Using multiple types of camera on one film?

C

corpustle

Hello all,

So i'm directing a feature this spring/summer called 'Wilderness'. It is a low/micro budget thriller with almost exclusively exterior locations. We're planning on shooting on a 200,000 acre estate in the north west of Scotland as its the only place in the UK with suitable wilderness. This will mean a small crew and we may need to walk to locations as they will often be completely inaccessible via road. Because of this we were considering shooting on DSLR, however we will have a fair amount of action and quick movements (running through the woods etc) which were worried the DSLRs wouldn't be up to the job with the rolling shutter 'jello effect' problems. We however also have access to 2 Sony AX-2000 so i was wondering what you thought about my idea of using the DLSRs (550d, 60d & 5d) for all the non action stuff which would obviously be the majority of the film and then using the Sony AX 2000 for all the action scenes to solve this problem. Do you think this would cause HUGE problems in the edit? Is it viable especially as the AX2000 records in AVCHD?

If it were it would be hugely helpful as lugging around DSLR kit is a lot more appealing in the wild when walking to locations as opposed to lugging full film gear.

What do you guys think? Is this worth suggesting to the DOP?

Cheers guys!
 
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In my opinion, the jello effect on Canon's DSLRs is nothing like as noticeable as people seem to think it is. A lot of the very first video samples we saw (from Canon and Nikon) were pretty bad in this respect, and despite the improvements we've seen since, this first impression has stuck in people's minds. My suggestion would be to shoot some action scene tests with all the cameras you have, cut a few little sequences together and see what you think.

Shooting with two different kinds of camera is viable, but wouldn't be my first choice. As well as the inevitably mismatched pictures, shooting two formats is liable to being a pain in post - if you do go this route, consult your editor and colourist as well, and see what they'd recommend to make their lives easier and save you time in post.
 
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You really need to whip the camera to create any noticeable jello. It doesn't matter if your actors are running all over the place. What are you doing with the camera? Unless you're shooting "Crank 3", you should be fine.

Shoot some test-footage.
 
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It's sometimes hard to match footage from two identical cameras. It will be impossible to do it with different brands. The footage will look "different", now sometimes that can be ok, but it's an issue you'll have to deal with.
 
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