JVC Professional Products, a division of JVC U.S.A., announced that the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College in Ithaca, N.Y., has purchased 20 JVC GY-HM700 ProHD camcorders for its TV production and cinematography courses.
“Right out of the box the JVC GY-HM700 produces a gorgeous image with a very pleasing color palette. But what closed the deal for us is this camcorder’s exceptional price/performance ratio and low total cost of ownership,” said Phillip Wacker-Hoeflin, cinema production support engineer.
Two of the JVC GY-HM700 camcorders have been outfitted with P+S Technik MINI35 Compact image converters and Nikon photographic lenses to achieve 35 mm optical geometry without the expense of 35 mm motion picture cameras and prime lenses. The two units are also outfitted with motion picture matte boxes and follow-focus systems. With the GY-HM700’s HD scanning and creative features such as RGB gamma curve and color saturation, the setup allows students to produce content with a 35 mm film look and film judder.
Approximately 30 students in the “Advanced Cinematography” course will have access to the two modified units. The remaining 18 GY-HM700 camcorders will be used by undergraduate students taking classes in the Department of Television-Radio, as well as the Department of Cinema, Photography, and Media Arts.
“With its enormous creative latitude and removable lenses, we’ve devised a very innovative strategy that turns these HD camcorders into virtual 35 mm motion picture rigs for advanced digital cinematography applications for a fraction of the cost,” said Wacker-Hoeflin. “Considering the escalating costs of 35 mm motion picture film and processing, as well as high-end digital cinematography gear, we would not be able to prepare our students for today’s demanding film and television business without such a creative, cost-effective solution.”
The film-like images are recorded in real time onto SDHC solid-state media as native QuickTime files for a quick shoot-to-edit workflow. Because almost all the school’s edit bays use Apple Final Cut Pro editing software, Wacker-Hoeflin said the native file recording was an advantage. Student films are burned to Blu-ray or DVD—or stored on a 24 TB media server—and screened using a Christie digital HD projector in the school’s 220-seat auditorium.
