What is the best camera (part 2/3)

Since in the last article, I just told you to spend your money on mics and not cameras, I suppose its a good time to get into the second most important consideration when it comes to deciding on a camera. Yes boys and girls I’m talking about the budget.

First off, I want you to stop thinking about things in terms of the “budget” you have said aside to buy a camera, and start thinking about the budget of your production. This is not one of those “buying vs. renting” arguments. Instead I’m just trying to get you to change your thinking. Your goal is to produce a film. You put in X dollars plus Y talent and you get Zfilm…everything else you have left over doesn’t count for anything. Fixed assets, aka things you buy that can be reused, do not count directly towards the budget of your production!

Always, write your budget as though you won’t own a anything, except a finished film, after its done. If you’ve bought a camera already, when you write the budget write it as though you’ve rented the camera. Find a standard rate, and rent the camera from yourself. This holds true for any gear you actually purchase. It may seem sort of strange to think in this way, but it achieves two things.

• You have a better understanding of what the production actually cost. If you bought gear and just ignore the cost, then you are going to think you spent almost nothing. If you add the entire cost of the gear you’re ignoring the fact that you still have the gear when your all done.
• You find out if it was really worth buying the gear. If you can imagine yourself as the production spending $400 to rent a camera, you can imagine yourself as a rental company earning $400. Its not a bad idea to actually write it down this way and keep a tally. Then at the end of the month you’ll add up all that imaginary rental from all the projects that you’ve worked on, and compare it to what the camera is really costing you (if you bought the camera on credit this is pretty easy…if you bought it cash you’re going to have to learn a bit about amortization). So what do the numbers look like? Are you a profitable “rental house”? If so then buying a camera was a good idea…otherwise renting was probably a better way to go.

Like I said earlier the budget is the second most important consideration, and it’s a distant second. Why do I say this? Because, if you know your goal you can find the means…

What I mean by this is that, if you have a script that is worth being produced into a full theatrical 35mm film…if you try hard enough you can get it done. Even completely untalented people have done it…all it takes is convincing someone to invest in you.

That being said, something like that is a lofty goal, and if your new to filmmaking you should be looking at a 35mm feature as more of a long term goal. After all, would you rather produce a big budget 35mm extravaganza…that turns out to be total crap because you didn’t know what you were doing…or would you rather cut your teeth on a few shorts and low budget features? I hope you choose the latter because I’ve seen plenty of the former and I’d rather if those people hadn’t wasted my time and/or some poor investors money.

Another reason budget is very secondary is that there is a good chance that even if you have no budget you can find a higher end miniDV camera that you can borrow or use for free. I personally have shot most of my shorts on borrowed cameras. Public access TV often have cameras you can use…you’ll probably have to take some sort of orientation class, and it may have restrictions on what you can do with the finished footage. Also, some universities arts, media, and film programs have cameras their students can use. Go to a college and see if you can find someone who would want to shoot your film with you. I’ve gotten a DVX100a twice this way, and a friend of mine got a HVX200. Third, you can make friends with someone else who has gear. And finally, you can rent get some very good camera packages for pretty reasonable prices.

So for that reason, this break down has a lot of gray area in it, but in general. And here I am talking about the production budget, not the budget you have available to buy a camera.

• 0 to $5000 - Whatever you can get
• $5000 to $15,000 - 3 chip miniDV cameras
• $15,000 to $100,000 - HDV, or HD
• $100,000 or more - Film or high end HD cameras.

Ok, I hear you saying this is obvious. It is! But yet somehow still people insist on believing that there is some best camera. More often than not though, when people are asking “What’s the best camera?” they just aren’t asking the right question. What they really want to know is ‘What is the best digital camcorder I can buy for X dollars?”

I bet some of you clicked this article thinking that that is what it was all about. Well, get ready because in the next installment we are going to get into that …and from an engineers prospective…so you are about to get way more info than you’ve ever wanted.