In the backstage videos of music videos, you can see that camera operators are filming with small video cameras.
In the backstage scenes of TV shows, you can see that cameramen are filming with large cameras that they carry on their shoulder (or mounted on a tripod).
Comparing the quality of music videos and recordings of various shows posted on YouTube by TV channels, I do not find any difference.
It seems that small video cameras shoot just as well as large video cameras.
What is the difference?
A friend of mine who went to film school said that the primary technique in film is that you put the camera as far away as possible and simply use the zoom to frame the shot you want. These cameras have a wide field of view and a powerful zoom allowing them to be much further away from the scene and still have it be in focus, framed and with a good resolution.
They may also be using larger cassette tapes to hold more video than your average home recording device. Afaik, they still often record to some kind of physical media for storage purposes, and these big ass cameras aren’t storing the film digitally thus they have to be big enough to hold the tape/film.
It’s all digital these days, pro cameras have hot swappable ssd drives so you can record to 2 drives at once for backup, or record endlessly