What Camcorder would be good for film?

What's a good camcorder for a beginner film maker?

• I want to start making films and learning to edit, What is an affordable camcorder I could buy for this? Also how would I handle audio? I'm not looking for anything crazy just a ...show more

• Answer:

  Affordable is kind of subjective since it might mean one thing to one person and something to another. Without knowing for sure your price range on what you can afford I would recommend on the cheap end a Canon HF-R400. It might be smart to stay at this cheap end as well since you mentioned audio which is a another expense. I would get two things for audio, one would be an inexpensive shotgun microphone that you can attach to the camcorder and an external recorder like the Zoom H1. The external recorder should be very close to your recorded subject(s). A cheap way to do this is with a monopod having the external recorder attached to it and then having a person hold it near the subjects but out of the camera frame. Having it on a monopod will also keep the audio person out of the frame. It is very important that you monitor audio both in camera and through the external recorder to make sure that you are getting good sound. I would recommend some headphones that shut out most external sound around where you are shooting. The camcorder microphone is important, whether it is internal or via a shotgun mic, because you will be using that audio to sync to your external recorder audio in post. You should start every take you do with some type of clap or sound that you can sync off of. The spike from this clap will then show up in your editing program audio wave forms and you can match up this sound between the two different audio files to get a sync. Once you have a good sync I would get rid of the audio from the camera and just use the mic that was close to your subjects. Audio is one of the big things that most amateurs do not do that well when they are making movies so make sure it is good and that will add a lot of value to your final product. Below are some links that will help you out. There are some good videos on YouTube that will show you hot to do the audio sync, just do a search for something like "syncing audio in post." http://www.amazon.com/Zoom-Handy-Portable-Digital-Recorder/dp/B003QKBVYK/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1390398500&sr=8-2&keywords=zoom+h1 http://www.amazon.com/Canon-VIXIA-R400-Advanced-Camcorder/dp/B00AWZFJ22/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1390398530&sr=8-1&keywords=hf+r400