Discussion about faith, rumors, more rumors and little facts. Coursedesign and Serena summed it well, alot can be done and has been done with video going to film, but its not cheap nor quick if done correctly. DVfilmmaker, as stated before, is probably the best bang for time and the $. But understanding motion capture, lighting,.... and final format, all important when designing the scene and the shoot.
Shooting at 24p with pan110b is a waste of time if the scenes/motion is not properly designed.

why shoot in 1080i/60 and then go through horrendous rendering times using DV Filmmaker to get the 24 frames when you can shoot it directly using dvx100

Why shoot video when you're going out to film? Why compromise quality? I'm sure you can still rent 65mm cameras from Panavision. All the necessary matters have been discussed to the level you need.

One of the (main) reasons that 35mm looks so good is definitely "talent". Notwithstanding Patrick's statement that crew will far outweigh the cost of camera and film, (abosutely correct), when you get to the consideration of a feature, there is a minimal "breaking point" of how much you are going to invest. Once your camera and lighting gear surpasses (let's say) $50k - well you get good crew. So there's sort of a "hand-in-hand" about high end production. You're not letting a beginner out on a set with $50k in camera rentals. Not if you want your money back.

It's definitely not simply "get a 35mm camera" and your stuff will look great. Back in the fifties there were a lot of "soft core" pornos shot - all of them produced on 35mm. They all looked like crap. (Please - I am not a purveyor of that kind of stuff, but my career has taken me a lot of places - and I used to hang out at film labs, for a long while - "Hey Vic, look at this!").

Anyway, that being said, I personally believe the future bodes well for digital production. Take Star Wars, Collateral Game and most recently, Miami Vice; all are very large budget features. All were shot by people who could easily have gone to 35mm, without a thought. All have projected in theaters around the world without "notice".
I am looking forward to the next generation of video cameras, as projected by the new "Red" (which may or may not ever see the break of day). But the line has been drawn.

35mm sensor (probably CMOS as in the Canon MarkII series), utilizing 35mm lenses. HiResolution digi acquisition at native 24p. 4mega-pixel per frame. Low light (compared to 35mm film) capabilites.
And the usual suspects - the enormous advantages of shooting in digi vs film which all of you enjoy:
Instant playback and approval. Elimination of the need to shoot "safeties". One third the cost (or way less) in film stock. Cameras that weigh a tenth (or way less) of a 35mm rig.

Not an answer to the question - but a pronostication of the future of our industry. Anyone who asks me (and there are a lot)... well I tell them not to waste time learning the film technology, but to dive into digital production with both feet. As Spot said above, good story wins - everytime - hands down.

There are already "leakages" - features shot and screened - that were produced in DV (not even HiDef) - "Open Water and Blair Witch" to name the two most obvious, plus of course dozens of documentaries (which don't even try to go for the "film look"). They are not at all "beautiful" in the filmic sense, but $150 million at the box office guarantees that your next feature can be shot in anything you want. Robert Rodriguez, who shot his first feature, "The Mariachi" in 16mm for $7,000 proved the point, that in Hollywood, box-office success is the king. If you can show a profit, you can shoot another film.

It is and always has been about "concept".

v

It is and always has been about "concept".

Again, more sage advice. But such concepts are difficult to comprehend when one is so totally focused on the technical aspects.

Omar, the reason I ask is because many post houses will tell you to go ahead and shoot in 60i and let them do the conversion to 24 frames. The reason being you get more information per frame in 60i than in 24p. Therefore, more information gets transferred to the final internegative.

Jay, do you mean you get more motion information per second with 60i?

Unless you're talking about HD vs. SD, you get more picture information in a progressive frame than in an interlaced field/field combo.

David,
that's incorrect. A camera will typically record more vertical res in p than i, all else being equal, one p frame split into two fields will contain all the data from the original frame. This isn't a case of p being better than i, it's a case of how cameras work.
However at 60i Vs 24p more temporal data is recorded. That's why 24p compressed better, there's less data, not more.

The other big problem with shooting 24p is the frame is only 720x480, that's well under even SD broadcast spec for PAL, I guess if you only intend NTSC distribution then fine but otherwise it's going to look soft in PAL and even worse in SECAM.

For a film out I cannot imagine how anyone could contemplate starting with SD anything, I know it's been done but it's one of the few things that's made people comment on image quality. Wolf Creek was shot on Varicam and it looked woefull, I mean horrid, was the story any good, I don't really know I was so put off by the soft look of the vast open plains of Australia I couldn't bear to watch enough to find out what the story was. Did it look like film, no way.

There' s a world of difference between a soft image and a low resolution image. I can't believe the number of people who don't get that. A lot of 35mm is deliberately shot soft. Shooting at los res (ie SD video) does not produce anything remotely the same as 35mm with a filter in front of the lens.

The other good word of advice from the filmout guys (apart from shooting 60i) is don't try to make the image look like film, if it looks like film on your monitors they say it'll just look like rubbish on the big screen. Give them all the resolution you can. The filmout process will make it look like film.

Bob.

Unless you're talking about HD vs. SD, you get more picture information in a progressive frame than in an interlaced field/field combo.
You get more information due to the additional temporal resolution. Why for instance, are sports not acquired with a 24p rate? 30p is the choice if sports are being acquired in progressive, and even then there are complaints about the stutter. 60p is ideal, but we'll not see this as a broadcast format. 60p contains more information than 60i, but 30p doesn't contain more information than 60i, and 24p contains less overall resolution than any of them.
Additionally, you're not taking into account the chroma resolution when we're talking about highly compressed formats such as DV. You have significantly less information in a 24p frame than a 60i frame, and moreover, motion appears to be stilted, particularly in high motion. Read the Standford or Grand Alliance temporal tests, you'll find a lot of valuable information in there.

You get more information due to the additional temporal resolution. Why for instance, are sports not acquired with a 24p rate? 30p is the choice if sports are being acquired in progressive, and even then there are complaints about the stutter. 60p is ideal, but we'll not see this as a broadcast format. 60p contains more information than 60i, but 30p doesn't contain more information than 60i, and 24p contains less overall resolution than any of them.
Additionally, you're not taking into account the chroma resolution when we're talking about highly compressed formats such as DV. You have significantly less information in a 24p frame than a 60i frame, and moreover, motion appears to be stilted, particularly in high motion. Read the Standford or Grand Alliance temporal tests, you'll find a lot of valuable information in there.

I think you should prep for digital projection rather than a film print. Either the FX1 or the Panny DVX100 can give you a high quality picture when digitally projected. I saw a good documentary at Sundance this past year called "Clearcut" that was shot with a DVX100. It looked excellent when digitally projected on a full sized movie screen. Nobody there remarked that it looked like it was shot on video. They only remarked how good the film was. So when shot with care and within the confines of a good movie, either camera is capable of accomplishing what you want it to.

Keep this in mind. Most film festivals judge whether or not a film will be accepted based on an SD copy viewed on a normal size TV. So Sundance, Slamdance, etc look at a copy of your movie on DVD, DV, or VHS to determine what gets in and what does not. If your movie gets accepted, Sundance will take copies either on a film print (very,very expensive) or transferred to HDCAM tape for digital projection ( 1/10th the cost of a film print). If your movie is great and gets picked up by a distributor, let them front the cost of a film print. This is what Robert Rodreguez recommends and in fact did for El Mariachi. It was edited linearly with 2 VCRs!

So the FX1 or the Panny are both capable of producing a high enough quality picture for theatrical release if shot properly. For digital projection, I think the FX1 may give you more flexibility in post than the DVX100, as you can leave it as 1080/60i for razor sharp projection, or can convert the video to 1080/30p or 1080/24p and copied to HDCAM. I think widescreen 1080/60i from the FX1 converted to widescreen 1080/24p will look better than cropped 480/24p from the DVX100. Especially now that 1080p projectors will become the standard and replace 720p projectors in the neer future as the standard. I haven't directly compared them so this is just what I would expect and not what I have directly obserbed. Neither will be as good as 35mm, but can look a lot better than the film print I saw of Open Water. It was shot with Sony PD150s and VX2000s and looked horrible in my local theater on film.

Just to reiterate what everyone else has said, its really the quality of the script, the acting, the production quality, etc that will be the ultimate determination of what happens with your movie. Whether you use the FX1 or the DVX100 is less important IMHO.

Greg F, great points too. Then which would you recommend out of the two: FX1 or DVX100?

I've heard people say that the real time 24 frames of the dvx100 is worth more than the better resolution of the FX1. Plus the 60i has a much more video look?

About blowing up to screen, "November" was shot using the DVX100 as I mentioned before, shown on a 50 ft screen AND won Best Cinematography at Sundance in 2004. I think technical buffs will tell the difference but average people will say it looked fine technically so long a post-transfer job is done correctly.

I'd rather save money, shoot with a low budget on minidv and a good DP and hope to get picked up for concept than spend so much shooting on film with still the risk of the movie getting thrown on a shelf anyway.

> If you can show a profit, you can shoot another film. It is and always has been about "concept".

Excellent point!

Guys, I think you skipped right over my first sentence:

"Jay, do you mean you get more motion information per second with 60i?"

I was careful to make the distinction.

Wait, I gotta go to the tote on this -- what do you mean by this?

"Additionally, you're not taking into account the chroma resolution when we're talking about highly compressed formats such as DV. You have significantly less information in a 24p frame than a 60i frame"

How can there be significantly less color information in a 60i "frame" than there is in a 24p frame, unless you're talking about
HD vs. SD?

Omar,
I'm not in the film business like a lot of the guys here, so I do not have the technical expertise or behind the scenes knowlege of a lot of the pros here. I am an avid movie enthusiast and have a decent "textbook" knowledge of low-budget digital movie making.

When the FX1 came out, I decided to upgrade my VX2000 to a different camera. I narrowed it down to the FX1 and the DVX100 because $3000 was all I could justify for what is really a hobby for me. My main hobby is doing short films but I wanted to have the ability to shoot hi-def if I wanted or needed it. I chose the FX1 for this reason.

It offered more flexibility in post than does the DVX100. It is native widescreen 1080/60i which when viewed on a high-def set is just in a different league than the VX2000 or the DVX100. It can be converted to just about any other resolution and yet still maintain good quality. I think 1080/60i downconverted to widescreen 16:9 480p will look very close to cropped 4:3 480p from the DVX100.

Like I said before, this is just my expectation and I have never done an A-B test with this. "Clearcut" looked excellent digitally projected. I thought it could have been shot with an HD or HDV camera. It was only after the movie was over and I asked the director personally what he shot with did I know it was the DVX100. I'm not a pro but I have a more scrupulous eye than does the average movie-going public. If it looked pretty good to me then I bet it looked good to 95% the audience.

So even though I chose the FX1 for its higher flexibility, I absolutely respect the DVX100 and feel that you couldn't really go wrong with either. If you have $5000 and want 24p as the final frame rate, I would probably choose the JVC HD100 as it is native 720/24p. For dramatic productions, I would expect the JVC to look clearly better than 1080/60i converted to 24p or native 480/24p when digitally projected.