What Tape Formats Can an Indie Film Use?

Video Transcript

"So going along with the equipment, the formats, there's always different video formats and I'm assuming if you're doing an independent film, you're shooting on video which is way more acceptable today than it was like ten years ago. I remember when I first started doing my movies I shot them in Beta cam and digital and then I would have to like film walk them, put them through a process that made them look like film because if it was just look like video, and this was before the 24 frame cameras, nobody would look at anything, they'll look like video, look like and old Dark Shadows episode or something. So I would have to kind of fool it, make it look like film, but fortunately nowadays, they make cameras that shoot 24 frames per second, definitely has that film look to it and HD looks really good. So depending on your budget and all that, you're probably going to be shooting mini DVC, its most accessible, cheapest, it looks really good, holds up in terms of quality. So there's also DVC Pro, DV cam, the HD is just directly to like a hard drive. In terms of format, doesn't really matter in terms of saleability. If you're shooting something on DVC Pro isn't really going to look any different than something from MiniDV. But again, HD will look different from them both because HD, nothing really compares to that. So again, just depends on your budget what format you're going to be using, what camera is available to you. If you only have a MiniDV camera available, well that's what you're going to shoot on. If you have an HD camera available, use that."