I'm about to start shooting a short doc that I hope to get screened at festivals. I have access to archival footage of my subject that is almost all is SD and 4:3. I also want to use photographs.

I'm thinking of shooting in 720p/24fps with my HMC-150. Here's my thinking: Almost all the audio and much of the footage is going to be from an extended interview of the subject, and this footage will essentially undergird the film. I want to shoot in HD and hopefully use it, but this way I can downgrade if need be. Shooting in 720 will make it less jarring to upscale the archival footage if I go HD than if I did it in 1080. The 24fps is because I just prefer that look over 30fps. Moreover, I'll be shooting b-roll and I'm thinking that some of it I might want to put in slo-mo. Shooting in 720p means I can go to 60p and slow it down without much blur as opposed to shooting in 1080 where 60fps is interlaced.

Any thoughts or feedback would be appreciated. I'm still new to this game and have much to learn.

Sounds pretty logical to me though I don't know what the requirements of film festivals are.

I can say from having owned the hmc-150, it looks really nice in 720. Much better than 1080.

Have you looked at Magic Bullet's instant HD? does a pretty decent job of up-rezzing SD video.

One person recommended to me shooting just in 720 60p and converting it to 24fps. Is that easy to do with FCP7?

Hi Noam

I shoot my weddings at double frame rate and if there is any fast movement the 720 50P (I'm PAL) handles it a lot better than 25P where even rapid arm movements can be a little blurry. If you ever need to slow down footage, double frame rate makes for really smooth footage too!!

Not very sure about rendering out to 24P in FCP though as I don't use it!!

Chris

720p is perfectly acceptable.

As to frame rates, different festivals have different requirements for masters. 24p is a good idea if you're only displaying in HD and on the web. However, if you plan to go SD, then you'll have headaches getting it to 30p for NTSC.

The HMC150 is not a whole lot sharper in 1080p mode than in 720p - so you're not going to miss out too much by shooting at 720p.

I'd suggest shooting the interviews at 720p24, and the rest at 60p. That way the stuff you know will be at normal speed is already a perfect fit for a 24p timeline, and you have the option of using slow motion on all the b-roll footage.