If buying gear from scratch with a blank check, what would you get?

sigepwriter

sigepwriter

Member
I had a friend approach me with an interesting question. He is working with an investor to start some sort of production company (the thing is a little convoluted to be honest) any way, but he wanted me to come up with a wish list of equipment to be able to start filming right out of the gate (think turn key) and do all post in house. They are insisting on Red. Given my limited experience with it, I want to turn this question over to anyone willing to answer the following:

Given a blank check, and knowing what you know now, what equipment would you purchase to accomplish the following:

1-3 Minute commercials.

1-3 minute Corporate video

Corporate training videos

Pre-recorded webinars

I could go on, but I think you guys catch the drift by now. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.
 
Question: how much experience does your friend have in the field of video production? And the same question for the investors.
 
sigepwriter said:
I had a friend approach me with an interesting question. He is working with an investor to start some sort of production company (the thing is a little convoluted to be honest) any way, but he wanted me to come up with a wish list of equipment to be able to start filming right out of the gate (think turn key) and do all post in house. They are insisting on Red. Given my limited experience with it, I want to turn this question over to anyone willing to answer the following:
Click to expand...

So if I understand correctly, your friend doesn't know what gear he needs to start a production company, so he's asking you, who don't know what to tell him.

No offense intended, but I really don't think he's in a position to start a production company if he doesn't already know what he will need or who to turn to for advice.

But to answer your question, I would tell him to buy absolutely no camera, sound or lighting gear. Instead, form a good relationship with one or more good rental houses.

When you buy gear you're paying for all of the time you own it, whether you're using it or not. When you rent, you pay only for the time you use it. Also, when you own a specific, narrow range of gear, you wind up using it on all the projects you do, regardless of whether those projects are paying enough to cover it's costs or benefit from it's potential or need something different or more specialized.

And given the quick rate of obsolescence with cameras these days, why saddle yourself with something that some of your potential clients will consider old fashioned in 3 months? Renting puts that burden on someone else's shoulders. Yesterday's camera announcements from both Black Magic and AJA are a great example, both cameras are much better suited to much of what you described than a Red camera.
http://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicursa
http://www.aja.com/en/products/cion

In terms of software, who's going to do the editing, graphics, mixing, coloring, etc? What software do they want to use? And how much of this is going to be done in house, how much will be sent out? What software can the local freelance pool parachute into?

Once you know that, the software will recommend itself.
 
Red? URSA? Cion? The sort of projects being mentioned suggest simple PX270 or PMW-200-class hardware.

Those are exactly the sorts of jobs I often do, and I've been scraping by with a worn-in-the-tooth AF100, GH2, and HMC150 for years, editing on an old Core2Duo MBP. No idea how he'd recoup Red camera money in any reasonable timespan.
 
mcbob said:
Red? URSA? Cion? The sort of projects being mentioned suggest simple PX270 or PMW-200-class hardware.

Those are exactly the sorts of jobs I often do, and I've been scraping by with a worn-in-the-tooth AF100, GH2, and HMC150 for years, editing on an old Core2Duo MBP. No idea how he'd recoup Red camera money in any reasonable timespan.
Click to expand...

Couldn't agree more. Until you have some real world experience of what your clientele really wants/needs, you can't really project what gear you need to have available. And you certainly don't need a Red camera to shoot a webinar.
 
I'm fairly new to the whole business side of this, but this is what I'd buy if I could buy anything:

Two Mac Pros and four 4K monitors.

Adobe's creative cloud (i use FCP7 currently)

A Beaulieu 5008, a couple Bell and Howel Filmos and a Krasnogorsk K-3, plus a fridge full of Super8 and 16mm film.

A whole mess of old film lights. Plus a ton of material for sets and a small werehouse to build them in.

What can I say, I'm old school. I'd probably actually buy some really nice digital cinema cameras if I had unlimited resources, but what would be the fun in that? I guess I'm content with where I am right now, with a Canon T2i, a couple EOS lenses, and an iMac with FCP7. It's worked for me so far.
 
I would tell him to go to CVS and buy a disposable camera and an awesome Targus tripod, the fancy one with a crank on the side. Then when he meets with the investor he can show off a little and crank it up and down with his 35mm disposable camera.
 
I wouldn't buy anything. I'd find every free media resource around and use their equipment. Book some jobs and see if you can make some money with a pd100/dvx100, lowell kit and public access computers. After a few jobs your friend will have a more realistic view of what he needs. All those items or similar are fairly easy to track down for free or the price of a class at least in my neck of the woods and I suspect in yours also.
 
...or your friend can just subcontract the jobs through Craigslist for $150 a pop and concentrate on sales. If he has no significant production knowledge or experience but already has a potential investor for his production biz, he must be a pretty dang good at sales.
 
The first point I'd make is that if your friend is going to charge market rates for his company's work, then renting is a viable option that drastically reduces start-up cost. This not only means renting from rental houses, but also leveraging owner operators of cameras and grip trucks, etc. The typical idea is you purchase what you're going to use so frequently that renting it is going to be more expensive in the long run. Cameras change so quickly right now, they're one of the most dangerous items to invest in owning.

Then again, if the investor wants RED, it's their money.
 
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