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FOR HD DOCUMENTARIES East coast company, Skycamusa has smaller helicopters that are optimized for light weight HD video cameras, like the six-pound Panasonic HVX-200. Run by David Quinones, a licensed FAA commercial pilot, his fleet flies from 750 feet to just five feet. David has rebuilt an industrial model copter and designed a gyro stabilized mount for pan, tilt, and roll. Rates are from $2.5K to $5K. FOR ALMOST FREE (ALMOST) HD Cameras are getting smaller and lighter. My new Samsung SC-HMX20C camera (I called her “Susie”) shoots full 1920 X 1080 video at 60i to a regular SDHC memory card. Susie has an internal memory of 8GB and with the push in card can record a total of 142 minutes. Her pictures look terrific. Susie weighs in at just one pound.
I’m making a HD 60 minute documentary about a Wall Street trader turned Sonoma County winemaker. I want some aerials. A $5K shoot is out the question. There’s a model shop just five minutes down the road from my house. That’s where I met Mars. Mars, Susie, and I go up to a vineyard in Petaluma to do a test shoot. Susie’s wide angle isn’t wide enough, so I screw on a 0.66 Raynox adapter. Another two ounces to lift; Mars is unhappy. The still camera weighed almost nothing. Susie is now 1 pound 2 ounces. Mars revs up the battery-powered rotor. Faster, faster…hang on Susie! And she’s up; flies over the vineyard. A tiny video transmitter is sending the pictures back; the recording is on Susie’s memory. Safely landed, I take Susie home and load her file into my MacPro. Import the shot into Final Cut Pro. Wow! It’s amazingly steady, just needs a pass through the SmoothCam filter to take out a few bumps. That does the trick! SmoothCam is worthy of its name; the flight over the vineyard is silky smooth. Well done, Mars and my little black-eyed Susie. Stefan Sargent has a production company in San Francisco. He has made a zillion TV commercials, pop videos and corporate films. Stefan's docs have been screened on the BBC, the Discovery Channel, and somewhere else.
Arri
Flying-Cam
Panasonic
Red
Skycamusa
Stefan Sargent
Sony |
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