Filming Equipment

When we have filmed in the past, we have used the video recording cameras that the school owns. However when we came to edit our previous project, there were elements that we were not entirely happy with regarding filming quality. To prevent this from happening again in this project, we looked at other equipment that we could use...

These are the cameras which we have used in previous projects. These cameras have some really good aspects for example they are good at picking up sound, however this will not aid us in this project as we will be detaching the audio from what we film so we can put the song 'You you you' over it. Furthermore, when we were conducting our lighting experiment, we used these cameras and they did not work well with the lights. They were not very focused or clear. As we plan to have a lot of strong lighting in our video, we feel that these wont be the best option for us.

The next camera that we looked at was more modern. This Flip Camera has a higher resolution and stores all of its information onto a built in  USB/ memory stick. When we did some test shots on this camera we found that the resolution of it was a vast improvement, however as it was so small it was hard to keep steady. Also similarily to the previous camera, it did not react well to strong lights.

The last camera that we looked at was the Canon Powershot SX200 IS digital camera, and it was the perfect solution! As this camera  is initially purposed to take photos, it has a great, high quality lens. When we tested these cameras we found them so easy to use, and easy to fit to other equipment, like the tripods and steering wheel. The main concern we had about the technology for this project was how it was going to handle and react to the extreme lighting that we are going to use. This camera has high quality optics in the lens which allow brightly lit footage to be clear with little interferance. To ensure continuity in our music video we will use 2 of these cameras simultaneously to record footage from different angles. Another advanges to this camera is that it records onto SD cards. This makes it easier to upload than the conventional tape. This advantage however thus created a problem. The school owns these cameras, and lends them out as photography cameras, so they only have a 1GB SD card in them; for the amount of time that we intend to film for, these wont be enough, so we went home and looked, and came back with a 8GB and  4GB card, which is more than enough for us. We will film at a resolution of 640.