Solving the camera problem

Well... work has just ended and yet just begun. I'm back to constructing my basement set and I think I've just solved a problem that's been nagging in my mind -- how to mount my camera. The tripod I have is one of those bendy-leg gidgets that can either be stood up or have its legs wrapped around... whatever. It looks kind of like a K'Nex robot. It's awesome that way.

But it's also very short. Like... 6 inches short. That, in and of itself, is a problem easily, EASILY solved by the application of the phrase "well then just set it on top of something." And there is no shortage of potential "somethings" I could drag over and set in front of my bar. But I'm the picky type and I'd really want to be able to make every shot CONSISTENT. Trouble is, I can't set something PERMANENTLY in the middle of the floor in front of the bar -- it would be blocking literally the ONLY place anyone usually ever walks down here, the most direct path from the stairs to the laundry room.

But I've just now found some old metal rungs that used to be part of a shelf unit in the bathroom. I have no idea where the rest of it is and I doubt it will ever be of any use to anyone in this house again as a shelving unit -- it is, after all, rather old and collecting a bit of rusty tarnish. The thing is about 6' tall, maybe 9" wide, with rungs every 6" or so all the way up... it looks like a ladder.

Now, it just so happens that some years ago, when my sister tried to take over the basement for her personal uses, she removed the ceiling. The... entire... ceiling. A small area above the stage was painted and put back up but the rest of the main room of the basement remains sans ceiling, leaving the structural beams exposed.

It also just so happens that there are some perfectly spaced beams at exactly the right distance from the bar.

I believe a little bit of that parachute cord my dad has in his tool chest will give me a strong fastening and let me hang this thing from the ceiling loosely enough so that when I'm done filming, I can swing it upwards. I have a couple of carabiners around in MY tool kit. One of those fastened to a beam just above the bar will let me hook this rig up flat against the ceiling when not in use. Then it'll always swing back down to the same place. My tripod will wrap securely around the rungs and I can adjust the height by increments of about 5 inches and then also get angle shots from as high as this room would ever let me go, or from lower down without my having to play the box-and-book-stacking game.

So I'll begin that in a few minutes. But first, since this is a blog recording the process of EVERY STEP of learning to make videos from scratch, I want to discuss a question every newbie videographer is going to encounter early on -- how do you pick the right camera?

The answer is -- I have no idea.

What I did was decide how much I was willing to invest in a camera for this project, and go to Best Buy to see what they had in stock. It turns out that it isn't very easy to figure out what makes all these different models... all that different. But they did have some handy printed sheets stacked about that covered the basics about video cameras. I read them over and spent about an hour browsing and tinkering and testing and re-reading until I decided on a camera that seemed to have a lot of potential for more advanced functions, but wasn't so advanced as to be the filming equivalent of fucking Adobe Anything. And it had one feature I really, REALLY liked -- SUPERZOOM, MOTHERFUCKERS. 70x. I can pick up things on this camera on full zoom that I cannot see with my eyes focused towards the same point as my camera lens. That... is a very attractive option to me.

Your preferences and mileage may vary. I didn't get TOO hung up over OH GOD I HAVE TO FIND EXACTLY THE ONE AND ONLY PERFECT CAMERA OR I WILL BE DOOMED! That is bullshit. Unless you are filming macro slow-motion clips of frogs or water droplets for the Discovery Channel or something, there is no magical One Camera that holds all the power of Sauron and will let you conquer the world (wide web) with the click of a button and a tweak of the settings. If you're reading this because you're like me and starting out as green as they come... just get something within your price range that feels comfortable for you to handle and has some options on it that appeal to you as a film maker, however vague your ideas are as of yet.

And if anyone absolutely MUST know, I'm using a Panasonic SDR-H80 with 70x zoom, 60 GB storage PLUS the option of buying a card for it as well, and something called "web mode" which I think means you can actually push a button and make the camera know that this video is going onto YouTube so it gets optimally formatted to do that or something. I'm actually not entirely sure how that works, because the instruction manual for this thing is just about the least comprehensible thing I've ever read in English that wasn't fanfiction. But that feature wasn't a priority to me because I'm in this to learn how to make PROPER VIDEOS with editing and everything, not to point and click and spam YouTube with single-take crap.

And as for my editing... I'm using iMovie, which came preinstalled on my MacBook. I'm not using a MacBook PRO or any other bells and whistles except that I did have to purchase and download some software from the Apple store that would let my computer read the format my camera records in. I have no idea whether this is like... a common thing with camcorders, that they're really optimized to be PC compatible and Mac users can go stuff themselves or figure out how to get around the problem... but that's something worth knowing when you go buy a camera, especially if you're on a tighter budget than I am and can't afford to buy software just so your computer and editing software can recognize and work with your footage.

I will also note one other issue I had in choosing a camera, which is that I'm a lefty and apparently they don't MAKE camcorders that are structured for the likes of us, pfaugh! ....Well, I'm sure they DO, somewhere, but you can't just walk into Best Buy and purchase one. I'm doing what I've done for my whole life with uncountable numbers of other tools -- just get used to using it right-handed. But if you're a lefty who is so left-oriented that it's really difficult or impossible for you to adapt, you're probably going to want to go internet-shopping instead of to Best Buy.