h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've got the bug to make a film after recently helping make one (mostly held the boom), but really enjoyed myself.
I was thinking of just shelling out on a camera, so I can experiment and get used to it before I actually begin filming my masterpiece.
Do you have any advice on what type of camera to buy, as I've heard that a 16mm is a good camera to get, although as you say it seems silly to get an old-fashioned kind of camera when there are digital cameras on the market.
Do the 16mm cameras give a different kind of feeling to the film? More authentic, that kind of thing?
Very useful entry btw.

Thanx

To be honest I don't really know. I haven't had any experiance with non-digital cameras and I've only had a small amount of experiance with digital cameras, you probably know more than I do.

However looking at the quality of picture I got on mine its fairly similar to the real thing, the picture looks like the sort you find in documentaries.

Cheers for the reply.

I was looking around the internet earlier today, and found some pretty useful pages on this sort of thing. I found that the old cine-cameras are quite recommended for starting out, so I'm going to borrow my dad's old one (if it still works).

If not eBay have some pretty cheap deals. If you're interested, I'll let you know how I get on, i.e. how useful they are for actually filming with.


GWL

Yeah that would be useful.

I'm hopeing to go into filming professionaly so any info what so ever is helpful.

It would be great to professionally film, but I don't know how realistic that would be?
What kind of thing did you do with your digital camera? Was that a film?

Personally, I'm just going to experiment and play around with cameras until I come up with an idea I think will be worth investing money and time into. From the previous project I got involved in, I realise what a mission it is, and how much it can cost. I think experience counts for a lot, so I am just going to get involved in as much of this sort of thing as possible.

Have a look at this (if the link works) http://www.exposure.co.uk/makers/minute.html
It makes a lot of sense to me at least.

Well its as realistic as you want it to be.

Well when I first got my digital camera I messed around with all the extra transitions, getting rid of the impulse to use all of them so I could decide not to use any of them. I made sure I didn't do anything serious because I find that when I first buy something I want to use every little gimic on it and most of the time they look awful. After I got something to edit my film on, i.e. a capture card I wrote the script for Connection. I wrote it for stuff that I knew I had. A forest, a house and very few characters. I didn't even consider using artificial lighting, so mine was probably as cheap as you get. The only costs I had were for the camera the tripod and the capture card which I can use again.

The hardest part of the whole thing was coming up with the idea!

That site really does make sense. Thanks

I have many ideas. It would be a problem transferring the ideas onto film, methinks.
I am thinking of picking up a Super 8mm cine-camera. (You can get them 2nd hand for next to nothing). But the films are quite expensive. Might be worth it though - just for playing around with.

It probobably depends on what sort of stuff you are planning to film.

If you thinking of doing the music video type stuff you need to be able to edit it and add effects. But if your thinking of mini-soap operas you won't need that as much.

cine cameras - the old fashioned type, give a beautiful jumpy olde-worlde sort of image. but not all varieties of the film you need to use capture sound. it's perfectly suited for sections of a movie where just music will be played or where there's a voice over. it is quite tricky to match sound with image when captured seperately but it's worth the attempt.
i found an old super-8 at a flea market for £5 and it came loaded with a film. when i sent the film off for developing, after doing some filming of my own, i found some footage from the 70's of a family holiday to an air show and what looks like a butlins holiday camp pool. i used it as part of a project, set it to some saxophoney mood music and it became really nostalgic.

I have to say I've never tried anything but a digital camera.

You can fake that sort of effect on mine but it probably doesn't look as good as the real thing.