This is a review for a simple 4 shot exercise I did for my T436 Digital Cinematography class. I shot outdoors on a very sunny day with a Sony HVR-Z7U HDV camcorder. The criteria was to have a person waiting for a second person to show up and then the two leave together and to do it in 4 shots. I actually achieved this twice by having the first person waiting under a tree reading a book in the first shot. The 2nd shot is a close up as she wipes some debris falling out of the tree and onto her book. The 3rd shot is a return to the first wide-angle shot and the second person drops down out of the tree and steals her book and runs and she chases after him as it fades to black. The final shot fades in with the 2nd person now under another tree enjoying the book he just stole. However the girl is behind the tree and cleverly distracts him as she steals her book back and he then gives chase after her.
The liked the shots I got, but my partner and I could not figure out how to convert the video from tape into HD, it kept converting to 720×480 no matter what setting we used. We are 99.9% certain we recorded at the highest setting and the video looks super clean in the tape deck, but every time it converted in the 720×480 resolution. We were using Final Cut as the program for log and capturing. I went ahead and edited at the lower resolution but hopefully I can figure out what the deal is with the tape deck/Final Cut and get a much better finished product.
Another issue I had but didn’t catch until after shooting was the white page from the book is blown out. If I had noticed it I could have shot at a different angle in order to cut down on the glare, or if I had a 3rd person I could have had them provide some shade over the book. The shoot could have gone better if we had just another 30 minutes with the equipment and if hadn’t went last out of the group and it wasn’t the first time using this particular camera.
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