Starting From Scratch

This week I'm going to give you guys a rundown of all the film making tools I have at my disposal. I was hoping to have a video posted by now, but time constraints and schedule conflicts have prevented me from doing so. My friends and I have a lot of great sketches in the works and I'm excited to finally be able to film them. Until then, I'll just have to bore you with the technical details.

For starters, this is the camera that I'll be using to film a majority of the videos that will be posted here:

The camera is a Sony HDR-XR160 Handycam. It's nothing special, but it's more than capable for what I intend to use it for. I chose this model based on several factors: It has a 30x optical zoom, which means that I can zoom in fairly close without having to resort to switching to digital zoom (which severely lessens the quality of the video); it has a 160 gigabyte hard drive built into it, so I don't have to ever worry about constantly changing out SD cards while I'm filming; it performs great in low-lighting situations, so filming at night will be less of an issue; it's able to film in 1080p, which means that the image quality shouldn't ever be grainy (which is something my old videos always were); and finally, it's relatively cheap. While I would absolutely love to have a $2000 camera, it just isn't in my price range. Even though I've been saving up for this for several months, there is just no way I could have justified spending over $1000 on a video camera.

Most of my videos will hopefully be edited using Sony Vegas Pro 11. I say hopefully because I don't actually own the program. As of right now, I'm only using the trial version of the software. Now, you might be wondering why I don't just use an editing program I have access to, such as windows move maker, to film my video. My reason for this is that Sony Vegas is simply amazing. When used properly, it can make an amateur video look like an official Hollywood production (or at the very least a second-rate, Bollywood production). Unfortunately, this amazing tool comes at a steep price. For me to actually own Sony Vegas, I would need to shell out $600, which is $100 more than I paid for my actual video camera. So right now I'm just going to savor the trial while I can, and at the same time I'll be keeping my eyes open for any freeware programs that might serve as an adequate replacement.

That's pretty much it as far as filming tools go. The only other things I can think of are a stage light that I'll be  using for low-lit scenes, a few extra camera batteries for filming over long periods of time, and the tripod that   I'll be putting my camera on. I should have a video posted by next Sunday at the latest. If I can't get a full sketch posted up here, I'll at least post some of the technical demos I've been doing to get used to filming.