6 Pieces of Filmmaking Gear I Regret Not Buying Sooner

filmmaking and gear go hand in hand and as much as it's great to say that gear doesn't matter that's only true to a point it's true that story Trump's gear 10 times out of 10 but you still need gear to shoot stuff and the better your gear is the easier your life will be and over the years I've accumulated a ridiculous amount of gear to the point where I can barely fit it into a single room these days but out of all of it there are some things that stand out as the most universally useful and if I could go back I would have skipped out on all day gimbals and drones and sunk my money into the things that matter much much sooner and that's what this video is all about six pieces of filmmaking gear that I wish I'd bought earlier I'm not exactly gonna rank them but I am going to save the best for last and it's probably not what you're expecting so let's not waste any more time and get right into it [Music] hey guys welcome back and if you're new here my name is Luke Forsyth and on this channel I teach the skills I've learned over 10 years working as a documentary filmmaker and photographer right off the bat I'm going to start with the piece of gear that's been in my kit the longest it's the unsung hero of my camera rig that I barely notice anymore but that's just kept on working day after day and it's only when I don't have it that I realize how much I miss it and that's my on-camera monitor I'm personally using this small rig 502 ultra bright which I don't actually think they make anymore I'm not even saying that you need to get this specific one but if you're still relying on the camera LCD screen for Focus I would highly recommend investing in a monitor as soon as you can speaking of good Investments the sponsor of this video is audio which is a no-brainer investment for filmmakers who need royalty-free music but more on that later these days we shoot almost everything at 4K and at that resolution if you miss the focus by even a few millimeters it is super obvious and the shot is almost unusable most of the time I have my own feelings about 4K but that's the way of the world these days so all we can do is roll with it and while autofocus and touch screens and all that stuff have come a long way there's really nothing that can replace is having a big bright monitor to help you know what you're really shooting and I do know that small HD makes pretty expensive stuff but not all monitors are created equal I recently tried to buy a much cheaper monitor to use with my fx3 thinking that I could save some money and get most of the same results but I was wrong and after one shoot I ended up giving it away to my mentorship student because it just didn't do what I needed it to do and what I need is for it to be super bright so that I can see it while shooting outside but maybe more importantly it needs to have really accurate focus peaking so that I'm positive I'm focusing on the right thing the cheaper monitor was shockingly worse at this and I was never totally confident that I had it right so it's failed at its main job for me and was essentially useless now false color and Lut overlays and all that are nice to have too but for me brightness and focus peaking are the essentials and it's tough to find Budget solutions that do this really well my only regret was not investing in a good monitor right at the start of my filmmaking career when I bought my first cinema camera because if I'd known how much of a difference this monitor would make take and how long it would last I wouldn't have struggled with my fs5 stock monitor as long as I did and while we're at it make sure to get a good sun shade too because not only does it help to see even better in bright light but it stops people from crowding over your shoulder to see what you're filming I use this one which is an aviator uh model from a hoodman I think it's made for an iPhone but this fits the five inch monitor really well and comes with me on every single shoot next up is the thing I probably waited the longest to invest in just because it wasn't very exciting and that's a solid tripod and by solid I don't necessarily mean that you have to get a super expensive flow Tech like this one I have now though I do still think it's the best documentary tripod out there but just one that has a few basic features the first is a leveling Bowl Mount so you can make sure your head is level without adjusting the legs because over hundreds and thousands of repetitions that is just so much wasted time and frustration and it's not going to inspire much confidence in your clients and subject you might be tempting to save some money on a Stills tripod but even if it can handle the weight of your camera the lack of a ball mount just isn't worth it in my opinion the second important quality is that you should be able to adjust the height with as few stages as possible the very best ones have just one set of latches to control the height so you can bring it up and down really fast but even if you go with a more budget option try to avoid tripods with more than two stages of releases I resisted investing in a good tripod for the first six years of my career and if I'd known what a difference it would would make I never would have waited so long and I would have held off on that macro lens and flashy matte box and bought the best tripod that I could afford much much sooner tripods never go out of date and a good one will last you a decade or more like I said in my opinion the cream of the crop is the flow Tech and if you have Deep Pockets you can add an active head for the dream setup but you don't need to spend that much especially if you're just starting just don't be like me and waste your money on cooler accessories just because they're fun get a solid Dependable tripod early and then just forget about it another solid and dependable resource I have zero regrets about using is audio like that transition which is the royalty-free music site I use for 100 of these videos and more and more from my documentary work as well I actually just scored an entire short film using music from audio so just because it's one of the most affordable options out there don't think that it's only good for amateurs because it's not we all know what royalty-free music sites are these days but there are a few reasons why I go with audio over the rest even though I've tried them all at different times in my career the first just because it's a highly curated library with pretty much No Junk and for someone like me who just wants to find a good song and get back to editing as fast as possible that's much more valuable to me than having 10 000 extra tracks I'm never going to use another reason is their huge sound effects Library which is constantly growing and if you've ever made a short film you probably know what a different sound design can make maybe you need a base layer track of the inside of a car driving to cover Cuts during a conversation or some Gentle Wind noises to segue between b-roll shots just search for what you need and odds are audio probably has you covered I think they're at over 30 000 sound effects right now and I've never had any trouble finding what I needed and they're constantly adding more lastly is the price because at the time of recording audio is the best deal out there at just 59 bucks for a full year of access when you use the code Luke 70. most of the other streaming services cost like four times more than this and especially when you're just starting to build up your kit that's not a small investment so save yourself some money and get access to all the music and sound effects you need and support this Channel at the same time I never promote things I don't use myself and I honestly think audio is both high quality and a stellar deal there's a link in the description as per usual and now let's get back to the video the next thing I really regret not investing in sooner was a big powerful single Source life when I first started out I figured that documentaries don't use lights in the same way as Hollywood movies so why bother dragging around anything larger than a one by one panel I prioritize portability over output and while that's not totally a bad idea after a few years of lighting ugly looking interviews or struggling to compete against window light with tiny battery-powered LEDs I realized I was hurting my final product don't get me wrong small lights are great and I have all sorts of panels and tubes and pocket lights but in some of the most important situations nothing can replace a big chip on board light interviews are the first thing that come to mind and being able to pump some serious output through a softbox is crucial to a good interview or walking into a really dark room and realizing that you need something strong to blast up into the ceiling or maybe you need something to look like daylight but you're actually shooting at night you can use a big light to shine through the window and get some really great results now this isn't a lighting video though so I'm not gonna break down all of the uses there are for a large single source light but I definitely regret waiting so long to get one if I could go back I'd actually say that a chip on board style LED light like an aputure 300D or similar with a softbox would be the first light I'd get in my kit we're lucky enough to be living in a golden age of lighting technology and there are a ton of companies that make lights like this at good prices aperture is probably the best well known in the LED world but small rig and godox are also starting to make some really interesting entries that are even more affordable whatever brand you go with I'd suggest saving a bit for the most powerful one you can something like a 300D or a 600D even if you can swing it a lot of these LED lights even though they're not cheap are still cheaper than those one by one panels I started with so trust me just pick one up you'll find a use for it I promise and when you really need a lot of power you're going to be glad you have it next we'll move away from lighting and we'll talk about lenses for a second because the next thing I wish I'd done sooner was prioritizing manual focus lenses over autofocus speed if you spend enough time on YouTube and I spend a lot of time on YouTube stop it get some help you'll see every lens that gets reviewed is judged on its autofocus speed and while autofocus can be super useful in some situations the vast majority of high-end Shooters whether in dock or narrative world are using manual focus lenses I'm definitely not saying not to use autofocus because I use it pretty often but when I bought my first video lenses I made auto focus speed a very high priority only later I realized that the trade-off for super fast autofocus speed usually comes at the expense of smooth manual controls and the longer I do this job the more I use manual focus lenses only lenses that are built with autofocus is a top priority usually have really short Focus throws because it's fast for internal Motors to get from one point to the other but that means when you try and use them manually it's really hard to dial in precise Focus because just a few mm meters of turning changes the focus plane completely Sony G Master lenses which use a focus by wire system are some of the worst at this in my experience even though they're relatively expensive I'm not hating on them and I do have a couple myself I'm filming on one right now but I only use them for things like these YouTube videos or maybe on a gimbal where I'm not planning to do any focusing myself when I have tried to focus them manually I find the experience really unpleasant now this is a contentious topic and I know a lot of people love their autofocus so feel free to argue with me in the comments but when I compare them to something like this which is a Fuji Cinema Zoom or even something like an art lens they are so touchy and hard to dial in that they'd be close to the bottom of my list of recommended lenses for covering scenes for talking head interviews and Action Sports and things like that it could be different but for covering a scene where you want smooth organic movement between things I'm sorry but I hate them I know I'm opening myself up to all sorts of hate here why don't you go yourself but in my experience manual focus is the king at higher level and I regret wasting my money on lenses that didn't do it well okay we're getting close to the end here and just two more things on this list and the next one is one of my favorites because if you've been watching this channel for any length of time you'll know that I have a serious bag fetish you don't need to and probably shouldn't take it to the extent that I have but investing in a really solid backpack will save you all sorts of back problems and just generally make life easier for you as your kid grows coming from a photojournalism background I started with shoulder bags because that's what I was used to but that's definitely not the right move as video gear gets super heavy and shoulder bags are tough to carry then I bought a random manfrotto bag that I found on sale and even though I still use it for some specific things it's overall really uncomfortable and hard to carry around for long distances finally I found the company f-stop to make the camera bags that are more design like hiking packs and I've never gone back but my point here isn't to pitch f-stop to you because what works for me might not work for you what I'm trying to get across is that getting one solid backpack that can fit most of what you need to shoot and you can stand to have on your back for more than 15 minutes is a great investment I need mine to be able to handle some seriously brutal conditions from mountains to jungles so s-stop works for me but there are lots of other options out there if I had a time machine I would have saved hundreds of dollars in wasted cash that I spent on cheap backpacks that I never even liked from day one and that's a regret for sure lastly we get to the one thing that's made the biggest difference in my work and it's not even in the camera department and that's replacing my stock mics that come with wireless Labs with these which are sanken cos 11ds it might sound strange to say that the piece of gear I regret not buying sooner is a lav mic when the stock mic seems to work okay but trust me these things are worth every penny for starters the sound quality is much much better and even cheap laugh packs can get a major bump in sound quality from changing out the stock mic there's a reason those things are included in the box and it's not because they're the best in the same way that putting a good shotgun on your camera will level up your sound game swapping out these mics makes an immediate difference and since audio is at least half of the storytelling process it's a really great investment but more than just sound quality these things are much much smaller which makes them easier to hide than the stock mics which tend to have these big bulbous ends on them can you see that look how small this thing is and when you get down to this size it opens up a bunch possibilities like using Undercovers or one of those little rubber squares and some medical tape that you'd never be able to do with the mics that ship with the laugh packs and since documentaries are all about the real world the less we see the mic bulging through our characters t-shirts the less likely we are to break the illusion these things aren't cheap but as long as you don't break them they'll never go out of date so that's it six things I wish I'd bought sooner I do realize that not everyone is in a position to buy anything at all and not having this stuff does not mean that you can't make incredible stories I've watched docs I love that were made with Rock Bottom quality gear so gear is never a match for story work with what you have and don't let gear stop you ever but if you're looking to build up a professional kit you can earn money with in the long run and that you're going to be able to keep for a decade or more then investing in these six things is a great move in my opinion thanks for watching and I hope you got some value out of that and if you did think about signing up for the wait list on my documentary cinematography course that's coming out in a few months I'm going to cover a ton of gear topics but I'm also going to get into scene coverage lighting career tips business advice and a lot more there's a link below if you're into that kind of thing and I'll let you know the day it's public see ya foreign

Channel: Luc Forsyth

Views: 238,213

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Id: RYvMVIZdvXk

Length: 14min 19sec (859 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 19 2023