The amount of gear required is the least excellent part of filmmaking. And I’m even a gearhead. But gear love only goes so far. I mean, traveling used to be fun. Okay, it’s still fun and the cool truth is that not that long ago the film I can make with this pile-o-gear would have required 10 times this much gear. Cameras have shrunk – dramatically. And with them batteries. And battery chargers. What used to require a large backpack full of tapes now fits on a few tiny memory cards. Smaller cameras mean smaller camera support and stabilization. In this pile are 2 tripods, a monopod, a motorized dolly and a small steadicam. The same gear for a 30lb camera would fill a truck. And it is all this shrinking that now allows me to travel to a faraway place and make super high-quality films… by myself. Amazing.
This paired down pile of gear is part of what I’m taking to Mexico tomorrow morning to produce a couple short promotional videos for the Mexican Ministry of Tourism. It seems that tourism has slowed somewhat. Strange. So we’ll (myself and Eduardo, my Mexican partner in excessive gear endeavors) be driving all over Mexico taking pictures and dodging drug related nastiness. But mostly moving gear around. Alarm clock goes off in 3 hours so, as they say in Gringolandia, “buenos nachos.”