Making Movies

Well, I’ve decided to take the plunge into cinematography. I’ve always liked to play with movie cameras.

I used to have a windup spring loaded 8 mm that I bought used in a garage sale. I had a lot of fun with that camera. I could get about 5 minutes worth of a movie on a reel about 3.5 inches across. Some buddies and I made a short film I’ll now title “The Tribal War”.

Back then, of course, you had to send it off to be developed and thread the developed film thru a projector and since we didn’t have a screen to use it got projected onto a bed sheet.

I’ve had perhaps two movie cameras since then. My last one even had a microphone and you could play back the magnetic tape in a special adaptor in a VCR and watch your movie over the TV right away. A major improvement, but now in the computer age things are even better.

Take a look at the pictured camera I just ordered as an early Christmas present. I hope to use it for both fun and profit.

This Panasonic records in surround sound stereo. In still mode it can record about one thousand still shots at high resolution. It can make a movie about 20 minutes long recording it directly onto a DVD disc.

Yes, that’s right, it records directly onto a disc that you can then pop into your DVD player or into most computers “D” drives and watch your movie. Like all DVD’s you can access any portion at any time easily. No winding back and forth looking for a scene.

You can also do a wide range of special effects right in the camera.

You can use it as a DVD burner and make copies of your movie for distribution. You can even get into the action with its automatic feature.

You can hook it up to a computer thru a USB port on the camera to a USB port on your computer and edit your movie and do even more special effects.

And…I think I will be able to use it to record directly into the computer, thereby using the computer’s storage, along with some new software that’s about to come out, to make streaming videos. Then I can put steaming video clips on my website or maybe even send it out in emails.

Wouldn’t that be cool. To have movie clips embedded inside a Chapala Chat!

Well, don’t hold your breath as this will take a while to do. The software isn’t available to me yet and I don’t even have the camera to begin to learn everything it will be capable of doing.

The plan is to make DVD movies of homes I have for sale to send by email or even snail mail to possible buyers…and to place streaming videos with sound on my website.

And, of course, it will be great to take on future trips or to film testimonials of satisfied customers. Etc. etc. etc.

Perhaps if I get really motivated I’ll make a new documentary of the Lake Chapala area.

Again, don’t hold your breath, but that would be “Way Cool”.

Can you tell I’m excited ?