We filmmakers love obsessing over gear.

Often to our detriment.

What camera did you shoot on? What lighting gear did you use?

I’m a firm believer in not letting a lack of gear stop you from making a film. That being said, I want to indulge the gear nerds out there. Today we'll break down the equipment we used to shoot Wild Boys, and the reasons behind why we chose the different pieces.

We’ll dive into:

• The camera, lenses, and accessories we used
• The lighting package (we barely used)
• The sound equipment (yes, this is important!)
• All the other miscellaneous bits and pieces that helped us make the film

My hope is that this breakdown will help you get an idea of how to put together your own gear list for your next film.

Let’s roll.

The right tool for the job

Before we get into the actual equipment breakdown, let’s talk about how to determine what you need in the first place.

Every film and story has different requirements. Just as in selecting your cast, crew and locations, you need to make sure your gear list matches the film you’re trying to make.

For Wild Boys we knew we needed a camera package that could perform well outside in daylight. It needed to be rugged enough to be lugged around the forest and reliable when we were far away from any and all technical support.

We also wanted to be able to move fast and travel light, so a small, nimble kit was essential.

Our budget was also a big factor. We had a limited amount of money to spend, as well as a small crew. We needed to pick the gear that would give us the most bang for our buck and could be effectively operated by our modest band of filmmakers.

One big question to consider is whether to rent or buy equipment. Unless you have several productions lined up where you want to use the exact same gear, it almost always makes more sense to rent than to buy.

• It’s more cost-effective
• It gives you more flexibility to select the right gear for each project
• You avoid having to deal with inventory and spending time trying to rent out your gear when it’s not in use. Unfortunately, the return on investment for filmmaking gear can vary a lot. It can be a full-time job just to manage gear rentals.

A mentor of mine once told me you can either be in the storytelling business or the equipment business, but you have to pick one.

For me, I’ll always pick storytelling.

“What camera did you shoot on, bro?”

For context, we shot Wild Boys in the fall of 2017. That’s a while ago as filmmaking technology goes, so keep that in mind when reading this.

Our main camera for the shoot was the Arri Alexa Mini (the original version). There are many reasons we chose the Alexa Mini, the foremost being that we had access to one for free (until the whole forest fire debacle).

The Alexa Mini is an excellent camera by any standard. It offered us a lot of “cinematic value” without us having to do a lot of heavy lifting on the lighting front. Although we didn’t get the camera package for free, we were able to get a great deal. One of the benefits of living in Los Angeles is that there are lots of owner/operators who have cameras sitting on a shelf when they’re not working.

We found someone who let us rent his Alexa Mini camera package for 10 days, where we only paid the rental rate for 4 days.

That added immense value to our film.

Many filmmakers worry about their camera choice. But, lens selection is even more crucial for your film's look.

We went bargain hunting again and struck a deal with a rental house for a set of lenses that were gathering dust in their vault. We chose an older set of lenses with more “character” than a brand new set of lenses, which lent itself to our 80s vibe.

The film was shot on the Zeiss Standard Primes (16, 20, 24, 32, 40, 50, 85, 100) and an old Cooke 20-100 mm zoom lens.

The lesson here is to look for ways you can give the person or company you're renting from a good deal. A DP who’s not working would rather rent his gear for a reasonable rate than have it sit on a shelf. A rental house will be happy to give you a great deal on a set of lenses no one else wants to rent.

One thing to watch out for when renting a camera package is that you get all the accessories needed to make it work for your needs.

We rounded out our camera package with a remote follow focus and wireless video so our 1st AC could work independently of our often handheld camera operator. We used an EasyRig Vario for my DP when he operated handheld, and a DJI Ronin 2 gimbal for some of our more complicated moving shots. We also had a tripod, which we used mostly in Kate’s house.

When we went back to do some simple pickups, we used the DJI Mavic 2 Pro to capture all the drone footage in the film. We also got some shots with the Sony A7Sii. Fun fact: there are shots in the movie that are 3 years apart, and one is shot on an Alexa Mini and one on the Sony A7Sii. I wonder if you could spot them?

A minimal lighting package

Lighting equipment has evolved like crazy in the last few years, and our kit would have looked different if we went out to shoot the film today.

But the compact kit we had, and used mostly for the indoor scenes and the night scene at the Wild Boys camp were:

• Litemat kit:
  • Litemat 1
  • Litemat 2L
  • Litemat 4
• HMIs:
  • 800 K5600 Joker Bug Light Kit
  • 800 Joleko Assembly W/ Lens
• Source 4 750 Fixture 26 Degree Source 4 Lens Incl W/ Hd 50 Degree Source 4 Lens Incl W/ Hd
• Black Light Kino Globes (for the blacklight in the cave)

The Jokers provided a strong source that we placed outside the house for the indoor scenes and shot through the windows. We used the Litemats inside to fill in and adjust for each setup.

For the exterior scenes, we used no additional lighting other than the occasional bounce board or flag.

Keeping the lighting package small was important because we didn’t have the crew to operate a large lighting and grip package. If we’d had more gear, we’d have wasted a lot of time lugging around equipment and messing around instead of shooting.

We were actually so short-staffed that we only had a gaffer for the days when we shot inside.

If we were shooting the film today, we’d have an LED-only lighting kit. A mixture of flexible panel lights like the Litemats and a couple of punchier Aputure lights to replace the Jokers.

All these are widely available for rent and shouldn’t be too much of a burden on your budget.

Sound

If you can’t capture clean dialogue on set you’re in for a long and painful road in post production.

Find a great sound mixer.

I avoid replacing dialogue as much as possible in post and wanted to prioritize capturing my actors’ performances on set.

Because of our small budget, and shifting schedule we ended up having three separate sound mixers for Wild Boys. Normally, a sound mixer brings their own kit as part of their deal, and you leave it to them to pick the right tools for the job.

But because we had three different mixers I wanted to make sure we at least used the same main microphone across all days of filming.

We settled on the Sennheiser MKH 460, which is a workhorse of the film industry.

It’s a shotgun microphone, usually mounted on a boom pole.

Microphones are to sound recording what lenses are to cameras. They determine the characteristics of the recording. Having one type of microphone across our three sound mixers helped to make the film sound uniform.

We also used lavalier mics (the little ones mounted on the actors), but here each sound mixer brought their own. Lavalier mics with wireless belt packs can be finicky. Having ones that the mixer was familiar with helped keep the production running smoothly.

The last important thing for me about sound recording was the ability to record each microphone separately. Most modern recording devices allow this, so it’s not a big deal. But having each microphone on its own track has saved me so many times I can’t count them. If you, for instance, record all the lavaliers on one track, and one actor who’s out of frame scratches his jacket as another actor is talking, the whole recording could end up being useless. With separate tracks, you reduce the chances of accidents like this.

What about everything else

It takes a village to make a movie, and everyone brings their own set of tools for the job. I’m not going to go into everything our production designer, makeup artist, and costume designer brought.

Frankly, I have no idea about their toolboxes.

You and I have talked about how important it is to hire smart people and get out of their way, and that’s how I approached my heads of department. As long as their kit fee isn’t astronomical, I do my best to get them the tools they need.

Because we spent a lot of time out in the wild on this film, we needed a way to charge batteries and keep our media backup operation running.

We had a small, portable gas generator that provided electricity.

For backing up media, I used my MacBook Pro laptop and two big-ass hard drives.

We had one 16TB hard drive and a 20TB RAID array, which we later used as our main editing drive. When we got back to civilization, we also made extra copies of the media.

Being the director and also the guy who makes sure all the footage is backed up properly is not ideal. But needs must. Luckily, we didn’t have any accidents involving lost media on the film.

We also had walkie talkies for everyone on set, to help make communication easier across distances. Depending on the size of your production, walkies can definitely be a huge help, and they're inexpensive to rent.

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