$2500 grant - what to buy??--MacDV Digest #2387

[Ted Langdell]

> From: "Macintosh Digital Video List" <MacDV at lists.themacintoshguy.com>
> Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2003 05:34:16 -0700
> To: "Macintosh Digital Video List" <MacDV at lists.themacintoshguy.com>
> Subject: MacDV Digest #2387
> 
> 
> Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 20:16:29 -0400
> Subject: [MacDV] $2500 grant - what to buy??
> From: Dan Farley <danfarley at mac.com>
> Message-ID: <BB965A9D.10AB2%danfarley at mac.com>
> 
> My JROTC unit received a $2500 grant to create a 1 hour "World War II
> Veterans of Dixie County FL" video. (This is half of what we requested...
> But hey,,,better than nothing)
> 
> I was thinking on purchasing two refurb eMacs, 1 with the super drive, and
> two digital camcorders.
> nded one emac and 1 higher quality dv camcorder?
> 
> Thanks
> Dan


Hi, Dan,

Start your fundraising now.

Take your budget, outline the package you REALLY want, and approach various
military or veterans' units to fund a share. Heck... approach service clubs
in the area, too.  10 clubs donating a couple of hundred each is two grand.

If there's a Sam's Club in your area, ask the manager to participate by
supplying tape in exchange for credit on the show.  They sell a sixpack of
Maxell Mini-DV tapes for around $23.  You'll shoot quite a lot of tape, so
this can work well in terms of not spending cash.

If the terms of your grant allow, figure out how you can raise funds by
selling VHS and DVD copies of the finished piece, perhaps with some "extra"
material that isn't in the hour-long cable/broadcast show.  Pre-selling
could help you raise some money now.  Design great looking material to help
you sell.

SO YOU CAN GET STARTED RIGHT AWAY, spend your grant on a 3-chip camera (even
a good used package) and tripod/head and a couple of lavaliere (lapel) mikes
and tape.

A used Canon-XL-1 could be just the ticket, and I've seen folks selling
complete packages on eBay and elsewhere for pretty good (for you) prices.
You might get the whole shebang (camera, tripod, batteries, bag, etc) for
the amount of your grant.

Add batteries and a couple of after-market chargers to your package to keep
you running.

Do a Sherlock search in addition to looking on eBay.

Radio Shack has a stereo lav mike package that aren't much ($19-20) that
sound just fine for what you're doing.  Two mikes are mounted on one clip.
The cable plugs into a small battery powered amp that has a longer cable
that ends with two mono 1/8" plugs.  If you use a Sony camcorder, you can
plug the mike portion directly into the camcorder.  It'll provide phantom
power to the mikes over the 3-conductor 1/8" mini plug.

If you need wireless lavaliere (lapel mikes) check out the Samson Micro 32
series. Just ordered a pair (mike, transmitter, receiver) for $399 each.

I can recommend a Bogen system similar to what I use.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&s
ku=196914&is=REG

DO spend some money ($180 or so) for a Canon (or other) pan-handle mounted
zoom control.  The ability to keep your right hand on the pan handle while
zooming makes things a lot smoother and easier to do.  Once you've used one,
wrapping yourself around a camcorder on a tripod will seem so...  Cro-Magnon
era.

The Canon unit appears to work with any camera that has LANC jacks (I've
used it on Canon XL 1 and Sony consumer camcorders.)  It really makes a
difference in HOW you shoot, and the quality of the finished work.

Lights?  Check with TV stations in the area to see whether they've got older
kits or lights and stands that they don't use, anymore.  Colortran's
"Mini-Pro" kits were great.  650 watt focusing lights w/barn doors, stands
and cords.  Often the kits had "gator grips," big clamps with 5/8"  spuds on
the end so you could clamp a light pretty much anywhere.

Get a hardware store to donate three-wire extension cords for you light
kit(s).  14 gauge wire should keep you safe for 25-50 feet.

As a JROTC, you're connected to a school, right?  Check out educational
pricing from Apple.

If I recall correctly, a full version of Final Cut Pro 4 at ED pricing is
about the same price as an upgrade for the rest of us.

The real-time effects on a G5 will speed your production up greatly, and the
G5/FCP 4 combo will do more than a G4, from what I saw at a recent Apple
demo.

The LiveType and Soundtrack applications will really help you with your
final product.

Given that the new G5's are so much faster than the G4's they're
superceding, I'd get a G5 and an LCD monitor. That's going to allow you to
take advantage of the great stuff and speed in FCP 4... as well as keep you
ahead of the "trailing edge" of the technology.

You'll want a scanner to scan photos the people you interview might have.
You can thank them by burning the scans to a CD-R in Photoshop and
e-mail/web sized JPG files.  The owners might want to make big prints from
the Photoshop files. (Get the CD-R's donated by a local business.)

For the scanner, I'd suggest either the Microtek flatbed that has "Digital
ICE" built in (to handle dust and scratch removal) or buying Silverfast from
LaserSoft Imaging for the scanner you do buy.  The $49 downloadable version
works great for getting rid of most dust and scratches at the time of
scanning, without seriously degrading the image.

An A-B comparison of untreated/treated will show some blurring around the
defects, and things that may appear to be similar to defects, but it leaves
the image sharp and clean, on the whole.

The idea here is to enable you to scan a lot of photos, without having to
spend tons of time using Photoshop's clone tool (or the Dust and Scratches
filter, which blurs the image) to get rid of specks and scratches. You may
have to do some... but Silverfast really cuts the amount of "hand work" you
have to do.  It made a big difference on a 200 image memorial service

Scan at 300 DPI with a 4 x 6 print size (or 6" in the longest dimension) to
get enough pixels to "zoom in" to small areas of the image without
pixellation making things ugly.

Hope this is of help...

Ted Langdell
Ted Langdell Creative Broadcast Services
Marysville, CA