The HVX is a fine camera but the DOF coming from a 1/3" chip is not what we are after.
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Pix, I know you won't believe this , but, from my experience, short depth of focus is not what makes cinematography look good.
The most important factor is what is put in front of the lens to photograph. Good actors, good costumes, good set, good lighting, good composition. After all that, I would consider depth of focus, but don't get fixated on the size of the chip. As you pointed out earlier, it's hard to shoot a movie in focus with moving actors and very short depth of field. Even for the professionals. Really, will your professional focus puller be using an ultrasonic tape measure during shots to help nail the focus? Even with that, sometimes an operator has to try to fix it on the fly if they can see it.
Personally, I don't like movies that are largely "almost focused", but I've seen a few shot with 35mm still camera lenses (or cine lenses) on a Red Rock or other 35mm lens adapter. I think the movie has to be pretty darned good to overcome being out of focus 85% of the time.
I seem to remember a lot of buzz about a cinematographer who managed to shoot an entire motion picture with everything in focus. Magazine articles were written about this great achievement from 1940 which of course was "Citizen Cane".
Pix, just so you know, I'm not really answering your post directly, I'm really reacting to all the people who insist to me that "we can't afford to shoot on 35mm film, so we need to use one of these Red Rock adapters to make the movie look good like film" "Here, we can use this handycam (choose model/brand) with adapter and our $5000.00 feature film will look like we used a Panaflex and spent $20,000,000!"
Really worse than this are those that say "ok, were stuck with a 1//3 in or 2/3in chip depth of field so we'll shoot everything on the longest lens we've got to get that background out of focus. Then it will look like a real movie". No, it just takes the viewer out of the action like they're watching the story on a telescope.
Rant over. Pix, make a great movie!