What 3 camera setup for an indie TV show?
 

Hi everyone. We're on the planning stage of a TV show for a local channel. There are still many things to be polished before we present the project to the TV, but we're stuck struggling with the ideal camera setup.

It's going to be a weekly music show, 50 mins in duration, to support the huge local scene. Half the show will be shot ENG style, with interviews and so on, so we need just one cam for that. But the other half will consist of a couple of bands playing some of their tunes live. The bands will be shot indoors (on Bars). Idea is 2 on tripod, one handheld (1 general view, 1 on singer, and 1 handheld all over the place for the rest).
For that part of the show we dont know which combination of 3 cams would be best.

We want to keep it as low cost as possible to make it economically viable, and dont want to invest in 1/2 or 2/3 cams with expensive glass, but to go instead with the prosumer types if it's possible, and broadcast acceptable. But which ones?
The show is to be broadcasted in PAL, so not sure if shooting/editing HD (in FCP) is neccesary. Still deciding on aspect ratio, fps will probably be 25p to give it that little cinema touch.

So, which combination of cams would you use? Do the 3 have to be the same to avoid too many setup troubles?

The cheapest combo would be a trio of DVX100B, specially considering the fact that they can be time-locked (not a big deal since you can easily align and edit multicam in FCP), but is it a good idea to get 3 of those *outdated* cams? Then we wouldn't have any nice better HD camera for the rest (ENG) of the show.

-What about two DVX100 and one HVX-200?
-or a trio of the new sony V1,
-or three of the new canon A1...

...etc etc

thx in advance

To answer one question, having the same cameras is more of an issue of having identical looking shots as it is a setup issue. You can have 2 different cameras side by side shooting the same thing and they will look different, even if color calabrated.

jon

well, it only took a week and a half to have someone chiming in ;-)

thx Jon for your reply.
My bad, boy do I speak an awful english, dont know if im getting you right. You're saying it's better to shoot with exactly the same camera to get "visual continuity", as it's almost impossible, even in post, to match video shot from different brand/make of cameras, even if calibrated, rigth?

anyway, what best trio of camcorders would bring broadcast-level picture (to be sold to an station) in the aformentioned setup? Nobody has done something like this?

Well, I'm pretty sure at least one U.S. cable show uses DVX100s. "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" on the FX cable network, I believe, uses the DVXs. They get a pretty good look out of them, but I don't know what they do to the image after acquisition.

Ask the broadcaster
 

The best thing to do is ask the intended broadcaster what formats they accept. This would be a question for their acquisitions or technical standards department and an answer may already be available on their website.