Users of the Canon XH-A1 may be excited to learn that the filmmakers making Crank 2: High Voltage are leaning heavily on the $3300 XHA1 and another affordable Canon offering, the sub-$1000 HF10. They chose these two camcorders for their image quality, compactness, and affordability. The first Crank film was shot on Sony’s HDCAM SR format using three Sony F-950 HD cameras.

“Mark: I won’t have back problems because, you know, they’re very light. And they’re really inexpensive so it doesn’t hurt my pocketbook, but no really, we can put these cameras in places that people haven’t and we can put 10 of them in places where people haven’t. And one of the things it allows us to do is…we’re doing this moving bullet time camera rig where we take 8 HF-10’s and we put it on a light weight piece of speed rail and I can roller blade and skate around Jason Statham as he’s blasting down the street with a weapon and capture just rad images.

Brian: I mean, this is an ADD movie so we should have ADD cameras, so you know the idea of like moving the camera in outrageous ways and being able to destroy cameras without blinking an eye is more important to us than, you know, sort of having this filmic image.”

I can find no references to capturing footage tethered (nor does the A1 have HD-SDI out, that is only available on the XH-G1), so it seems at least possible that they are recording HDV to tape. See the above image of the XHA1 on a handheld Fig Rig, it appears to have no tether. However they do mention the ability to shoot “full HD” 1920 x 1080, which neither Canon camera can do (HDV is 1440×1080, not full raster). Has anyone spotted other images or references of a capture device in use?

They also said that they are shooting with an aggressive in-camera look, and doing very little in post…which is an interesting approach. The Crank team showed a lot of excitement in the past about the Red camera, shot “Game” with it already, and they mention that in this article as well.

“Mark: We just want to move faster. We’re using these little cameras because, you know, red is a beautiful image. We love red cameras, we’re going to shoot with them again, but it’s like shooting a 35mm film and you need a ton of AC’s and it takes a lot of time for set up. With the cameras we’re using we literally can point and shoot and we have the same image quality that we had on “Crank 1”. You know full HD, 1920 x 1080 res—it’s great.”

It will be interesting to see how this film turns out, both in the way the camera is used cinematically, and the final image quality. Here’s hoping it turns out rad.

You can purchase the Canon XH-A1 and Canon HF-10 at B&H for $3299 and $819, respectively. Purchases made via those links help support FreshDV at no additional cost to you.