25p you'll never get back the field (that is 1/50th of a second) information, neither in SD or HD

Well the thing is that the only input I got is that they want the best quality possible :) It's a pretty big company but they never did a commercial yet. There is a advertising agency in between and they don't know anything about formats as well, so it's up to me.

It's probably going to end up in SD like you said Marcello, so that's good advice thank you. But HD is a fashion thing lately, so even if it's not necessary to shoot in HD, it's to satisfied the client who can say that the shoot is in HD :)

I always prefer the film look and shoot as much progressive as possible.

I just did a commercial for TV on the 301 and we did it at 1080i 25np using pre-set 5 to get a nice filmic look.

The client was very happy with the pictures but as stated it is best to shoot in the delivery format required.

you want 1080 25p you will limit yourself greatly if you are using a different rate. Most high end commercials are shot on 35mm film at 24p(usa) 25p(UK) then scanned and bounced down to 2k 24p or 25p masters, edited and then shipped to the agency to air on all different types of networks. but 720 is really ok too, but it depends on the capability of the agency. You can always res down from 1080 in post

If this is a REAL deal project you should never get turned down for having 25p footage as for big car commercials, cell phone commercials, beer commercials and more are all shot on 35mm @25 fps

You should really get in contact with the cable station it will be sent to.