Discovery is being shot on two Canon 7Ds. Bet you didn't know that! While the 7D has its drawbacks (need for stabilization, rolling shutter and other issues) I've come to the conclusion that it has the absolute best cost:performance ratio in my budget range. The array of lens options also help make it an ideal candidate.
It's also only $1800, sans lenses. To put that into perspective, a Panasonic HVX-200 would cost me TWICE as much. Since I'm going to be shooting for more than 4 days, it makes sense to buy two 7Ds instead of renting a higher-end video camera. Plus I'll have two cameras when I'm done shooting!
However, there is still the issue of my budget. Thanks to some awesome people, I got the contact information for ACTRA's low budget incentive person here in Toronto, so I may be able to get a deal on how much I spend on actors. For the sake of continuing the budget talk from this morning, let's assume the old figure of $51,015 for the budget. Well, with the $3600 for the cameras, that brings us to $54,615, but what else do we need? Well...
Batteries: Never, EVER only have one battery per camera. Nothing is worse than being unable to shoot because the batteries went dark. Two battery packs for each camera, so that's an extra $200.
AC adapter: Sometimes you're able to plug in and run off AC, which is fantastic. HOWEVER, the Canon 7D doesn't come stock with an AC adapter. You'll probably want two of these, so that's an extra $360.
Memory cards: The Canon 7D, at 1920x1080 24p has about a 330mb per minute video size. This means that a 12 minute clip (silly) would be just under 4gb. For safety's sake, four high-speed CompactFlash cards should suffice, bringing us to $720.
Lenses: This is a bit tricky. I'm temporarily budgeting $1,200 to lenses (this is a very low number) until I've fully explored my options. $1,200.
Okay, so that brings us to $2,480 for the camera accessories. Put that on top of $54,615 and we get $57,095. This is just for production and cameras. I haven't even STARTED to cover the cost of other equipment rental/purchases such as tripods, c-stands and reflectors. Maybe tomorrow. At 3am.
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