Camera and sound edit in premiere

Question

I have to work on a commerical that I will be editing in premiere.  Can anyone tell me some suggestions on
what type of equipment, hd camera would be best for this.  I'm not looking for super high end, but something
that won't break the bank and will still look professional.
Also, will anything separate be needed for recording audio? Or can you pick up audio from the camera. 
Thanks for your suggestions and help in advance!

Answer 1

Come on, guys, he's not shooting a promo for CSI: Miami or anything.  A local TV commercial doesn't have to have such high standards, especially with the lower budgets.
At my church we have a Panasonic AG-HMC150.  For the price it's the best camera out there, and Premiere natively supports the AVCHD format that it records in.  There right around $4k.  I dunno how much to rent.  If that's still out of your budget, a consumer grade HD camera should be able to get the job done if you use it right.  Without knowing more about the commercial, it's hard to recommend equipment, but here's a few suggestions.  If you have someone on camera giving some dialogue, you'll probably want to get a wireless lapel mic or something of that sort (and make sure you have the right connectors/adapters to plug it into the mic jack on the camera).  As far as lighting, depending on the situation, just use your basic 3-light technique using some cheap but bright lights.
If you're wanting to do some graphic animations, you could probably get better looking ones using After Effects.  It has a lot of cool animation presets for graphics and text, and you can add motion blur, etc.  For just basic still or scrolling text on the screen, Premiere will do fine.
Tell us some more about the commercial and we can give more specific ideas.