Canon 5D – a still camera – used to shoot “House” finale

Here was the announcement on the twitter feed of Greg Yaitanes, the director of House:

“i’ll answer any questions you have about the canon 5D that we shot the finale on. yes, a stills camera that shoots amazing HD. go!”

Yaitanes’s 120-character-or-less Q&A tweets included these:

“@MVRamunno: What is the difference in how it looks on a TV screen compared to a regular camera?

Greg Yaitanes: richer. shallow focus pulls the actors faces to forground [sic]

@oamad0101: How many frames per second and why a Canon 5D Mark II?

GY: 24p and wanted it for ease of use in tight spaces.

@unikissa: Ok, seriously. Can you tell us something about the lenses you used?

GY: all the canon primes and the 24-70 and the 70-200 zoom

@sarabury: Did you have to change any of your working practices to fit in with differences between the 5D and a typical setup?

GY: some. focus was hard with these lenses but more “cine-style” lenses are being made as we speak.

@marykir: were you using CF cards for storage or some sort of mass storage mod? seems like you would need a lot of cards

GY: some 18gb or something like that card. gave us 22 min of footage.

@Drdiagnostic: How was the quality as compared 2 the traditional camera used in shooting?

GY: i loved it and feel it’s the future. cameras that can give you these looks

@klizma: How did you manage to stabilize the camera in tight spaces? Any special kind of brackets?

GY: no. mostly gave it a hand held feel. or on a small tripod.”

[Via PetaPixel.]

So, in summary, they shot the finale of a major TV show with a handheld still camera, in clumps of storage that never exceeded 22 minutes of film time. Was it just a stunt? Well, clearly it was a stunt, but the director seems pretty happy with how it turned out.

On a possibly related note: A professional-level, Academy- and Emmy-award-winning film editing program, is reportedly going to be made open source.  [Via Hacker News.]

The video and film industry is one of the major industries in the US. How will it be affected as the cost of its enabling hardware and software approaches zero?