This entry is a guest post I wrote for nofilmschool.com; NoFilmSchool’s founder Koo is a frequent collaborator of mine and fellow co-creator of The West Side. If you haven’t yet, you should check out NoFilmSchool: it’s an invaluable resource for independent creatives and I promise you’ll find something rewarding.

This post is fundamentally a review of the twin-lens, 3D JVC GS-TD1 camcorder and so I’ll get it out of the way up front and say that I really liked this camera. A lot. For a two lens system, it’s incredibly small and durable, it makes a beautiful image, and is about as good as I could reasonably expect for 2011. Done! Okay, fine, I’ll go a bit more in-depth, but this won’t be an extremely technical rundown. For a more detailed technical rundown of the JVC camcorder, please see this perfectly fine summary of the nitty gritty.

One quick disclaimer: Koo was kind enough to help me help him help B&H (who was very kind in lending Koo/me the camera and the oh-so-sweet Steadicam Merlin to use in conjunction). I got to spend some quality time with the package in exchange for the words you now read (yes, it pays to be a co-Webby Award winner with my main man Koo; yeah, I’m that dude), but please rest assured that my critic’s impartiality has not been swayed by said schwag. But by all means, if you DO order this gear — or any gear — please go ahead and trust B&H with your business. They’ve got their game faces on. And you want game faces.

But lets push on: I’ll assume we haven’t met and I haven’t talked your ear off about how sweet 3D is, and how there’s just no way it can’t not be the future (or part of it!), so I’ll just say that I’m a big 3D nerd these days (I’m in preproduction on my debut feature film, which, you guessed it, will be in three-dee). I know that there are 3D haters out there because I’ve read your vitriol on this very blog and basically anywhere else someone mentions 3D. And it’s cool, 3D’s not for you. But I’m kind of into it (and I’m not a hater), so we’ll take your strangely passionate arguments as granted and move on to the “review.” Though despite and maybe because of this little jibe, I see it now: your comments crying foul, fad, glasses, agh! This really isn’t meant to be a polarizing article, just a few gentle anecdotes in the nofilmschool spirit of pushing things forward as independent content creators. If you’re interested, I quickly touch on the topic of 3D haters, and other things, in this little post relaunching my own 3D site, but again, it basically boils down to, “Hi Hater”). All jokes aside, what I mean to say is that there’s room for all of us in this independent community of ours; there’s too much actual BS in the world to wish for anything but your independent (2 or 3D) success and I’d hope the feeling’s fundamentally mutual, regardless of my dimension. Okay, 3D hater disclaimer over (for now)… Continue reading →