Best Documentary Film Gear: Everything you NEED to get started.

This video breaks down the best documentary film gear I have used over the course of my career. After I had all my gear stolen I had to think about all the most important filmmaking gear I would need to be able to produce my documentaries.

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My Camera Bodies

My Lenses

My Drone

My Audio Gear

My Monitor

My Lights

Tripods and C-stands

Accessories

Contents of this video:

00:00- Intro

00:17- What inspired this video

01:18- Audio

03:19- ND Filter

04:11- Lights

05:01- Very Important Tool

05:28- Tripod

06:20- Lenses

AUDIO
I want to start by talking about the audio. The first thing that you should purchase for audio is a good shotgun Microphone, this is almost as important as camera because capturing good sound is half the battle.
The reason why you want a shotgun mic is because its extremely directional and when your filming a Documentary a lot of the time your in an environment where you cant control that. So by using a directional mic like a shotgun mic your able to capture more of the sound that the mic is pointed at and filter out the noise around it.
The shotgun mic I went with was the Rode NTG 3
The next thing your going to want to do is get yourself at least one good lauv setup. If your in a situation where your subject is far away or there's a lot going on and your not sure if your going to be close to them, best thing you can do is throw a lauv mic on them and hook it up to an external recorder so you can capture that audio
And that brings me to the next piece of gear you need and thats an external audio recorder. I use the Zoom H6 recorder and theres a few reasons why this is an essential piece of gear.
#1 to record interviews you definitely want to use an external recorder with high quality preamps, and depending on your mic you'll need something called phantom power to power your microphone which a lot of these external recorders have. And a lot of lower end cameras don’t have.
The other benefit is that they allow you to monitor the audio levels and they have a limiter so if your subject talks too loud it could limit their audio so it doesn't peak in the recording.

ND Filter
Moving away from audio, a tool that every filmmaker should have in their kit is a good ND filter. The reason why you need an ND filter is to be able to control your exposure when your shooting outside or even if your inside and its way to bright.

So instead of increasing your f-stop and having an uninteresting shot without depth, get yourself a good ND filter.

LIGHTS
One thing that you will always need is a good light. I can't stress this enough. I have bought cheap lights in the past and they turned out to be a complete waste of money, but when I finally bought my Aperture 120D I noticed a significant change in production quality right away and I still have this light to this day so If there is any light that I would recommend to someone just starting it would be the aperture 120D for sure!

LENS
Now i'm going to go into lenses, this is such a tough one because every situation is different and theres definitely not one lens that will be perfect for everything.

The way I think about lenses is simple, I ask myself what do I need to use everyday and you need to ask yourself the same. The big question is Prime or Zoom lens?

Zoom lenses are great because if your in an uncontrollable situation which im in a lot of the time then you have the ability to adjust the focal length and zoom into a subject. There's been so many times where i've been stuck in an area and there's something happening 30 feet away or really close and I've missed shots because I was using a prime.

[TheComebackKids]

Hell yeah. Been looking for a video like this for a long time. Thanks Alex!!!!

[Jazzmarcel]

time ive seen the script of a video included! big thumbs up on a great vid!👍🏾

[sebastien.jubinville]

That 2 audio sources... I'll keep that in mind because I've messed up a couple of projects because of bad audio... Well done again, man! WELL DONE 💥

[neikozarfati]

Great video. Packed with valuable information, just earned a sub.

[DACProVid]

What ND filters do you recommend? I'll rewatch this but I didn't hear you mention the brand you have that doesn't do the X thing..

[dinbali]

what shockmount are you using on your boompole?

[Glazer-Productions]

Amazing job my man! Keep it up🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼 would love you to show what is the best way to monitor and use shotgun mics!

[paoloborgato]

Hi man, can you give some advise about easyrig, which model are you using?

[toluenceframedit]

very helpful thanks
really appreciate

[jonkrogvold]

Great video Alex!

You mentioned you usually plug the shotgun mic into the camera and then use an external zoom recorder for the lav mics. If making a solo documentary in the field, do you have any tips on how to record both shotgun-mic AND lav mic (røde/dji mic etc.) that still fits on a relative compact handheld setup? Maybe a zoom F3 field recorder that I can attach on the handheld rig is a solution? I really dont want to use a big external zoom recorder that doesn´t fit on the handheld rig if possible, but I understand that this might just get you the best quality..

FYI I have a Sony a7c ii.

[schoeferfilm]

Great video Alex 👍🏻 that is so true bro 😉 I think I must improve my lightning 🥴 best cinematic greetings from germany

[moisesramirez]

Anyone reads this the only way to escape the matrix is to live by the wisdom of the Bible, to bring peace and love into the world. We need the love of Christ, and know that he is the way, the secret that’s not so secret. Love and stability to all of you. Amen 🙏🏾 ❤

[AdmiralSP]

I'm sorry!

I thought this was for a TINY Tiny tiny budget?