Video Production Setups

Here at TR Media we run a fairly modest setup that we’ve built up over the years. We like to keep things fairly lean where we can, ensuring speed, efficiency and mobility without compromising on final quality. This article is intended to give an outline of some of our most common setups that we use in our day to day video productions.

Is gear really that important?

This is an age old question, but we thought we’d address it quickly before going into specific setups. Ultimately gear isn’t the most important single aspect of a production, but there are times when a single specific piece is, such as..

We find that a lot of video production companies actually spend far too much money and time on the purchasing and acquisition of new gear. I mean we’re as susceptible to G.A.S (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) as the next person, but we try to only re-invest into new gear when the job calls for it. At the end of the day, is the client going to notice the difference between a €500 F1.8 lens vs. a €2,000 F1.2 lens? Probably not.

What they are going to notice a hell of a lot more is how you conduct yourself, how professional you are with time-keeping, turnaround times etc. However that’s a topic for another article. Today we’re going to look at some common setups we use, and the gear that we do use and think is important for these setups.

Corporate Interviews (Internal link here.)

Camera Gear

For a typical corporate interview we normally run at least 2 cameras, to ensure that we always have a safety and another angle to cut to. Depending on the interview itself (more than 1 person), then we may use 3 cameras depending on the logistics and location of the shoot. We still use 2 Canon R6’s for most of our interview setups, whilst we do own C70’s, we don’t like the softness of the C70 image and so we only use them when we really need the functionality (i.e. long form shooting, internal ND’s etc.)

Having two of the same camera bodies allows us to very easily match in post production, and normally we are shooting in CLOG3 to preserve as much dynamic range as we can.

We’ll also try to have 2 different focal lengths, normally a wide (either a 35mm or 50mm), and then a close up (either an 85mm or 105mm). We try and match the bokeh if we can, so on the wide we might run at F1.8, and then the close up will be F2.8, but it depends on the exposure of the scene, and the creative look we are going for.

The other camera/lens gear may be ND filters

Lighting

This is probably the most important aspect of an video production. If we were to recommend one area to invest in, and to really spend a lot of time practicing, lighting would be it. Lighting can very easily make or break the visual aspects of your production. It dictates your exposure, mood of the scene, literally everything so it’s absolutely crucial to get it right if you can.

Indoor

In an indoor interview environment, it’s much easier to control and shape the light when compared to an outdoor environment. Whilst we don’t believe in too many hard rules, the following are fundamentals that we believe are a must when shooting interviews:

• You generally want soft light on your subject. Harsh light is not going to flatter skin tones, and it’s going to make managing exposure a lot more difficult. This is why we recommend owning softboxes, diffusion fabrics (such as muslin, silks etc) or other modifiers.
• Motivate light where possible. This means justifiying where the main source of light is coming from. This isn’t always possible

Audio

Run’n’Gun Event Coverage

Here we like to use an R6 rig, with either the 28-70 F2, or the sigma 24-70 F2.8 OS. The IBIS…

Commercial

Helpful Resources

We highly recommend the following YouTube channels for helpful content relating to all things video production.

Griffin Conway

Joel Gabrielsen

Cranky Cameraman

Meet the Gaffer

PD Mokry

David Morefield