Yet another reason I heart Pando

A few nights ago, Angela (of the famous 'Mustache Portraits') and I were trying out the fancy new iChat in Leopard - when she IM'd me to say she had just opened up Pando to see a big banner for Pedal! I knew nothing about this - so I opened up my Pando to see if it would also show up for me, and it did, it was the first banner to appear each time I re-opened Pando (yes, I'm a dork, and I opened it more than once).

I guess I just wanted to shamelessly self-promote the project ["slash"] give a huge thanks to Pando for always being so awesome.

my decision

Two weeks ago I wrote a post titled "My Dilemma", since then I've accepted the fact that as much as I love my Z1u, I don't desperately need it at this moment. What I do desperately need (two months ago) is about 2 TBs of storage, so I can begin to import & log the 140+ hours of footage from Pedal.

I spent tonight sorting out everything I plan on selling along with the Z1u, including the: 4 extra batteries (440 min ea.), the Century Optics Pro Sony HDV wide angle lens / 0.6X, the Quantary 72mm polarizer filter, and a 5 pack of Sony premium tapes (just cause I have tons of them left over).

Since I bought the camera, six months ago, it's basically been used for only two things: Project Pedal, and Jay Leno's Garage. It makes me sad to see it go - it's a really, really great camera. I love the way it handles, the way looks, the picture it produces, I really have no complaints.

The plan is: after I sell the Z1u, the first thing I'll buy is a replacement camera. After a lot of looking, I've settled on the A1u (pdf), the Z1's baby-brother, it still has XLR 2 channel inputs, it has a CMOS chip instead of 3 CCDs, it's gotten a lot of very positive reviews. And considering I need a deck for capturing more than anything else - it should work out great.

My only concern is that I still haven't been able to find a clear answer to whether or not capturing PAL footage with an NTSC camera is going to be problematic? While on the road, I used the HC1 (which is NTSC only) and iMovie to capture bits of PAL footage here and there, and never had problems, but I'm trying to avoid any major nightmares down the road.

After I buy the A1u, I'll buy my 1st TB, I've decided on Lacie's 2big Triple (2-disk RAID). I was going to buy the 2 TB model, when I realized that it was about $140 cheaper to buy two 1 TBs separately. Since the first TB alone will capture around 70 hours of HDV, it should last me a while before I need a 2nd Raid.

If you're interested, the Z1u is for sale here, and you can take a look at some more detailed pictures on flickr. Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving.

"all thanks to piracy on the net!"

I was scanning through some of my 500+ unread feeds, when a headline from TorrentFreak caught my eye, it read: "Producer Thanks Pirates For Stealing His Film".

[Wilkinson] writes: “Our independent movie had next to no advertising budget and very little going for it until somebody ripped one of the DVD screeners and put the movie online for all to download. Most of the feedback from everyone who has downloaded “The Man From Earth” has been overwhelmingly positive. People like our movie and are talking about it, all thanks to piracy on the net!”

To illustrate this, on IMDB the film received close to 700 votes with an average rating of 8.2 which makes it one of the most popular movies of the last 2 weeks.

Wilkinson continues to praise the pirates and adds: “What you guys have done here is nothing short of amazing. In the future, I will not complain about file sharing. YOU HAVE HELPED PUT THIS LITTLE MOVIE ON THE MAP!!!! When I make my next picture, I just may upload the movie on the net myself!”

Some people, I'm sure, might argue that leaking a Hollywood'ish film on the internet deos not have a positive effect, like it might compared to a low budget project. I would say that it definitely does, word of mouth is still the best advertisement.

And I've seen countless examples of people benefiting, in the both the short and long term, from giving their films / music / hard-work away (knowingly or unknowingly) on the internet for free. If you're doing something that people will enjoy, and it's obvious to people that money is not the bottom line, then they are much more likely to support that kind of open environment.

But... that's just in my humble opinion :) What do you think?

My Dilemma

I've been back from filming for about three months - a lot of things have unfolded recently, some of which I can't yet talk about on the site. At least in detail, but I will soon... sadly, much of it is not positive news.

But that's not why I'm writing, the reason is: my Z1U, for the most part, has been collecting dust. The only use it's gotten has been two or three shoots through NBC for Jay Leno's Garage, and it's not insured through them. Which makes me nervous... to say the least, when I'm hanging out a window of a chase car at 60 mph.

Recently I twittered that I was considering selling off my camera for a smaller model, thanks to those who gave good points and responses on flickr. I've had a few more points on my mind lately and I needed to write them down and hear some feedback.


When I returned from 'Pedal', I sold my HDR-HC1 to Tiff, the FemGeek, and kept only my Z1U. But it's been hard not having a small easy-to-carry camera these last few months, to be honest, there isn't much I need a Z1U-like camera for, and there won't be for at least another six months. But that doesn't mean I don't love my Z1U, and that it hasn't been very good to me, and I find it hard to think about letting it go.


I've been debating selling the Z1U and, in turn, buying an HV20 or HDR-HC7. I'm torn between the two cameras because both got great reviews for picture quality (the HV20 though seems to be the favorite). Both have manual focus, unfortunately neither one uses a ring, just a small dial near the lens. Both have microphone inputs, and headphone jacks. Both use the HDV format. There's a lot of interesting hard-drive based HD cameras out there, but a) I still need to import about 140+ hours of miniHDV tape, and b) archiving footage seems like a problem I'm not ready to deal with.

One of the biggest losses in selling my Z1U is XLR inputs and separate channels - I would be keeping my microphone, cause it's fantastic - but what kind of audio quality loss am I looking at when running an XLR into a stereo input?

Another thing is my Z1U has 3CCDs, the HV20 and HC7 do not, but, aside from low-light, both capture amazing color - so does it even matter when I'm capturing that much color information? With HDV you have a lot of room for color correction. Is it going to make a huge difference?

Another reason for getting rid of the Z1U is I don't want to use it to import that amount of footage, seems like a lot of wear and tear on it's VCR. As much as I love the HV20, I don't know if I'm asking for trouble importing Sony captured footage with a Canon camera? I can't see why I would be - but it still makes me nervous having never done it before. Also, the footage for Pedal was filmed at 50i, or PAL, does this complicate importing on any level?

One of my biggest drives in selling the Z1U and buying a smaller HD camera, is my interest in setting up an HDV35 kit. I'd love to hear some other people's thoughts on this: is there any real advantage or necessity to use a camera like the Z1U with a HDV35 kit compared to a HV20 or HC7?


I found a rig earlier today using a Brevis35 kit and an HV20 (more pics and a forum discussion here) - the set-up had a bit of overkill mattebox and monitor on it, but still, it was nice to see someone else was out there experimenting with this type of set-up.

Plus, for follow-up interviews I'll need to film months from now, it would very hard for me to purchase another Z1U to give me two camera coverage. But buying another HV20, at a $1,000, is much more reasonable. Not to mention that purchasing a Brevis35 kit is only around $1,200.

So, that's a bit of my back-and-forth, I would love to hear your thoughts on any of this. Any tips, point of views, or technical advise would help a lot.

Black Sheep's New Do

If you haven't checked out the Black Sheep's web site in the last few weeks, you might have missed their redesign. I'm always extremely jealous of their layouts and graphic design work.

I've actually noticed a handful of new videos that I've been anxious to watch. Feel free to drop them a line (info [at] theblacksheep [dot] be) and tell how much you dig their work.