What are some good TV shows for me?

What besides lighting makes professional (or really good) camcorder videos look different from TV shows?

• I know most TV programs are filmed with the same type of digital cameras (albeit they are larger) as we could buy in a good electronics store - but what makes the TV programs (besides lighting) look less "live." Do you know what I mean? The way people move in camcorder videos looks sharp, clean, and faster somehow. When you see the camera work on TV shows, it's not like on the news - it's different lighting, and the exposure doesn't look grainy, but it looks like the movement of the actors is smoother, less jerky. What is different that makes it appear this way?

• Answer:

  Hi John: Besides decent 3-point lighting techniques (Key/Fill/Back lights → better lighting = lower gain settings = less video-noise or "grain"), and just-plain-better equipment, people tend to forget that quality optics make a big difference in professional photography, video, and film. Even with low-end professional TV shoots, you can often have a "cheap" $5000-$10,000 camera body hanging off the back of a $50,000 zoom lens. And to achieve smooth, jerk-free camera moves, the tripod & fluid pan-head can be easily another $3000-$5000 investment. And having a dedicated (in both senses of the word) video engineer monitoring and adjusting all the parameters (white balance, black balance, gamma, knee-point, iris/gain, etc.) using 'scopes (waveform & vector) and pro-monitors which easily run $3000 each makes a huge difference in the final video quality. Using high-bandwidth recording equipment allows the use of little or no video compression, which also eliminates the jerky actor and action movement you describe. (Consumer-level compression can introduce "artifacting" or stuttering into motion scenes.) I've only touched the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, but these are a good starting point of reference. hope this helps, --Dennis C.