Main Task- Equiptment

In our recording's we will be using hardware that we have borrowed from school so that we can get the best quality equiptment avaliable to us. We wlll need to use a Video Camera, Tripod and a Camera. Here is what we used:

This is a 'Cannon Widescreen MV 920' and it is the camcorder we used to film all of our footage.

Features:

Camcorder Type: Digital
Recording Format: Mini DV
Recording System: PAL
Sensor Quantity: 1
Optical Zoom: 25x
Weight: 0.38 kg

It is a very user freidnly camera, and was perfect for what we needed. As well as having auto features, you can also edit the white balance, exposure and other features yourself, but we did not tend to do this too much because we did not want to loose quality in the image we where recording. The camera has zoom features which was perfect for our close-up shots. However the lighting setting on this camera is not great, there are presets which determin the lighting through settings (e.g. Night, Day, Snow) so if you want a paticular lighting then you would need to yse your own lighting e.g. lamps or torches. We had to make some scenes look darker but instead of doing this on the camera we edited it through iMovie.

All of your footage is recorded onto a mini DV tape, and transfering it onto your comptuer is very easy. We simply needed a firewire cable which would run from the camera to the comptuer and using a peice of software you upload the footage. However you can also play clips through the camera as well.

We also had to use a tripod, the one we used is called 'Fujifilm Finepix A900'

We needed to use this tri-pod in orfer to keep some of our shots still, and not have a hand held look. If we just held the camera by hand then the production would not look proffesional unless we could evaluate a proper reason for the camera work.

The tripod is very easy to use, the legs extend out in order to have the camera for a low angle or a high angle shot. The camera stand also extends higher in order to get extreme high angle shots. The tripod also allows the camera to pan pivort and tilt without having to move the tripod itself. We found this very useful on our panning shots.

So that we could take pictures of our settings, cast, crew and costume we also had to use a picture camera to take these to good quality. We used a 'Fujifilm Finepix A900'.

Features:

9.0 megapixels
Real Photo Technology (RPT)
Intelligent Flash
IrSimple™
Large 2.5" LCD screen
Sensitivity up to ISO 800
10Mb internal memory
Selectable scene positions

Although we had access to all the equipment that we needed to produce the production, in an ideal world we would of had a few extra's but because we had no budget, we simply could not afford them. The equipment we would of used, had we had the money, would have been the following:

• A much better quality HD camera with sound boom attached:

With a camera like this we would be able to pick up much better quality sound and picture, wile also having better uses of setting to adjust the way the picture looks, e.g. White Balance.

• A SteadiCam:

This is a camcorder that attaches to her person using it so that you can get a point of view shot much clearer and less shaky.

• A electric-controlled tripod:

With this piece of equipment, we would of been able to create much more precise and free-flowing panning shots.