Writing a screenplay...

[kami]

Getting the framerate down to 24fps does nothing for you if your final product is going to be video and most film filters I've seen just make it look like grainy video.

Not true...frame rate makes a big difference and takes away a LOT of the video look. I made a mess after I reviewed the first bit of footage I shot with the Panny in 24p mode.

Professional video filters add a lot more than grain as well.

The main problem wih shooting video over film is this simple reason:

Eye: 1000:1 contrast ratio
Film: 200:1 contrast ratio
Video: 50:1 contrast ratio

If you want it to look like film, you need perfect lighting. It's actually much harder to light a scene for video than it is film. Soooo much harder.

 

[kami]

BTW, JVC also makes an affordable high definition cam, but it has many drawbacks since its the 1st generation for these cameras. The best thing is that it records its 1280x720 video straight onto a regular miniDV tape using MPEG2 compression! It's very high bitrate, and you get a few more minutes of space compared to DV compression.

The drawbacks are that it only shoots at 30fps, and it's only a single CCD camera which means pretty poor color fidelity. If it had those two features, I'd be all over it.

 

[pulse8]

Not true...frame rate makes a big difference and takes away a LOT of the video look. I made a mess after I reviewed the first bit of footage I shot with the Panny in 24p mode.

If you shoot in 24p, it'll surely help, but taking a piece of video shot at 29.97 and making it 24fps does nothing.

Also, if the main problem in video versus film is the contrast ratio, then how does the 24p take away much of the video look?

Anyway, DV format can only be as good as the DP you're using. I've seen some decent stuff shot on DV and I've seen some really crappy stuff shot on DV. If your DP knows how to light for video and you take other steps to increase the video quality, you can get a little bit better images out of it, but it will never compare to film and, in my opinion, will ALWAYS cheapen a movie. It may be because of my conditioned brain that I think this, but it's the way just about thinks as well.

Professional video filters add a lot more than grain as well.

I know they do, but everytime I've ever seen one of these filters used, it always still looks like video.

 

[Looney]

I realize it sounds typical but it's next to impossible to come up with something original on a very small budget spare The Blair Witch Project.

Why would it matter if you're writing the screenplay yourself?