Kids these days

As I've alluded to in other posts on the comics documentary, I've cobbled together a crew for the summer from students, recent grads, and Anne-Marie. Mostly, this has been to help with interviews; while you can be a one person crew working with digital media, it isn't the best way to work, at least not for me. However, I've also been asking folks to help with logging tape, an essential, but tedious job.

Logging tape entails providing useful descriptions for every shot on a tape, usually including information like time code, angle, and subject. Getting this done is helpful for a number of reasons. Once you have a tape logged, subsequent viewings can be devoted to evaluating quality and content. A log lets you see at a glance what's on a tape. It makes it possible to fish out specific kinds of footage without having to actually watch an entire tape. It can guide the creation of a batch list for downloading footage. I'm sure that there are people who work without logging their tape, but I can't imagine not doing it, especially not on a project where you're going to be working with hours and hours of material (I generally don't create a tape log for events like this weekend's 48 Hour Film Project, but that's a time issue, and we usually don't have much more than an hour of tape to work with in any event).

I've been asking members of the crew to log tapes, and with some mixed success. Not surprisingly, no one is eager to do this job, but most have been game when asked directly. The main limiter I've discovered is that most don't have access to miniDV cameras, and certainly not to miniDV decks. All but one person has informed me that they only have access to hard drive-based cameras, or everyone they know just uses the video function on their digital still cameras. One person told me that he's never had a miniDV machine, only hard drive based ones.

I have wide control and access to a couple of camcorders from the university, but not enough to keep everyone working simultaneously. I guess that miniDV became outmoded at the consumer level without me really noticing.