Camera switch!

We're not going with the HPX500 camcorder.

Instead, I bought two other ones! The HVR-VU1 and the HV20 , with which as I mentioned before we'll be using the Blackmagic Design HDMI input card mated to a kick ass computer with an 8 drive 7200rpm 16MB buffer SATAII raid 0 array (which will double as our editing deck/CGSFX machine).

Why? Well, for one thing: Money. $16k is a lot of jack. Also, we had to buy a muscular computer for editing HD anyway.

And also because of a fortuitous new development which I just recently found out about: We'll be using Cinevate's Brevis35 - A 35mm adapter that lets you use 35mm SLR (yep, you read it right) lenses on your HDV camcorder. I saw 720p footage from the HV20 shot with the Brevis35, and it was stunning.

With the setup we'll be using, we should be able to go one or maybe two better... Shooting and capturing uncompressed 1080i. however, depending on how easy it is to edit, we might opt for BMD's jpg codec, it sounds like it's pretty darn good.

So now it's just a question of whether the picture quality will be merely awesome, or absolutely amazing.

Gotta go, I have a shot list to draft!

-Dave