9 Things You Actually Need for Filmmaking

[Music] a lot of people talk about just having an eye from lighting but I just felt like I had to learn the technical to achieve the non-technical that's what's gonna separate you from pretty much everybody right what's up Indy mogul Ted here and of welcome back and kick things off today here is a question what do you actually need to make bounce nothing seen and video thank you and good night the truth is you don't really need great gear to make great films and if you're gonna hear it from anybody please hear it from me I worked in the industry of making gear and I know a bunch of you guys are like hey Ted you guys have been using a lot of gear to which I say yeah we have and we use gear the only thing that changes when you have gear is you realize that it doesn't help you as much as you thought it would in the first place so no bro you don't need that gimbal but if you are ready to spend a little bit of coin on your filmmaking journey if you are ready to invest in yourself and you're ready to start building skills with gear what do you actually need to buy and how do you make sure you're not wasting money on trannies to find out I reached out to my friend Caleb Pike who is the force of nature known as DSLR video shooter he's basically the og Channel when it comes to filmmaking gear he's been studying it for over a decade he's been making videos about it's like 9 years and when it comes to gear especially for digital creators there's basically nobody there that's been posting about it as long as he has so we left Toronto and we said goodbye to our friend Maddy and we headed out straight to chai to go visit my buddy Caleb bike but first [Music] what is going on guys we are still in Toronto basically going to be heading over to Chicago leaves at 7:14 okay what time is it now it's now 10:00 to 7:00 yes it has happened we missed the flight started flying out tomorrow morning at 7:00 a.m. so from the person that has seen it all the UPS the downs the trends that have come around and stuck around what do you really need now this is just a small portion of our discussion with Kevin Mike but make sure you check out the full discussion in the podcast link down below so basically as someone that's seen like a lot of gear one of the top things to kind of cut through the fluff that people really if they're starting out it actually invested I actually went years and years and years and years without getting a nice trappin even this to this day I hate to say it I don't have a super nice tripod so I would recommend getting a decent set of sticks if you have to start cheap that's fine Ben Rose the company I've used a lot there s8 if you can afford it is a great kind of middle-of-the-road solid tripod what are you looking for in a good drug something that can balance nicely something that on the pan and the tilt you can just move it and there's no weird jitters I really like to have one with a bowl of some kind that's what I love Ben drew the center column goes up and down and there's a bowl all right well gimbal can do everything that a slider and a jib and a tripod can do no it can't if you are just starting out you really don't need one in fact I guarantee that you'll end up getting much more use out of a tripod than a gimbal you're gonna learn how to shoot locked-off shots with lighting like this one and in many ways I actually think that having a gimbal can make you a worse off filmmaker with the gimbals and stuff you know people just kind of throw the camera over the place there's no motivated movement so a tripod I feel like people think more about you know their framing their composition from there I really love vintage lenses so you can save a ton of coin called the phone you're telling me that I need lenses like plural aren't those expensive and yes they aren't and while cameras have dropped in price because of the BS boom lighting is dropping in price because of LEDs Thank You LEDs honestly out of everything in the filmmaking industry I think lenses are like the one thing that haven't dropped in price yet they have had a dramatic spike yet but in the meanwhile before they drop and prices which I think they will eventually what are our options go back and buy like Carl Zeiss Jena lenses or FD lenses I have you know some right here I love them they're really affordable probably the cheapest best looking lens is out there you know a whole set for I don't know five hundred thousand dollars depending on how nice fast of a set you go for it I love this tip vintage lenses are super overlooked they have a different quality to them a different look to them but if you are just starting off and you're trying to understand what the difference is between different both ones there's nothing that beats having a full kit of vintage primes for super cheap and actually try swapping out lenses and understanding what it does to your image so aside from cost which is significant older lenses are gonna have older coatings these days we can coat lenses to do anything twelve zero flares lots of contrast these older lenses they're going to have a lower contrast flaring is amazing as well and then the characteristics of the bokeh is really interesting alright so for number three what are we recommending here we're looking at a color chart and in particular this is a little color checker passport from X right what I love about it is the size for some for most and it's really rugged it's got a nice hard case it's like a tiny Pelican case this just lives in my back pocket on set or near my camera setup when I'm in a studio there's a good chance that you've never seen this performance and if that's the case there's also a good chance that you or someone you know has been the victim of shooting color or footage that doesn't look right we've all been there it's daylight and you shot it at 2000 Kelvin you can't just drag a slider over because the way these cameras are reading all that information you need to make sure red is red Green is green white middle gray and black are all brought back to that correct color and if you ever have that shot we just can't get the skin right this will save your bacon with something like an X right colorchecker all you've got to do is slip one of these into your shot generally speaking every time you start shooting in a new location or chain or lighting setups cuz that's where your colors are gonna change and then in post all you have to do is use your software to actually identify that color checker correct those colors so that you can actually have perfect color and skin tones in every single shop this is great this is dummy proof it's something early on that will help and save your footage why I think is the most important thing that'll separate you for most people today and that's lighting one bright light doesn't matter what it is something right and we're going to modify that for a bright light now forget the camera everyone has a camera but very few people have good lighting I use a 120 Demark - you just want it to be cheap byah old mold Richardson 1k for like 50 bucks yeah it'll last you forever and just in case you're wondering yes you will be able to do everything that the big fancy doohickey lights can do with a molar inserts in 1k it'll be a little bit more tricky because it's hot but since it's 1k and it only pulls about a thousand watts that means then you can still plug it into a normal household circuit you want something with a big fat chip on it a big fat source so why is having one source so important well one source means one shadow which is good because it looks a little bit more natural after all the Sun is one source so any time you see a multi source light ie light panels be careful because you're going to need to diffuse that later you're gonna need a bounce off the wall or shoot it through some kind of diffusion that changes that multi-source light into a single source light from that one if heating panel otherwise you're gonna get something known as the multi shadow effect which looks bad so look if you take anything away from this video remember this panel lighting should always be used at the fusion and that good lighting with a boring camera will always look better than a good camera with boring lighting so you've got your big light source doesn't matter what it is it's big it's bright then usually I'm going with something like this this is a chain TV f30 or f55 number five an accent light now I know we just talked about our big source and the one that you need yes I'm sorry you need a second light now we're talking about the opposite end of the spectrum we're talking about getting a tiny little kicker enlightenment very simple to operate this one's a bicolor model it's got little barn doors on it so if you just want just that little kiss of light right there in your hair this is gonna do that for you whereas when the big fat source is used for softening and for acting is key this tiny little kicker light is actually perfect for adding a hair light which will usually end up placing on the opposite side of your key light to end up bringing out your subject from the background all that darkness back there or you can actually use these little lights as an accent light which is basically a light that is used for adding little kisses of light but things that you want to see like hey look at that flex that what tough one right there so we just talked about her big legs those talked about her small light source where we talk about see stains and you need them and you need lots of thumb so at least get one and just start using it experimenting with it you can do anything with a C's tune number six a c-stand now they're heavy I know they're expensive I know but it will save you so many hours in the future if you start learning how to grip it now and there are so many other ways to rig a light than just on with the C stand you're gonna be able to start playing around with things like complicated lighting under slinging lights arming them out and they're useful for more than just lighting too we're holding up sound blankets right now we have a light on its east and we even have a camera because we needed a second tripod essentially clamping and rigged up which is another reason you need a c-stand so you can post things online and post your rigs number seven shotgun microphone for that I use a diety so2 microphone love it it's a nice it feels good with this device solid brass strong I have worked a ton with the Sennheiser mk4 16 which it just sounds and feels like the same so that's kind of like the last Mike for me now I'm not Nadia professional but I do know that when you're looking for a good shotgun there's a lot of contradictory advice out there and it used to confuse me a lot too so hopefully I can share some knowledge of what I've learned people will tell you to look for a microphone that has a lot of bass and sound so it sounds warmer and there's also people that will tell you to look for a mic that sounds neutral and they both can't be right right base or neutral which one do you choose if you're going straight out the gate a microphone with added bass is going to sound better it's gonna sound fuller because it is pretty cued to boost the bass on the microphone now neutral audio can always be EQ to introduce more bass and there will not be any noise or distortion from doing so which is why neutral audio is what most professionals look for it's actually gonna play much better in post so if you're recording things like voices or sound effects really anything where you're planning on doing a sound mix neutral audio is where you want to go that said it does require a little bit more work if you want that normal bass sound so if you're new and you're straight out the gate and you want that base immediately that's actually totally up to you however now you actually know what the difference is between added bass and neutral audio and why there's so much damn confusion about it online and on top of that I really dig the SMX 15 I believe it is from as den it's a really nice kind of alternative to the road stuff number eight audio recorder now you've got your big old fancy microphone the next thing that you need is there a recorder to actually plug it into this is what I've ended up with and it's probably gonna be like for a video guy like the last thing I'll need to buy and that's the mix pre three from sound devices so this is an audio preamp and recorder really clean you can leave it if it's too low you can boost it up there's it's super clean has analog limiters which essentially means if you do have that nasty distortion over zero problem this will catch it before it's written love this guy and it's really affordable for sound devices at around 600 650 now the benefit of something like the mixed pre three is that it allows you to adjust the recording with these knobs right here now the idea is that you generally want to avoid anything that has buttons or anything that doesn't give you smooth control of those levels after that it's really about how many inputs you have any recorder what the battery life is like and how reliable it is overall seamless camera I love that we forgot about the camera and finally we have come full circle and arrived to the thing that I think a lot of you guys are waiting for the camera guys I can't say this enough but just don't stress out too much about the camera yes it's important I'm not denying that yes it's cool it's fun it's exciting but the reason it's last is because this is the part of your kit that's going to depreciate faster than anything else this is also the part of your kit that's going to become outdated before you know it cameras come out every 3-4 months these days my thing is eyes in via camera that you can own not going to debt for hopefully and that'll cover maybe 80 to 90% of your work and then for those huge gigs rent but since I know a lot of you guys are curious about it and to be totally honest I am - here is Caleb's camera choice for 2019 I would consider something like a GH by its 4k has really solid when you're talking about logs I love the log just an all-around solid camera these days it's kind of like large full-frame sensor good autofocus good shallow depth of field and then smaller sensors but high pixel quality there's just so much information there recorders up to 400 megabits a second that's 40 to 10-bit so there's just all that is to say tons of information that you can start to move around on a lot of these other cameras you know they're cutting corners to save on what you know heat really that's the biggest problem so you're gonna start to see stuff fall apart pretty quick so there you go guys you don't need a whole lot of film gear to start filmmaking but if you want to start investing or spending in here here are the first 9 things that you want to buy so I would prefer you spend the money on lenses tripod lighting modifiers C stands and then get cameras like this that you can rotate and yes I know that there are a couple things that are not on this list like say a drunk or a gimbal but that's become - both at least me and Caleb but they just aren't that important all that other stuff we talked about is gonna stick with you I'm gonna that mix pre until you know I'm gone or it's gets run over by 50 trucks that strong sound devices and you get it repaired exactly exactly exactly so cameras you know I don't want to hang on to this for 10 years but anyway I know that there's a lot of tools out there that we didn't actually get to so if you think of anything feel free to let us know in the comments below of what else you think should be recommended I'll also put Kevin's full link in the description below as well as here on this screen hopefully it showed up make sure you check out the full podcast link below where we talk about gear and how cam got into filmmaking do you feel like my school was that you still would go to no no so glad I did it mainly because of financing make sure to tune in next week when we go to go visit Devin Supertramp to learn how to make stunts look even better than they do in real life one of the first things I say is study Michael Bay and the filming no that is it for me I'm gentle mini mogul and of course we'll catch you guys in the next one [Music]

Channel: Indy Mogul

Views: 390,556

Rating: 4.8889999 out of 5

Keywords: indy mogul, film, filmmaker, indie, independent, filmmaking, behind-the-scenes, DIY, video, how to, techniques, red, alexa, panasonic gh5, came-tv, benro, aputure, c-stands, x-rite, deity, sound devices

Id: _os_IfUUUI0

Length: 15min 45sec (945 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 19 2019