best camcorder settings for a noob :p

[UK MONK]

hi all, im new to the forum and to camcorders. iv been living in china for the past 3 years studying kung fu. and now i want to make some vids. i want to make some youtube vids plus an instructional dvd. i have a sony HVR A1E and my questions are=

1. whats the best frame rate to film at when filming sports instructional dvds. (also i want to do some slow-mo shots aswell)

2. should i shoot in 16:9 formate?

3. i want to make it look professional so should i use cinema tones on the camcorder settings?

i will also be shooting in HD, so all surjestions would be apreaciated.
thanks for any advice.

 

[thefilmgeek]

hi all, im new to the forum and to camcorders. iv been living in china for the past 3 years studying kung fu. and now i want to make some vids. i want to make some youtube vids plus an instructional dvd. i have a sony HVR A1E and my questions are=

1. whats the best frame rate to film at when filming sports instructional dvds. (also i want to do some slow-mo shots aswell)

2. should i shoot in 16:9 formate?

3. i want to make it look professional so should i use cinema tones on the camcorder settings?

i will also be shooting in HD, so all surjestions would be apreaciated.
thanks for any advice.

I wouldn't really worry too much about framerate, that's not really a make-or-break type of thing. What you should be concerned with is shutter speed. The faster it is, the more of a strobe effect you're gonna get, that saving private ryan look. Aperature as well, to help with motion blur.

16:9 or 4:3 is up to you, most things are 16:9 these days though.

As far as making it look professional... that goes beyond just picking a camcorder preset. I'd say make sure you use some ND filters and use whatever preset will keep things like the sky from blowing out and being too bright.

 

[UK MONK]

so if i have the shutter speed set higher the clearer the film will be when shooting sport/fast motion??? i was also want some slow-mo shots aswell to enthersize a particular move. how would i go about doing that? is that shutter speed aswell? thanks for the help mate

 

[thefilmgeek]

The higher the shutter speed, the less things are gonna blur in fast motion, but you'll have to adjust your f-stop to compensate. (If the camera has shutter priority mode, the f-stop will be automatically adjusted for you)

As far as slow motion goes, unless your camera specifically has things built in to allow for faster or slower motion, that is built in under/overcranking abilities like the HVX200, you'll have to handle that in post production.

 

[Motorstorm]

What kung fu did you study wing chun? i do wing chun personally, anyway always use 16.9 in my opinion if you want to film a particlular shit slow mo and theres a function your camera that lets you adjust the frame rate then make the frame rate higher and you can do grading in post, just make sure the exposure and iris is correct or just use auto focus.