Plain and Simple...
 

Simple Question: Has anyone on the planet earth produced anything of note with the JVC HD100? Not this amateur hour zombie porn stuff, I mean a serious professional film with quality acting and story? Not wedding or bar mitzvah videos, but something artistic, creative, and most importantly, good? From what I can tell the answer is no, but perhaps some angry individual would like to say the contrary. Are all the creatives keeping quiet? Is there some fundamental psychology I'm failing to understand? Or am I just miserably uninformed? Links Please!

Yes. I'm sure there are a few "productions of note" being produced now.

Why haven't you seen any of it on the internet? Probably because the camera was only released 6 months ago. Big-budget adoption of new gear is heavily scrutinized in this industry, big production companies don't want to be the first to take the risk and "major" productions take time to produce, shoot, edit, post, market and distribute.
Also (I know in my own case) copyright restricts what can be posted publicly (I've shot some stuff I'd love to share but can't) and NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreements) restrict what can be "talked" about until the time is right (which is why I can't talk about most of the productions I'm involved with.)

Just think about how long it took from the release of the first Sony F900 to the release of the first motion picture made with that camera. I think the first was either "Session 9" or "Jackpot," and then "Star Wars Episode II" and "Once Upon a Time In Mexico" followed shortly after. At that point production with the F900 exploded because it had been "proven" as a viable "big budget" money saver.

I think by the summer we will start to see some HD100 films hitting the festival circuit.

I just attended an Apple/Aja seminar and the moderators told us that one of the reality tv shows was being shot with the JVC. When pushed, they said that they could not share which one.

The Panasonic rep was there and was quite obviously terrified of the JVC, because not only was it outperforming his HVX, but it may very well be the Varicam Killer.

The Producers of "24" have been testing the JVC on set, and almost every day there is another production revealed that is using the camera.

I suspect that in the next year we will all be exposed to numerous productions, of varying genres, that were originated with the JVC.

By the way, the most successful film of all time, dollar for dollar, is still The Blair Witch Project and Mr. Bob Kurtzman is far from an amateur, he is a highly regarded Director and Visual Effects wizard. I have been on more than one Hollywood set with him and can assure you that the rest of us would be lucky to share his stature.

To answer your question: Yes you are miserably uniformed!

Movie production
 

We, NAMASTE Audiovisusal, are shooting a movie in Indonesia using the 101E. The production was interrupted 2 weeks ago as our camera and lenses had been stolen. We will start again end of next week. As soon as we will finish we will publish details. We have also finished a 35 min documentary, shot in Sumatra, that is already delivered and projected and ... done and will appear at the JVC ProHD site soon. There are many people that are currently using the JVC GY-100 for commercials, documentaries and movies. We all know that we have seen movies shot with mini DV as NOVEMBER for ex., how is it possible that people will not use this camera that performs so much better?
To good and creative productions - Panos B

My group is working on a documentary intended for PBS that is shot in 3 countries. That's no easy thing to accomplish and is time consuming. We are still working on the "story", getting the facts straight, and releases. Meanwhile I've tested the camera 10 ways to sunday in order to know it inside and out and to pick a "look" to shoot the images in.

My intention has alway been to use the camera as a documentary camera and many others have the same ideas. Yusuf Thakur has already done some documentary work of note Click here, Andrew Young put together some documentary work in Madagascar. He can offer details. I have tried to be diligent in discovering the camera's strengths and weaknesses in film transfer and for HDTV productions.

I'm not sure why your query, but if you're interested in the HD-100 in your own productions then maybe a more specific question to you genre?

best,

Don't know about its quality, but these are professional films shot with the HD100:
I also shot a good documentary for brodacasting, but in SD. For the same reasons Tim posted, I can't provide images of that.

http://www.theragefilm.com/
http://www.abc.net.au/abccontentsales/s1469436.htm

The camera isn't responsible for the classiness of the content.

For instance, the single best known example of wide-release material shot by the Canon XL1 is the zombie movie "28 Days Later." Now I actually liked that movie and I bought the DVD, but let's face it, it's a zombie flick. And the second most famous example is Soderbergh's "Full Frontal." And let's face that -- it stank.

The point is, that's not the camera's fault. It's never a question of what the camera is capable of doing... it's strictly a question of what its operators are capable of doing, and what the production company is capable of doing.

Well put Chris

Two Words
 

As far as "real Work" all I have for you is TWO WORDS Andrew Young.

Not only did he take the HD100 on his recent Doc shoot he even did a film-out of his stuff. If I can remember correctly he did not even use the 24p mode when he did it.

The point is, how much 'good' stuff have you seen shot using any of the new HD cameras? Excluding the Z1, which has been on the market for nearly 2 years, there hasn't been enough time to do pretty much anything.

I think the XL1 or any SD cameras are a bit different because the video quality and manual control they offered wasn't so 'pro' as this new batch of HD cams.

Let's be positive and hope respected and reknowned independent film makers will eventually bring us some good stuff out of this cameras...

Bruce, at first glance I wasn't sure how to take your post but I've managed to see a few things.

1. What exactly is zombie pron trash stuff? If you are referring to the current zombie movie by Robert Kurtzman then you are way out of line. He is very experienced, very talented and believe it or not but his low budget zombie movie will end up having a great profit to budget ratio. Is it Oscar (which is rigged anway) material? No, but it's a real film being made with an HD100.

2. What does this have to do with the camera anyway? If Spielberg used the camera for something then you would love it right? This is only a tool and has no position on how creative something is. Ask yourself how many people watching a movie even have a clue what film, HD, Panavision, Panasonic, JVC, etc. are?

3. I think the biggest question most of us here would like to know is...Have you produced anything of note with any camera what so ever?

From looking at your other posts you definately have a glass is half empty approach to things which from my understanding is not what these forums are about. The HD100 has blown up your computer but then it was working again once you installed something, the Zombie movie thread is only worth ........ to you, and now you feel that nothing of value has been created with the HD100. What exactly do you want?

I did a national broadcast job with the camera, but since it's a music video, I doubt it'd fit Bruce's criteria.

He asked this same question in a similarly insulting way over on DVXUser about 2-3 months ago.

Bruce, you do nothing to make anybody want to help you with your myriad problems. Do you understand why?

Nice post, Tim.

zombie masterpieces
 

If you go through history of painting, you will meet artists like James Ensor. Ensor is the king of terror in painting, the Jombie master, the "George Romero" of plastic arts... nobody denies him this position.
Today he is a subject to be studied in univercities.
Maybe this is because the environment of painting is more mature than that of cinema.
Painting is there for a far longer period of time, familiar with shocks, provocations, blasphemy and... "trash".
If this JVC camera delivers Jombie movies, porno movies in 24p, real not serious stuff, what is the problem?
Warhol said: "My stuff is trash, no question about it", to protect himself...
from the "serious people".
Panos B.

Given the mumber of folks who have posted who are "clearly doing pro work" -- I'm curious if any of you used Filmout Mode?