Panasonic HVX200 and the HD Showdown

Director David Butler (right) confers with DP
Rege Becker on the set of Maestro Percival.

As a commercial director based in Annapolis, Md., I have recently made quite a few short films, one of which, I Will Not…, won the Baltimore stop of the 48 Hour Film Project (48HFP) last July. Because of this accomplishment, my team was invited to participate in the Panasonic/48 Hour Film Project HD Filmmaker Showdown, which pitted winning teams from various 48HFP cities against one another in a separate, high-def competition in January 2007.

The challenge with any 48HFP movie is the extraordinarily short turnaround. You have to write, shoot, and edit an entire film in only 48 hours—drawing a film genre, character, line of dialogue, and a prop on Friday night, which all have to be used in your film that is turned in as a completed project on Sunday night.

Panasonic lent each team an HVX200 to shoot the HD Filmmaker Showdown films. I had used the HVX200 several times before and had actually shot I Will Not… with it, so the workflow had been developed pretty well in advance. Since we had access to an additional unit of the HD camcorder, I opted to shoot much of the film with two cameras to increase the coverage. One camera generally shot wide, while the second would get a closer shot from a different angle. This gave us matching footage, making the edit go very smoothly.

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