Boring Things Every Filmmaker Needs
Filmmaking is so exciting! At least it is until it isn’t… Not every aspect of being in the creative industry is as glamorous and sparkly as it may seem to people from the outside looking in. That’s why today I think it’s high time we talked about all of the absolutely essential, but incredibly boring, things literally every filmmaker will need across their career.
Boring But Important Things Every Filmmaker Needs
Data Storage
Let’s start with possibly the single least sexy and unglamorous aspect of filmmaking. Yes, that’s right, data storage. Without having a single SD card or hard drive to work from you wouldn’t be able to get a single thing done, ever!!
Nobody gets excited when talking about this but it really is one of the foundational building blocks on which your filmmaking career will grow.
When it comes to capturing and storing all of your footage you will want to hit a nice balance between good quality and a decent quantity of cards and drives. Your needs will change over time but you will want to make sure you have plenty of space available to store and backup anything you film.
For SD cards try to buy the fastest and best quality cards you can for your camera. For most cameras an SD card from SanDisk or Lexar will work perfectly fine! I highly recommend them as they’re the cards I’ve used for a good portion of my career! Different cameras can read and write at different speeds so just be sure you buy a card that is compatible with your camera.
FAST SD CARD FOR RELIABLE CAPTURE
FASTER SD CARD FOR SUPER FAST WRITE SPEEDS
Now you have plenty of cards, you’re going to need to keep them in one place. Leaving them loose at the bottom of your camera bag will eventually break them. Trust me, I speak from experience…
Thankfully you have super boring card cases to shop for! You don’t have to spend too long on this purchase, something cheap and cheerful like this one will keep everything in one place and more importantly, in one piece.
best SD card case
When you’re sorted out for SD cards, next will come the BIG headache. Storing them for editing and archiving. As a beginner I used to buy super cheap external drives from the local supermarket anytime I needed more space. But it quickly became unmanageable! I ended up with boxes upon boxes of 500GB drives. Once you begin the transition from hobbyist to pro it becomes even more difficult to manage!
For anyone just starting out as a professional filmmaker I would encourage you to pick up the largest hard drive you can afford, like a LaCie Rugged Drive as they are pretty much indestructible (to a point). And once you reach the point where you are consistently working with huge files and have a lot of projects happening at the same time, then you will need to dig deep into your pockets and buy the absolutely monstrous drives that Google makes. It hurts like hell to buy but it is worth every penny when you edit without any interruptions.
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To make sure your stored data is extra safe you will also want an additional drive to store a backup of your files, just in case your main drive becomes corrupted or breaks! In fact, I would also recommend uploading all of your footage to a cloud service or an off-site server to be triply sure your files are safe!!
Stands and Stabilisation
Yaaawwnn!! Nobody gets excited over the light stands and tripod you use on set. You aren’t going to message your filmmaking buddies and tell them how much you’re looking forward to buying your next C-Stand. But like everything on this list, they’re just as important to making your film the best it can be.
You will probably end up with more stands than you can count, but it’s still worthwhile buying ones that are sturdy and will last on set. Steer clear of the thin and flimsy light stands that come with most sub £100 3-point lighting kits, they will bend and break the moment you put something heavier than a house lamp on them.
Instead, look for good quality and decently priced stands from the likes of Neewer and Flashpoint. They aren’t as sturdy as more expensive stands for professional use on a set but they are fantastic quality for the price!
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Best Value c-Stand
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best quality professional light stand
I will go out on a limb here and say tripods are slightly less boring than light stands, but only by a bit. Realistically as long as your tripod is fluid and sturdy nobody really cares about what it is. That still doesn’t give you an excuse to cheap out on it though!
Your audience won’t know if you’re using a good tripod, but they sure as hell will if you’re using a bad one!!
Unfortunately good tripods aren’t cheap, and what works well for you will depend entirely on how heavy your rig is. You can expect to pay upwards of £300 for a tripod before you are in the territory of finding a ‘good’ one.
Thankfully, Manfrotto tripods are a very solid choice. I have used mine for the better part of 7 years on pretty much every shoot I’ve been to, so I can highly recommend them for people who shoot on mirrorless cameras like I do!
When you begin using larger cameras and rigs you can begin by heading over to dedicated camera stores and creating tripods that suit your needs. Most professional tripods can have the fluid head and tripod legs swapped around and customised to suit your specific needs. Doing this does get pricey pretty quickly but it’s worth it in the long run!
Tools and Storage
Things break all the time, and your camera equipment is no different. The only way to make sure everything stays in tip top condition is to look after it, store it properly and keep up maintenance on it before it becomes irreparable. That’s why you’re going to need tools and cases in all shapes and sizes. It’s not fun or exciting, but it is necessary if you don’t want to have to buy all the other boring kit again!
The tools you need for your film gear should be pretty straightforward. A handful of allen keys, a screwdriver with interchangeable heads and a ratchet with varying socket sizes will carry you through almost all of the basic repairs and bolt tightening you will need to do. Though it’s always worth having some kind of multi-tool with you on a shoot too, just in case any last minute adjustments need to be made.
The thing I find myself having to do more than anything else is tightening up the tripod plate on my camera. It always loosens over time, so you should be prepared for it in advance!
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Best value multi tool
For the equipment you want to keep in the best condition possible, you will need a hard durable case to keep it in. The less knocks your gear takes, the longer it lasts.
Good cases aren’t cheap but they will take a beating before they break. When it comes to choosing a durable case you will almost always hear people talking about Pelican Cases, and for good reason. For years they have set the industry standard on keeping any type of camera gear you can imagine safe. They’ve built their reputation on the quality of their cases and that’s why they command such a high price.
Don’t worry though, there are plenty of other case manufacturers out there whose cases also do a fantastic job of keeping your kit protected. You may need to take some extra time to sift through the good from the bad though!
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Music Licensing
You can’t make films without good music. Well, actually you can, but a good score will help strengthen your narrative and help drive the story forward! Unfortunately for you, good music doesn’t grow on trees. So if you’re not a musician then you will probably have to license music like the rest of us!
Thankfully there is no shortage of talented musicians on music licensing websites like Musicbed and Artlist. I take out a yearly subscription on both of these sites and they cover me for every type of project I work on!
This is entirely anecdotal but I have found that Artlist tends to lean more towards music that works well for YouTubers, product videos, social media content and anything that needs a bit of pep and punch to it. Whereas Musicbed has music that works perfectly for longer form content like documentaries, cinematic short films and work that needs an extra level of finesse and polish.
Of course that’s not to say that you can’t find exciting and punchy music on Musicbed, or mature orchestral scores on Artlist!! But they both know the market they’re serving and the kind of music that their clients want to discover when they search on there, so both sites have a distinctly different feel of music to them. One isn’t better than the other, it just depends on the project you’re working on!