Basic Gear for Digital Filmmaking.

If you're really lucky you'll find some great people to work with who have their own equipment, especially a videographer, sound recordist, editor, etc. but if you want to be a guerrilla filmmaker and put together your own equipment package, you'll have to raise a bit of money.

Camera

People are shooting video on anything from phones to consumer grade point-n-shoots, handicams to prosumer video cameras and on up to higher end pro cameras depending on their budget. What you shoot with is often less important than the creative vision behind the lens. The best camera in the world can't improve a bad script or bad acting.

If you're shooting with a smaller camcorder you can find suggestions for low cost accessories here

The latest trend in video filkmmaking is shooting HD on a D-SLR like the Canon 5D or 7D and you can find footage shot on the various "combi-cams" here. You can check out a sampling of low budget gear that's available for video shooting on these cameras here

Sound

For professional sound recording you'll need a good shotgun mic as the mic that is built into your camcorder is better for capturing room tone than recording professional quality audio.

rode ntg2

Rode makes an excellent XLR shotgun mic, the NTG2 and Audio Technica has a new XLR shotgun mic the AT875R which is shorter and less likely to appear in the fram when a wide angle lens is being used. If you're shooting with a camera that has a mini-jack input you can use a shotgun mic such as the Rode VideoMic which connects via minijack instead of XLR. If you want to use an XLR mic with a camera which only has a minijack input for audio, you'll need an XLR to minijack cable or an adapter by Beachtek.

You can also use wired lav mics or wireless lav mics for recording. View a demo of the Sennheiser wireless system here

Another option for sound recording is a digital recorder like the Samson Zoom H4 which can be also be used as a back up recorder to what your camera is capturing or can be used in studio to bring in XLR mics to your computer for voiceover recordings.

Camera stabilizer
See footage shot with the SteadyTracker here
See test footage of the DV Rig Pro here
See demo of Fig Rig here

For the HV40 or a D-SLR there is a small hand bracket called the Mini Rover which is quite popular for under $100.

Portable LCD Field Monitor
This is especially useful if you want to shoot video on a DSLR.

Other Gear

Some other useful equipment you can either rent or buy to add to your kit as your budget allows

Camera bag
Boom pole
Tripod
On-camera light
Lighting kits and accessories
Cables


Post-Production:

Resources: