The Amateur Filmmakers Guide

Welcome back, come to learn a little more about Filmmaking? It’s ‘The Amateur Filmmakers Guide’ Wednesday where I a long time amateur filmmaker who has made all the silly mistakes one has to do to get any good, ‘’learn from your mistakes’’ and that old saying. But what if you didn’t have to? What if someone could mark all those pitfalls with a big X, wouldn’t that be pretty handy, no?

If you answered yes to the following then listen up and listen well because if your serious about starting into filmmaking you got to nail the basics otherwise it’s like trying to learn French but not bothering to know the verbs and tenses.

This week we’ll be explaining all the basic film camcorders and their formats, avoiding those you won’t come across for at least a few years such as 16mm and 35mm (35mm is the God of film cameras and can cost over a hundred grand). But Have no fear if you pay close attention you won't be confused any longer!

Camcorder? That’s what records film, right?

Buying a camcorder can be a tough decision when you take into consideration all the options; price, quality, design, features and specifications, recording format and optional extras are all key factors to compare when deciding which video camera suits your needs best.

First up is the price. This is greatly affected by the specification of the camera and generally, is relative to the video quality captured by the camera. Video cameras can range from a few hundred dollars up to 2000+; the more you pay the better quality you are likely to get. But let’s face it; you haven’t got that kind of cash.

Specifications that greatly affect video quality are the size of the image sensor (the bigger the CCD or CMOS imager, the better but don’t worry yourself about that yet) and the effective video resolution. Other spec’s to note are the optical zoom range and whether or not the camera has image stabilization.

Many video cameras also produce decent digital stills. But are unfortunately rather expensive and a cheap digital camera would do just as well in its stead. Remember the camcorder should be chosen for its film recording capabilities

The design of the camcorder is also an important factor for most, and not just for aesthetics. Some camcorders, bulky or small may be easy to use, whilst other designs may simply be too difficult to navigate. Touch screens and small buttons help keep designs minimal but they may not be the most comfortable way to access menus and options. Some models compromise the size of the LCD in favour of more compact camera; others may completely do away the viewfinder.

Recording format and connectivity are also important; some video cameras come with a USB port for a direct connection to your PC, some record direct to DVD, others to hard drives, flash memory cards or older formats like MiniDV and Digital 8 tapes (A format I despise above all else). High quality video can be achieved with all of these formats however there are pro’s and con’s for each type.

Recording Formats

MiniDV

Probably the most popular recording medium, MiniDV’s are small tapes that measure 2.5 by 1.5 by 0.5 inches. They are relatively inexpensive and produce high quality video (Quality is debatable in comparison to the new digital camcorders). Depending on the quality of the camcorder, the video image can be more than 500 lines of horizontal resolution. It can also support High Definition, consumer and semipro camcorders that capture HD do so using MiniDV cassettes.

These cameras are equipped with, view finders, touch screen, and high quality in-built microphone along with the function for external mics (Two is the standard) and are considered superior for that reason.

However, Editing MiniDV requires a PC with a Firewire connection (not USB as is the more common these days), some editing software and a bit of patience. Despite the time consuming method of re-capturing your footage into the editing software (A long and time consuming process), MiniDV is widely supported by many video-editing and effects software. There is also a whole host of editing decks and other hardware products available to aid you’re editing.

Digital8 and Hi8

Digital8 models record high-quality DV-format video on analogue 8mm and Hi8 cassettes as well as dedicated Digital8 tapes. The Hi8 tapes are slightly bigger than MiniDV so they tend to be more bulky.

Digital8 enable digital video to be recorded on an analogue tape, however this cut recording time in half. A 120-minute Hi8 tape captures only 60 minutes of Digital8 video.

Like the MiniDV they can also deliver more than 500 lines of horizontal resolution producing high quality video; however as an obsolescent format there is a small and shrinking selection of camcorders available. But can also mean you’d find one for a cheap price.

MiniDVD

MiniDVD records video direct to DVD and lets you take the disc and instantly view it on your DVD player. This is a great simple way to record and watch your home videos. You get easy searching and random access to video segments, a convenient and stable format for archiving and selectable image-quality levels including high-quality variable-bit-rate recording.

Mini-DVD camcorders record high-quality MPEG-2 footage directly to a mini DVD-R or DVD-RAM and can also deliver more than 500 lines of horizontal resolution. The downside is that the video recorded on DVD-R cannot be edited on a computer. MPEG-2 encoding generally compresses the footage so much that when you try to edit the resulting clips in a video editor, you risk adding artifacts (Bad Computer codes) that can degrade your video’s quality.

Recording times can be unpredictable using variable bit rates and also less reliable for live recording; as a single bad bit can render an entire disc of video unrecognizable.

Flash Memory and Hard Drive Camcorders

SD Flash Memory

Flash media cards (most commonly SD) have enabled manufacturers to design ever smaller camcorders. With cards ranging up to 4GB, it is now possible to record longer and better quality video than ever before using flash memory.

Hard Drive video cameras or better known as HDD may be slightly bigger than their flash memory brothers but they have the longest record times, 6 hours or more of video with better quality.

Unlike MiniDVD camcorders they store video using in a various encoding allowing simple drag and drop system and connect via USB. Because of this there is wide support from advanced video-editing and video-effects software.

The image-quality is selectable; there is increasing models for recording in High Definition but can cost in the thousands, clips are also easily archived and accessed and both video and still images can be recorded on one card/hard drive (instead of on a cassette and a memory card).

Note

HDD and SD camcorders are the most commonly sold camcorders nowadays in shops such as Argos, Currys, Tesco and many more. They produce high quality images even at their low cost. If you intend to buy a MiniDV or Digital8 you will struggle to find ones on open market and will most likely have to buy online or second hand from EBay and such. Whatever your decision I hope you have at least a basic understanding of camcorders.

Conclusion

It’s a lot to take in and in an age of technological takeover it’s not a pleasant feeling knowing your new buy will be next week’s out of date model. I myself own a Sony Handycam HDD digital camcorder. It produces a high quality and is compact. It's a very nice start for any serious amateur filmmaker but lacks however in it's sound capabilities. The information is all there and I hope you enjoy searching for your camera.

Competitions for Young Filmmakers and Film

-          http://www.cinemagic.org.uk/section_specific.aspx?dataid=440965&title=&title2=Competitions&id2=3521

You could be the Cinemagic Young Film Critic of the Year. To enter the competition all you have to do is send a film review (not more than 500 words) on one of the films screened during Cinemagic 2010. There are a number of wonderful prizes to be won.

-          http://www.cinemagic.org.uk/section_specific.aspx?dataid=440958&title=&title2=Competitions&id2=3521

As part of Cinemagic Dublin we will be programming a short film competition that will see a young jury reviewing and critiquing new films from all over the world.

The Big Tuesday Night Review

Alright everyone, let’s quit the chit chat and get down to business. Under the microscope this week; the new film release, Hot Tub Time Machine, a laugh out loud comedy, or so it says. Three DVDs I think would be best when curling up and chilling out on a Friday or Saturday night and if that’s a little too expensive you can find out what film I deem the best of what happens to be on TV that night as well. Up first though it’s:

The Film Review

Hot Tub Time Machine

Former best buds Adam (Cusack), Nick (Robinson) and Lou (Corddry) are reunited after Lou’s drunken antics are mistaken for a suicide attempt. To cheer themselves up they venture, along with Adam’s nephew Jacob (Duke), to the party town of their youth, but after a drunken night in a hot tub, wake up in 1986 (Shock and Awe!).

If you happen to have gone to the cinema last weekend, you would have been stuck with the Hot Tub Time Machine for comedy, a near two hour long piss-take of the genre of eighties feel-good films that is all but dead that you'll either be onboard with from the title alone, or dismiss it and see the latest Iranian drama about emotionally scarred goat herders (Four Lions). These R-rated comedies are spreading like wild fire (Hangover being the most successful) and Hot Tub is no different. Throwing out the stereotypical hook: the lovable college misfits are now middle-aged and get a little nostalgic. In this case, it’s depressed Adam (a well-cast John Cusack) and henpecked Nick (Craig Robinson), while ass of the group Lou (Rob Corddry) brings them all together when he winds up in A&E.

With that, they decide to head for the place of their happiest memories, dragging along Adam’s basement-dwelling, technology-obsessed teenage nephew, Jacob (Clark Duke, A character to lead those who happen to be born on the later side of the ’80s) along for the ride. The town they once spent their wildest nights, now lacking so much in life it couldn’t host a funeral. The go off the deep end in a night of irresponsible drinking, only to awaken on a date in 1986 that was crucial to all of them. (Go figure!)

A concept that would have been, and on hearing it myself, should have been rejected hands down to be sure, but it works beautifully up on screen, which you should almost expect given Cusack and director Steve Pink’s previous collaborations are Grosse Point Blank and High Fidelity. Of course, they’ve made sure Hot Tub’s story has heart while playing effortlessly with its own impossibility, and amazingly the jokes are even funny enough and bountiful enough to keep you laughing right through.

Hot Tub Time Machine R-rated Trailer

The big win, though, is the foursome’s terrific energy, which holds all of the script’s wildly disparate ideas together and even make the most obvious jokes funny. Robinson and Duke are well casted, and while it’s fantastic to see Cusack back doing all-out comedy, and Rob Corddry, who has to make horrible jerk Lou likable and funny.

Of course, they can’t all be winners, and the jokes every now and then miss the mark and are meet with awkward silences from the audience. It’s also, quite understandably, that being a eighties style film it is slanted towards a particular generation or two — if you’re too young to see the gag potential in an energy drink called Chernobyl carelessly left lying around, then you might miss a few gags and then again if your well informed enough on your history you just might catch them all. But despite the eighties jokes here and there, Hot Tub miraculously manages to survive this without leaving anyone behind; this is a comprehensive comedy for all ages but will of course suit those from 1990 back.

It’s bizarre to think that such a bluntly named film with a stereotypical script, even with its imaginative high concept, can make you laugh throughout. I believe it is the foursome of leads on electric form that makes this the best-blunt-dumb-fun-film of the year (now that is a mouthful).

The DVD Choices of the Week

-          Where The Wild Things Are (PG)

        The story follows Max, a young boy who wears his wolf suit, behaves badly and is sent to bed without any supper. Once there, he escapes to a forest where he is joined by the monstrous-yet-cuddly wild things for their wild rumpus.

A film that will bring out the inner child in even the most hardened of hearts, and let it run wild. 

-          A Scanner Darkly (15)

Anaheim, California, the near future. Bob Arctor (Reeves), an addict to the drug Substance D, is actually an undercover cop out to bust the D network. Bob’s bosses, who don’t know his cover story, order him to spy on himself, causing his grip on reality to be shaken by his schizoid way of life.

Although its clever posterizing effect is bizarre looking and curious it can become a series of dizzy pictures to the viewer so beware. However, its intelligent writing and cinematography makes it near-essential viewing.

-          Nowhere Boy (15)

        Liverpool, 1955. When teenage rebel John Lennon (Johnson) learns that his aunt Julia (Duff) is actually his biological mother, he finds his loyalties divided. He finds an escape from domestic pressures in his growing passion for music.

Nowhere Boy finds relative entertainment and drama, in Lennon’s legend. It’s not essential viewing and but entertaining nonetheless.

The TV Film choices For Friday/Saturday

Friday 14^th May

-          Red Dragon – TV3, 22:00

(2002, Detective/Thriller) The FBI agent who first captured Hannibal Lecter is called out of retirement to catch a demented murderer dubbed the Tooth Fairy, who slaughters a family whenever there is a full moon - forcing the detective to draw on the imprisoned cannibal's expertise. Thriller prequel adapted from the first of Thomas Harris's Lecter novels, starring Anthony Hopkins, Edward Norton, Ralph Fiennes and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

-          The Island – ITV2, 21:00

(2005, Science Fiction) The naive survivors of an apparent ecological disaster work, rest and play inside their utopian sealed community in the year 2019, each hoping to win a ticket to an idyllic island in a regular lottery draw. However, a curious inhabitant discovers the restricted society is a facade shielding a sinister cloning operation and is determined to escape. Sci-fi thriller, starring Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johansson, Sean Bean and Steve Buscemi. Including Entertainment News Update.

Saturday 8^th May

-          Die Hard – Channel 4, 21:00

(1988, Action) New York cop John McClane is in LA to visit his wife and kids over the Christmas holiday. Stopping off at his wife's place of work - an office in a Japanese-owned skyscraper - he finds the building hijacked by terrorists, who are holding the corporation's staff to ransom - and only he has the ability to fight back. Action thriller, starring Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman and Bonnie Bedelia.

-          Saturday Night Fever – Channel 4, 23:35

(1977, General Movie/Drama) A streetwise Brooklyn teenager struggles to cope with a dead end job and a dysfunctional family, but finds an escape in the disco scene, where he falls in love with a girl dreaming of breaking free from her equally poor background to pursue a brighter future in Manhattan, Drama, starring John Travolta, Karen Lynn Gorney and Paul Pape, and featuring songs by the Bee Gees.

-          Armageddon – TG4, 22:00

(1998, Space/Thriller) NASA discovers an asteroid the size of Texas is on a collision course with Earth, so a drilling expert is recruited to train up a team of misfits, who will transport a nuclear device into outer space to destroy it - but having had no training in space travel, the reluctant astronauts find themselves seriously out of their depth. Sci-fi thriller, with Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, Michael Clarke Duncan, Billy Bob Thornton and Steve Buscemi.

The Monday Night Quiz

It’s Monday and the quiz just gets that little bit harder every time. This week’s quiz is ‘What the Blank!’ and as its name suggests its famous lines and quotes from famous films with one or more words missing. It will test your film knowledge as you try to solve them. Don’t try judge the size of the word missing by the size of the blank because as you will quickly notice, they’re all the same size.  Listen very carefully to the rules and enjoy.

The Rules & Scoring System:

1. There is no use of Google, visual aids or referring to books etc. All answers must come from your own general Knowledge.

2. There is 60 points on offer; 10 films and 15 blanks. The film is worth 3 points and each individual blank is worth 2 points.

4. Scoring goes as so:  0-15  Poor, 15-25  Pretty bad, 25-35  Alright/Room for improvement, 35-45 Decent, 45-55 Know your stuff, 55-60  Film Buff.

1)      "All right, Mr.                       . I'm ready for my close-up."

2)      "It wasn't the                         . It was Beauty killed the                       ."

3)      "Goooood morning,                       !"

4)      "Get your                         ' paws off me, you damn dirty                       !"

5)      "That's mighty brave talk for a                     -                     fat man."

6)      " Kid - the next time I say, 'Let's go someplace like                    ,' let's go someplace like

                       ."

7)      "Love means never having to say you're                        ."

8)      "A                           taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice

                           ."

9)      "Here's looking at you                        ."

10)   "Forget it,                        , it’s Chinatown."

The answers will be posted next Monday night.

Last Mondays Answer: Wes Anderson