8. Organising equipment and filming set-up

Filming

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Be sure to take time in advance to research which equipment you will need.

Note!

Renting equipment can be a good option if you only have a few filming days and/or you don’t have the budget or the need to invest in equipment. Rent an extra day to become comfortable with the basic operations.

Here is a basic list of video, audio and complementary equipment needed for filming:

A quality tripod that can handle the load of your camera.
An adequate video camera (that suits the needs of the work to be done). Pay attention to and check:
- If the camera can handle the common standard recording format (HD 1080 25 fps for Europe).
- How the camera feels, how heavy it is and if it accommodates your shooting style. Ergonomics is important!
- How the camera can be powered and what batteries to use. Have multiple rechargeable batteries for the camera and a solution to work with a power cord in case they fail.
- If the camera has a good viewfinder built in, or if there is a connector for an external camera monitor, to allow you to evaluate the image correctly.
If the lens range is sufficient for what you want to film.
- If it's a camera body to use with mountable lenses, be sure you have access to different lenses with the right mount.
If there are ND-filters built in. This will help to adjust the exposure quickly when you move from interior to exterior without the hassle of using separate ND-filters or lens filters.
External audio input connectors are handy and they allow you to capture external audio directly in the camera.
Research the recording media and be sure to have several cards. Camera cards are expensive. Be sure to count this into your budget.
A backup camera is worth thinking of: if the main camera for some reason fails, then the filming day doesn’t need to end if you have a backup camera as an option. Good alternatives are:
- A smartphone with good movie recording specifications can be a lifesaver.
- An action camera is also a good option as an extra camera. It can be put in hard to cover places, to make timelapses or to mount fast moving objects.
Be sure to add a gorilla tripod to your kit to quickly install an action camera.

Think and decide on the recording format before going into production. Full HD 1920x1080 at 25 fps is the common standard format in Europe.

The recorded video files will be encoded and decoded through a codec (H.264, ProRes 422, MPEG,...) in a format container (MP4, MOV, AVI,...). Choosing the right options for your production can be a deep dive into technical information.

The most important thing to be aware of is that the more compressed formats will leave you with the loss of image and sound quality:

a middleground format can be a great option, as it will give you good looking materials at manageable file sizes.
a high quality uncompressed format can be attractive but will be hard to handle. The recording media (SD card, …) will fill up faster and it will take up a lot of disk space that also needs to be backed up. Look into the recording file formats of your camera and test them out. Make sure your editing software can handle it.

TIP: Consider a multi-camera setup

A multi-camera setup can be helpful in some cases: you may want to use several fixed cameras in order to film yourself, or maybe you need several operated cameras to capture the action from several angles.

Such a setup is especially useful when filming unique actions (actions that happen only once in a manufacturing process), such as gluing the top of a hurdy-gurdy. But you can also use this technique for repetitive actions: then you can use a single camera to capture the action several times from various angles (close, medium, wide).

A multi-camera set-up also gives extra possibilities when editing footage. For example, you can easily cut into the audio and change camera angles without disturbing the continuity of your action. This is not possible if you film with only one camera, because then the image 'jumps' very clearly in editing (this is called a jump cut).

! Be sure that the recording formats and the white balance of all the cameras are set the same. The same recording format will help you to synchronise the different camera streams automatically in the editing software. The same white balance will help you to achieve the same look for every camera, so there is consistency in the colour of every shot. If you are not able to use automatic synchronisation in your editing software, use a clap (by hand or board) in each take as a visual and auditory reference point. Make sure that the clap is visible on all cameras used.

Do a try-out beforehand and examine how the process works. You will be glad you did this once you start editing.

Below you can see an example of such a setup with multiple cameras. As you can see, this is very useful when you have too little space to move around easily, you cannot repeat certain actions, ...