Waste Not | End of Tape #1.

The Canon HV20 - Stock I use a Canon HV20 to film. It's an inexpensive, tape based camcorder (and for the price, I recommend it to anyone exploring film). But the key is that the camera is tape based, which has benefits and concerns. First off, HDV tapes usually hold a little bit more than an hour of footage, and they're not cheap at just under $15 each. As none of my shoots have ever lasted more than an hour (on one tape), there was always bound to be some extra room at the end of the tape. Not wanting to waste the (costly) resource, I made a decision. Whenever I have less than 10 minutes of tape left after a shoot, I'd tape whatever I could and try to cut it together. This serves a couple of purposes. 

1. I'd be able to look at life in a very isolated manner, trying to take any individual scene and make sense of how best to film it.

2. I'd be able to have more practice in how to use my camera.

I recently purchased an HVFF Follow Focus wheel, which allows me to rack focus on the HV20 much more efficiently than before. Wanting to get as much practice with it as possible, I took it our for a spin, and recorded the following. (Music added because I silent is boring in this case.)

I think that a lot of very cool things can come from using the HVFF system. The one drawback is that I need to keep the camera incredibly steady, as any shakiness leads to more issues. The HV20's stock depth of field is pretty short (unless I use an external lens), so I needed to zoom in significantly in order for the DOF to appear correctly. I figure though, that by using a proper shoulder mount would help this in the long run.