YouTube Has a Filmmaking Gear Problem

if you're into the YouTube filmmaking world at all you've probably stumbled on one of those why I'm switching from Sony to black magic or why I'm ditching Canon for the kodo X videos or whatever because they're everywhere these days and even though I have nothing against those creators I personally hate those videos and I think they point to a larger issue with how the YouTube Community talks about gear that can be really harmful to filmmakers who are working their way up the ladder and before you think I'm making one of those gear doesn't matter videos let me just stop you right there because after 15 years of working in the industry as a documentary cinematographer I can say with total confidence that gear absolutely does matter but not in the way most people seem to think it does so today I'm going to pick apart the YouTube gear problem why I think it's influencing filmmakers to make bad decisions and how we can build a healthy relationship to gear by spending our money on the things that actually matter right off the bat let me just say that I love gear I look at film making especially the documentary stuff that I do kind of like a complicated exercise in Creative problem solving you have a story you're trying to tell you've got some beats or scenes that you think will speak to that story and then a limited set of tools you can use to pull it off now depending on where you are in your career that might mean one camera and a single lens or it might mean an entire van full of Pelican cases but the challenge is still the same you use what you have to get as close as possible to what your vision was limitations are actually part of the fun of the job for me like those times where I realize I forgot my light stands and now I have to figure out how to rig lights from the ceiling using some sort of Frankenstein system of clamps and tape or like when a director asked me to rig up a requim for a dream style snor cam POV shot in a batcave and I have to figure out how to make it work with a 10-year-old travel tripod and my belt the more tools you have in the bag the easier it can be to solve those problems and the more problems you solve the closer you are to nailing your vision for the story and over the years I've built up a pretty substantial amount of gear $108,000 worth of it according to my last insurance policy and considering that I don't own a house and I drive a 15 year old car that should tell you a lot about what I value in life I also make YouTube videos about gear so no I would never tell anyone that gear doesn't matter but I do think we need to collectively reframe what gear matters so we can focus on the right things instead of just the next thing or the newest thing so let me just kick this off with a quick Story the hero of our story is a newer career filmmaker maybe with a few years of experience under their belt or maybe they're just starting out they've got a small but solid kit that they like and a camera that they can afford they've got a few short projects and while they're proud of the effort they're just not quite satisfied with the final result not that it's bad but that it wasn't as good as they wanted to be Ira Glass the legendary host of the radio show This American Life described this perfectly as the stage when your talent hasn't quite caught up to your tastes you know what looks good and what you like you just don't have the skills to get there quite yet so one day our hero is planning out their next spec project the one that they're going to use to fix all the mistakes they made the last time when they innocently open up YouTube and right away they're met with a video called why I'm ditching my Sony for the Blackmagic 6K or insert whatever other camera manufacturer name you want here but wait they think I have a Sony camera is there something wrong with it so they click on the video and then they spend the next 12 minutes listening to a detailed breakdown of all the things that the brand new Blackmagic does really well and how the 2-year-old Sony just can't match the bit rate or how much better the codec is or how much easier it is to work with the 6K straightforward menu system and to be fair these videos usually make valid points newer cameras are typically better than old ones and more expensive ones are almost always more powerful than cheaper ones when the video is over our hero looks at the Sony on their desk and starts to wonder if maybe it's holding them back like maybe the reason their shorts aren't getting into the film festivals they want or they're not finding the big retainer clients they've been chasing is because they don't have a high enough bit rate or they don't have those ssds to enable raw recording or because they only have 11 stops of dynamic range instead of 14 and gradually they convince themselves that there's no point shooting the project they had in mind right now because what's the point with such an outdated piece of tech like obviously their last film sucked it wasn't shot with a full-frame camera and the interview light they used only had a CRI rating of 90 instead of 95 plus and if you're thinking that seems far-fetched trust me since I started this YouTube channel I have a ton of interaction with filmmakers at all levels and one of the most common things I get asked is is the gear I have good enough I'm not talking about gear acquisition syndrome or gas or whatever the Internet calls it these days I'm talking about a gear inferiority complex that leads people to believe that new always means good as though it's the tech that determines a Project's success more than story and good coverage and this is so dangerous for people to internalize because it's just straight up wrong if you can't tell a good story with the gear that you have you're not going to be able to tell a good story with the new stuff either and all you'll be doing is adding a maxed out credit card to your list of problems and again I'm not blasting the creators who make those videos because maybe switching camera systems might make perfect sense for them and where they're at in their careers maybe that upgrade is going to save them hours of time of transcoding files or something or the higher specs will open up paying jobs that they couldn't accept before and in those situations it makes complete sense to invest but even if those moves are perfect for them and where they're at with their business at that moment they usually don't apply to the vast majority of people watching and that's the problem so if the elephant in the room is that I own more than 100 Grand worth of gear myself and I make Gear videos on this channel fairly often I should probably take a second to explain how I'm not doing exactly the same thing or at least how I'm trying to get out a different message anyways because I do try to stick to a consistent philosophy when it comes to gear both for myself and for the things I talk about this channel which is where I get the nerve to say that buying a new camera is wrong when I have a whole room in my apartment full of gear year because the reality is I didn't start with a kit like this and in my whole career I've only ever owned three main cameras I started out with a used fs5 Mark 1 that I used for 3 years until I destroyed it shooting a migrant Caravan in the rain in southern Mexico after that I got a used fs7 Mark I that I used for 4 years until I wrecked it with my own sweat in that Batcave in Kenny I mentioned and then after that I got the used fx9 that I'm still using now and I'm going to keep on using that fx9 until it either breaks or if it turns out to be in destructible somehow until there's a concrete reason why I can't use it to work at the professional level expected of me I'm not even really sure what that would look like but I guess maybe it's possible that somehow 6K is no longer enough resolution for Netflix standards or something like that but odds are I'll end up using that camera to death long before that happens and that's really been my whole approach to gear throughout my career when I genuinely need something I'll save up for the best tool I can afford based on the level I'm currently at and what my clients expect and then I use it until it dies when I am forced to upgrade it's never because the camera couldn't do the job anymore and if I'd never gone into that Batcave odds are I might still be using that fs7 today because the reality is that at a certain point the camera just doesn't really matter and that's not just me talking because one of the best looking doc shows on TV right now National Geographics traffic is shot on Sony F5s that came out in 2012 or at least it was when I worked on it a year ago I've also worked on a bunch of Seasons as the lead DP on the Survival show alone which is one of the most watched non-fiction shows on Earth and has a production budget in the tens of millions of dollars and we shot that show on fs7 Mark 1's which are over 10 years old and yeah there have been times working with those fs7 where I would have loved to have a variable ND or higher native ISO or insert whatever improvements have been made in cameras in the last 10 years but at the end of the day did that stuff make the show look worse would people like it more if I shot it on a Bano I highly doubt it and I challenge anyone to watch an episode of traffic and argue that the show would be better if they just used a new camera it just doesn't really matter and you can get a used F5 on eBay right now for less than the price of an fx30 with a kit lens now I can already hear people shouting at their screens I work in the narrative world and there's no way we could use an fs7 or they'd never allow the commercials I make to be shot with an f-55 and you'd all be right this isn't about me telling you what camera to buy because the right tool for the job is going to look different depending on what you're shooting and what part of the industry you work in but unless you're working at the very top of Hollywood or the commercial World in which case you probably don't own gear anyways because you just rent it it's pretty unlikely that you're going to seriously improve the quality of your work just by ditching that Komodo X for whatever came out at NAB this year for most people out there it won't make much of a difference at all and the only people that it would really help are the executives at the gear companies at the next shareholder meeting traffic looks amazing because the DP Fred menu is a master of Framing and scene coverage and naturalistic lighting not because of the hunk of metal he's holding because he'd probably be able to deliver on pretty much any camera out there if you really have hit the limits of your camera then fair enough but in my experience that doesn't happen very often okay so maybe you're asking where does the 100K of gear come from if I'm not spending it on cameras and if I believe in Waiting as long as possible to upgrade how have I spent so much money on this stuff well I spent that money over the course of more than 10 years and most of it went to other things than cameras so like the lights the grip gear and the lenses the things that make a real difference in my ability to shoot the way I want and with all of it I follow the same principles that I have when it comes to cameras I wait until I'm sure I really need something usually because I've had to rent it more than three times in a year or when I run into a shooting situation I can't handle with the gear I have when I do decide to pull the trigger I save until I can afford something that's wellb built rather than rushing and getting the knockoff version a little bit faster and I rarely upgrade or replace anything as long as it's still working I'm not going to go into every piece of gear I own and why but just for reference I've had the same tripod since 2018 the same set of primes and key light since 2019 and I've had the same light stands and led panels for more than 6 years even the backpack I used to carry gear on planes is 9 years old and as long as they don't break no Mark 2 version is going to make me upgrade unless I'm losing jobs because of it this is where prioritizing quality over quantity actually saves me a ton of money in the long run so my best advice to others building up their kits would be to buy less but buy better I know everyone's working with different budgets here so I'm not recommending any specific piece of gear over another but you all know the saying buy nicer by twice and whether it's fair or not it's very true and even with the crazy amount of free gear offers that come my way because of running a YouTube channel I'd say I'd turn down 90 to 95% of the offers because I'm just not interested in something new if it does the same thing is what I already have if it actually makes a meaningful difference like when laa let me keep one of their Ranger Cinemas zooms that were fullframe compatible compared to my Fuji lenses that are super 35 only then I'm definitely down to take a look but even though I love those lenses and I'm really grateful they let me have one I wouldn't have bought them with my own money because I already had lenses that worked getting free stuff is an amazing perk of YouTube and I don't take it for granted at all but after 15 years working with cameras accumulating more gear just for the sake of it and then crowding my tiny apartment even more is just not that interesting to me and it doesn't improve my work at all but I digress here look I don't want to come off as the gear police and I'm not telling anyone not to invest in the tools that help them grow their business at different points in your career it's absolutely going to be necessary to spend money on New Gear maybe upgrading to your first cinema camera and then a decent lighting package a solid tripod maybe a nice set of primes or a drone whatever as you grow in your career your kit will have to grow along with it but once you have a tool that does a good job just stop there until there's a reason not to use it until it becomes second nature and focus on mastering the things that count things like story composition lighting technique and scene coverage and you'll find pretty quickly that you can do good work with most camera setups and to go one step further with this if you want to go as far as being a professional in this industry I'd say it's actually critical to be able to get good results with any camera package because you're not always going to be able to choose what you shoot on I guess what I want to get across here is that I have no problem with gear but we have to shift the way we think about it in the YouTube film making Community cuz at the end of the day spending money on gear is one of the easiest things a person can do doesn't take any skill development or practice to swipe your credit card and you're not going to be a better filmmaker once the thrill of the unboxing is over instead use the gear you have until you can cover a scene properly pull Focus accurately use lights in a natural and organic way and understand the difference between b-roll and shooting for story then you can decide if your gear is actually holding you back and make good decisions about what to invest in next instead of just chasing the newest Tech worldclass filmmakers will be able to get good results using pretty much anything out there and it's only marketing departments who think buying stuff is the key now I do know this whole topic is a bit of a paradox because yes on one hand most of us need to own gear and you'll have to invest in it but once you have a kit that's been working for you my hope is that this video encourages you to think very carefully before you reach for your wallet and ask yourself honestly have I really outgrown the gear that I have have I actually hit the limits of what it's capable of and is that holding me back in a meaningful way if the answer is genuinely yes then it's time to upgrade but most times the answer is going to be no and the best thing you can do isn't to ditch your gear for something better it's just to keep shooting see you [Music]

Channel: Luc Forsyth

Views: 29,411

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Id: G-8mTAAjeCc

Length: 13min 53sec (833 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 29 2024