Filming theatre play with the HD100

[Stephan Ahonen]

Originally Posted by David Scattergood

Stephen - it was me not quite understanding what you meant by 'isos' in your set up

Iso = Isolated. It's a sports broadcasting term meaning a camera is following around a single specific person regardless of what else is happening, and recording that camera feed to a tape deck with the expectation that that person is going to do something interesting. In a American football for example one camera will iso a wide receiver during the play in the hopes that the ball will be thrown to him, or in hockey you'll have an iso of the team's best goal scorer. In plays and concerts I'll have someone iso the lead performer so that I can show that performer at any time.

To be honest I didn't realise there was another option for focus handles - I'll look into those studio style focus pullers Stephen (do they fit most tripod?).

Yeah, you just need a tripod arm to attach it to, if you've been shooting ENG style you might only have one arm on your tripod, you'll want two.

As far as an LCD goes, something just good enough to frame and focus will work fine. Needs to be small enough to fit on the camera. It would be nice if JVC had a BNC viewfinder out like most pro cameras so you could see focus assist on an external display.

Matte box is close to the top of the list (hence the cine focus puller) but then so is a lighting set up; g-raid hard drive (for HDV back ups)....and so on.

To be honest, I've *never* seen anyone using a matte box on an ENG camera, and a follow focus just plain simply isn't necessary on 1/3" chips. Most of this cine-style gear for prosumer cameras seems to me to just be people trying to make themselves feel like they're "Real film DPs!" without really any practical utility. If you're getting flare, a piece of cardboard gaff-taped to your lens hood works just as well and is about a hundred times cheaper. Save your money for something that will actually make a difference in your shooting. I'd go for the lighting kit.

I presumed with 2 inputs you would have 4 channels of audio (2 Left and Rights?)

2 inputs is 2 inputs. HDV doesn't do 4-channel audio, at least not at acceptable quality (unless you consider 96 kbps MP2 acceptable!)

[Jack Walker]

Regarding number of inputs of audio.

There are two inputs, each one is mono.

If you recorded two mics, one in each channel it's very easy to use the best one and get rid of the other one in your editor.

Unlock the tracks from one another. Delete the track you don't want. Copy the good track and put the copy where the deleted track was.

Some editors have provision for just silences one track and putting the other one to stereo. Sometimes the gain has to raised this way, and sometimes not.

Instead of deleting it you can also just move the unwanted audio to an extra track and silence it and save it, in case you need a piece incase something happens to the main audio (like a mic falls over or goes dead).


Regarding controls for zoom and focus that go on the tripod handles.... JVC sells some for the cameras and Varizoom makes some. They are not cheap but can be useful, expecially a zoom controller.

[David Scattergood]

To be honest, I've *never* seen anyone using a matte box on an ENG camera, and a follow focus just plain simply isn't necessary on 1/3" chips. Most of this cine-style gear for prosumer cameras seems to me to just be people trying to make themselves feel like they're "Real film DPs!" without really any practical utility. If you're getting flare, a piece of cardboard gaff-taped to your lens hood works just as well and is about a hundred times cheaper. Save your money for something that will actually make a difference in your shooting. I'd go for the lighting kit

I'll agree with that, although the reason I got this specific camera was so I could work on a few film shorts which I think is perfect for indie film making. I guess the matte box and french flags do indeed add that extra pizazz to what you're doing and may or may not amplify the performers/actors/subjects confidence. Also handy for adding filters etc (although I have a screw on polariser which works well). Hey ho, this has been kicked back down to the bottom of the list!
Heard mixed reports about slightly larger LCD's whether they're worth the money (considering you can focus assist, frame and check colour on this camera's LCD). A decent quality field LCD would be very handy however (in more extreme bright conditions I can barely see the LCD image...I'll shop around and come back with one or two idea's (though not for some time - yes lights and dedicated raid drive are highest priority.

Ah - isolated...where was I going with my translation of ISO!!

Yeah, you just need a tripod arm to attach it to, if you've been shooting ENG style you might only have one arm on your tripod, you'll want two.

I'm assuming this would make you tripod almost like a lawnmower (for want of a better term) and you would zoom with your thumbs - is it this type of set up?

Regarding number of inputs of audio.

There are two inputs, each one is mono.

If you recorded two mics, one in each channel it's very easy to use the best one and get rid of the other one in your editor.

Unlock the tracks from one another. Delete the track you don't want. Copy the good track and put the copy where the deleted track was.

Some editors have provision for just silences one track and putting the other one to stereo. Sometimes the gain has to raised this way, and sometimes not.

Instead of deleting it you can also just move the unwanted audio to an extra track and silence it and save it, in case you need a piece incase something happens to the main audio (like a mic falls over or goes dead).

Ah - I thought it might record two stereo pairs (were you to use 2 stereo mics)...I guess the onboard mic is mono and splits this signal left and right? So deleting one track (say the onboard mic wasn't worth keeping) you would be left with one audio track which you then copy to another audio track (I'm using FCP) retaining a mono signal but using L and R channels....?
Maybe I read that you can create 4 channels but as Stephen mentioned, much poorer quality.

Cheers.