I’ve been creating videos and films for many years now—if you dig back far enough, ever since I picked up my family’s Super 8 camcorder back in the early 1980s—but it’s really only in the last four years or so that I’ve amassed anything close to a proper “kit” of production gear.
The first video I ever posted to YouTube, on July 17, 2006, was a low-res, grainy recording of a Las Vegas thunderstorm captured with a USB webcam that I set to the Muse song “Forced In.” It’s terrible, but because it was uploaded back when there were only like 12 of us posting to YouTube back then, it garnered more than 800 views, which sadly makes it one of my most popular YouTube videos not featuring Buckethead, Tony Hawk, or my dogs.
Around that time, I had just started making original video content for the indie media website I ran called VegasInsight, and my friend and colleague Greg Thilmont helped out on the production end, since he had a decent digital camera and a microphone. I started editing the footage he shot with whatever software I had available, which at that time was Windows Movie Maker (R.I.P.).
Once Greg got busy and I got impatient, I forged ahead with what gear I had on hand—the aforementioned webcam, as well as a Canon PowerShot A620 I’d purchased in 2006—my first digital camera ever—which also happened to shoot 640×480 video. I was taking a lot of photos back then for the websites and publications I was editing or contributing to, and started capturing bits of video when I could, cobbling together little video segments around the time when “backpack journalists” were just becoming a thing.
The first dedicated, “HD” camera I had (in retrospect, it doesn’t seem so “HD”) was a Flip Mino. Remember those? About the size and shape of a cellphone? You held it vertically to shoot horizontally, it had a tiny screen with few controls and a built-in full-size USB dongle. But it worked great for shooting high-quality video on the fly, back before our phones did the same job. I recorded a lot of music gigs with it (especially with As Yet Unbroken), and started doing my first real documentary-style work.
In 2011, I joined with a few friends to assemble a crew for the 48 Hour Film Project, and learned an immense amount about filmmaking over the course of that weekend. We all did. Most of the people working on the project were either very talented professional still photographers or total amateurs. I learned how to use Apple’s Final Cut editing software on that short film—I literally bought it the day before we started shooting. Even though it was super informal and mainly a bunch of friends just making a fun thing, it was my first time on a “set,” working in collaboration with dedicated crew members. And I absolutely loved it. I loved the problem-solving aspect. I loved the immediate camaraderie. I loved just the pure process of creating something from nothing.
I embarked on my first solo short in late 2012, at which time the only “gear” I owned was that Flip Mino and two $5 clip-on lights from Target. Created out of spite as a reaction to a cheesy reality show called “Sin City Rules” that debuted (and was almost immediately cancelled) on TLC that year, “Las Vegas Rules” was the first fully realized reality/doc style project I shot and edited, and I think it turned out amazingly well despite the super low-fi equipment I was using (plus a borrowed boom mic from one of my 48 Hour Film Project crewmates).
And that pretty much remained the extent of my production kit for the next six months, during which time I also shot a music video for a friend with the same gear. But some time around my birthday in 2013, I bought myself a few significant video production upgrades: a Canon Vixia HF G10, my first real prosumer camcorder that shot full HD (1080p, not just the 720p that the Mino used) and had all sorts of whiz-bang features that I didn’t bother to figure out until years later, and a Samson Airline Micro wireless microphone set. Around that time, I had started doing full-service marketing for a variety of clients, which included making social media videos, and knowing I’d be doing a lot more “talking head” type of shooting. my slightly expanded kit was designed really only to make that work a bit better.
That was pretty much the status quo for me for several years. I made a lot of videos anonymously for clients where I sharpened some of my skills, but I was so busy producing for other people (and running a few other businesses), that I got completely sidetracked from my own original filmmaking projects, including a few screenplays and pilot scripts that were in various stages of unfinished. And just when I was finally ready to start shooting again, my G10 got stolen (after making it through recording at least a few Moonboots shows), which kind of let the air right out of my creative tires.
It really wasn’t until after I’d moved back to California in 2017, and acquired a new camera (just the latest Vixia model, why not?) that I returned my attention to moving pictures. I had finished writing and started shopping around a few TV pilots, networking with other filmmakers, and began pre-production for the documentary project that would become Parkway of Broken Dreams. In preparation for filming, I stocked up on some very basic lighting and sound equipment: a few cheap LED lights, light stands, lavalier microphones, and assorted accessories. And I spent many, many hours watching filmmakers and video producers on YouTube, learning more about all the technical points of filmmaking I never cared about before: depth of field, shutter speed and aperture, three-point lighting, diffusion, ND filters, and so much more.
As I started to line up more projects, I acquired more equipment. A professional tripod. New microphone. Boom pole. Camera stabilizer. Action cameras. (My Amazon order history for 2018 tells the story pretty well.) In the middle of shooting my first interviews for Parkway of Broken Dreams, I shot a pilot for a webseries my friend Matt Sorvillo had conceived about writers having conversations about their craft in different Las Vegas bars. It was the first time I was back on a “set” since doing that music video in 2013, and my first time working with a crew again, even if it was very pared down from the 48 Hour Film Project gang—just me, Greg Thilmont on second camera, and my pal Hernan Valencia as a script supervisor/production assistant/logo designer.
Even though the show is ostensibly a reality/interview concept, shooting it felt way more like making a short film. We did principal photography in four different locations, plus exteriors and a vehicle interior, and I shot a bunch of B-roll all around Las Vegas (some of which ended up in other projects). And this was all done in ONE DAY, plus another day of pick-up shots and ADR recording six months later.
All that is to say, by late 2018, I had amassed almost enough gear to qualify as a one-man production studio (including finally buying a 4K mirrorless camera with interchangeable lenses, a used Panasonic Lumix GH4). So when I decided to throw in with a crew of complete strangers for another 48 Hour Film-type of project during the AT&T Create-a-Thon in spring 2019, I came armed with not just a lot more knowledge of filmmaking (mostly from trial-and-error), but also a lighting kit (helped along by the extremely quick acquisition of a pair of CFL softboxes) that made me the de facto gaffer/lighting director for our short film, Namaste (which I also edited).
Now, to be clear, most of this gear is cheap. Outside of my main cameras, a recently purchased drone, and a few pieces of audio equipment (which weren’t expensive, but are at least name brands with good reputations), most of the gear listed on my ProductionHub profile is the most basic stuff you see peddled to video-makers on Amazon, from brands such as Fositan, Neewer, and that website’s own house “Amazon Basics” label. And that’s fine. For the most part, it gets the job done. And that’s the most important criteria for any piece of filmmaking equipment I acquire: Will it help me accomplish the task required on any given project? For example, is my $50 Campark 4K action camera as good or reliable as a comparable $300 GoPro? Of course not. But at that price, was I able to buy two of them, which made shooting an interior car scene (with the help of a pair of JOBY Suction Cups) for Notepads & Bar Tabs possible on a shoestring budget.
Still, cumulatively, my investment in filmmaking gear at this point might be close to rivaling my investment in musicmaking gear (and both take up a lot more physical space than the equipment needed for my other creative endeavors, much to the dismay of my wife), even if most items are relatively inexpensive on their own. However, all that gear does me no good if I can’t get out into the world and use it, which for the last 14-odd months has obviously been a challenge. (Right up until the pandemic officially was declared, I was lining up new projects that indefinitely got delayed.) But now that most of the folks I know are getting vaccinated and the coronavirus numbers are looking very good, at least in my part of the world, hopefully I’ll be able to focus my cameras on something other than my own face inside my garage again sooner than later.