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I want a Canon Optura Xi. You can find them new off ebay for around $1000 and it has a 2 megapixel CCD for still shots (better than most I've seen). Get brain washed by fancy flash...

The Canon &R 70 mc Is a NICE camera, I have had one for almost a year now, Used it for my graduation and a few other things such as vacation etc, logical to use once you RTFM. The only thing lacking is that you have to buy your own DV cable if you are going to do digital capture to your computer from the tape, The battery lasts nicely and recharges fast

Perhaps the biggest reason people go digital is the ease of transfer to a computer, and perhaps the low cost of media. If you are really into high-quality analog video (film) seems to be still hanging around after all of these years, and there is no doubting the quality of the result, as well as the archive capabilities.

However, you did ask for digital, so here is the answer. I'd probably go with the miniDV format. With this, you have tons of options. I've seen miniDV cameras on ebay for less than $100 (albeit first-gen low-qual, no frills models). The real high-quality route seems to be going with the likes of the Canon XL-1 (and related models). I've seen some great quality results coming from these cameras, and I spotted one in use during the filming of The Italian Job (check out the dvd special features to see it used), presumably for proof shots, dailies, etc.

Not sure if that helps you, and even the miniDV format may be obsolete in another couple of years.

Good Luck!

.02

cLive ;-)

That said, here's the equipment that we use to make it happen:

• 1 Canon GL2 MiniDV camera
• a bunch of Sony digital video cameras (that's not the exact model, but close to it)
• a boom mic (I have no idea what model, but it cost around $300, I think)
• a wireless clip-on mic (again, no idea what model, but it works well)
• a bunch of G4 Tower workstations with Final Cut Pro 3 (though this is mostly because we have a ton of people doing different things all at once, you don't really need more than 1)
• a dual 1Ghz G4 Tower with 1.5GB RAM on which we (I) assemble everyone's edited footage and export to video.

We use Final Cut Pro mostly because we have the luxury of a lab full of mid- to high-end Macs, but also because it is an extremely powerful software package for what you pay for it. The only thing that really compares in that price range is Avid XpressDV, which is slightly more expensive, runs on Windows and has its own unique advantages. Some people will try to tell you to use Adobe Premiere to edit your footage, as it is less expensive than either of the two suites that I just mentioned, but I wouldn't recommend it. While I have not worked with it personally, my filmmaking/broadcasting teacher worked with it at the last school he taught at, and it gave him nothing but trouble.

Any serious video editing will require some serious hardware to handle everything smoothly. Tons of RAM (on the order of 768MB or more) is a must, and it is also desireable to get a dual processor machine (dual Athlon systems are fairly inexpensive if you're working on a tight budget and choose to go with a Windows solution). Also, make sure your machine supports FireWire. On any fairly new Mac, this is a given, and support for it is built right into OS X and has worked flawlessly for me. FireWire is pretty much the only way to do video capture well, as most, if not all, DV cameras support it and it is many times faster than USB.

The editing will take much longer than shooting any of your actual footage. Make sure to plan your time accordingly.

Also, if you want to get better image quality, see if you can find a digital video camera that uses BetaSP instead of MiniDV. They may be more expensive, but they produce a much higher image quality and consequently, look much better on NTSC monitors and TVs (I'm assuming you're in the US here).

As far as distributing your footage is concerned, I know that Final Cut Pro allows you to export the movie in several different formats suitable for online distribution, as well as printing back to tape and burning to DVD. Printing to tape is how we finalize our broadcasts, as we just hook up a camcorder, record our edited footage onto it, and then hook the camcorder up to the coax broadcasting hardware with component video cables. Beyond that, I don't have any experience. For DVD authoring, I know that Apple also sells DVD Studio Pro, which I've heard is an excellent DVD authoring tool.

I've learned so much in this past year of working with digital video that I'm sure there's tons that I'm leaving out, but I hope this is enough to give you an idea of what is required. Please feel free to respond with any more questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

Was the whole movie shot with digital film? I think that would be overwhelmingly expensive.

I think that one of the arguments for digital is just the opposite... Conventional film is shoot once, develop and never use again. It is very expensive to develop those hundreds of thousands of feet of footage. (24 frames / sec is like 3ft/sec of 35mm film... and they almost never shoot that slow, that's just what the print ends up with)

The argument goes that with digital you take what you like, copy it without loss in quality to a master and then you can reuse that tape / drive / whatever.

The argument against digital has always been that it is inferior in quality to conventional film. Lucas believes that the state of the art in digital has progressed to the point that digital is equal in quality as far as 35mm is concerned to film. He has even said it was a enormous boon because of the lowered cost of production. You can go from the set to the cutting room in minutes, not days.

Check out this site if you're curious. It's a broadcast quality digital camcorder that costs to buy about what a 35mm motion picture camera costs to rent for one day. Canon is so happy with this camera they produced a commercial for a lower end digital camcorder using this one.