Bryan Tanori (the main guy over at The Tanori Group) is a good friend of mine and also the proud new owner of a Panasonic AG-HVX200 P2 based HD camcorder. I consulted with him during the purchase to help plan his camera package and he returned the favor by bringing his new camera up to my neighborhood this past Saturday so we could take it out in the field and get some hands-on experience shooting with it.

By: Andrew Seltz

I recently teamed up with director Dave Campfield to shoot a short commercial spoof to be used in a movie he is producing and directing. It turned out great and Dave posted it on YouTube.com.

By: Andrew Seltz

Our ability to perceive motion when viewing a sequence of still images is due to a phenomenon called ‘persitence of vision.’ There is a threshhold of frames per second (fps) where the human mind stops distinguishing between individual frames and begins to see motion (around 16 fps.) Film and video do not record and play back at the same number of frames per second.

By: Andrew Seltz

If you are familiar with the term b-roll in its contemporary usage, you know it refers to alternate footage that is not part of the main action. It is used to illustrate something being spoken about or to cover an edit in the main action. An example would be including footage of children playing that is shown while a person is talking about playground safety. Another example would be a shot of an interviewer listening intently that is used to cover an edit where the interviewee went off on a tangent before completing a thought. The tangential material is cut out and the b-roll hides the edit.

by: Andrew Seltz

A common dream among independant filmmakers shooting digitally is to deliver a movie that looks like it was shot on 35mm with a huge budget. We want to impress people and there is a certain look that says, ‘you are a real filmmaker!’

The Film Look

The basic look of film can be broken down into technical factors and style factors.