Aiming for Sundance... Need to upgrade gear

Hola

I'm an amateur film-maker who's looking to get serious and start working his way towards making a festival level indie feature. I want to get into Sundance within the next 4 years.

I've been shooting with a Nikon D5100 for the past couple of years. It's not great, but I've been able to learn a lot. I'm looking to upgrade my gear this summer. Got about 6000 dollars. Has to include the camera, the basic lenses, the stabilization and support gear and the audio gear. I've been looking at everything from the Mark III to the Pocket Cinema Camera. I'm really intrigued by the GH4.

Got any suggestions?
 
I don't think it's a bad thing to want better gear. It's normal for someone who's passionate about filmmaking to be passionate about the equipment too.


Not all of us. Now that my feature film is on DVD, I don't think much about equipment at all, including what I still have. When my next project is near pre-production I will look at what will work for me at that time and make a decision on what to get. I guess I'm a bit of a no-nonsense filmmaker. :cool:
 
Not all of us. Now that my feature film is on DVD, I don't think much about equipment at all, including what I still have. When my next project is near pre-production I will look at what will work for me at that time and make a decision on what to get. I guess I'm a bit of a no-nonsense filmmaker. :cool:

No,you're a pretentious filmmaker.

If you '' don't care about equipment " you don't know what tool is right for what job and you're doomed to fail.


I don't care if you think your stories are just so good that with your iPhone and it's incamera mic you can go to Sundance. That's not how the reality works.
 
APE, it sort of works both ways...

Indie filmmakers, (the non-gearhead kind) on the other hand are people would rather have made their own feature film than actually work on a Hollywood production (maybe except for an above the line position).

That depends on what you mean by "indie" filmmaker and by "Hollywood" production. An indie filmmaker might have a budget of millions or even tens of millions and might be making a film in the same way and of equivalent (or nearly equivalent) standards to Hollywood productions without ever going anywhere near a Hollywood studio. At the other end of the scale is what I would call an amateur indie filmmaker and, using the term "amateur" is not necessarily disparaging because "amateur" covers a huge range of filmmaking abilities, from the newbie vlogger, right up to the very serious amateur with tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment and considerable skill, knowledge and experience at making dramatic films. There is a similarly wide range of "professional" indie filmmakers and, there is a crossover point, where essentially amateur style filmmaking might make some sort of "reasonable" income (and therefore can be legitimately described as "professional"); some of the films on SyFy, Universal and Viasat Film Channels are an example, as are "mockbusters". Another distinction is that amateur films can in practise more accurately be described as feature length videos rather than theatrical features, albeit in the best examples, videos with a more theatrical look.

The point I'm (apparently unsuccessfully) trying to make is that no matter how good an amateur filmmaker you are or you become, you cannot escape making essentially amateur style films by following the course of buying/upgrading gear and getting better at using it, no matter how much better the equipment or how good at using it one becomes! With almost no exceptions, even a very good amateur style film is going to stand little to no chance against the professional/commercial style of making features which dominates the top film festivals like Sundance.

In other words, the very top festivals essentially cater to the professional theatrical indie features world rather than to the amateur video world. While many/most of the skills and knowledge of the talented, experienced amateur filmmaker are useful/transferable to the professional theatrical world, some are not. Furthermore, much of the knowledge/skills/experience which differentiates professional theatrical features from amateur features is missing in the amateur filmmaker and no feasible amount or quality of gear or skill at using it is going to provide that knowledge/skill/experience! Hence my original advice to the OP, namely to start to develop the skills/knowledge applicable to professional filmmaking rather than buying equipment and improving their amateur filmmaking skills.

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If you '' don't care about equipment " you don't know what tool is right for what job and you're doomed to fail.

Interesting, I personally would say the opposite, if you try to learn "what tool is right for the job" you're doomed to fail! What is the right type of make-up for a particular situation, the right processors for a particular line of dialogue, the right lights to use for a particular scene, etc. In every one of the filmmaking crafts there are a wide and often an almost infinite number of tools/combination of tools, not to mention ways of using them. While a filmmaker might become an expert in one of these crafts, no one person can know "what tool is right for the job" in all of the filmmaking crafts for every given situation. A decent knowledge of some of the basic tools of the different crafts certainly doesn't hurt but it's not essential either.

What is essential, is being able to communicate effectively with the various specialists who do know the right tools for the job, so that they clearly understand exactly what the "job" is and, careful development, budgeting, planing and preparation in the first instance to make sure that "job" most effectively aids the storytelling.

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If you '' don't care about equipment " you don't know what tool is right for what job and you're doomed to fail.

Well, lookie here, someone made an ASSumption way on the other side of the planet. Doing research is one of the things I actually do for a living. Fear not, I can figure out what tools I need rather easily. Can't do much for your butt though.
 
The point I'm (apparently unsuccessfully) trying to make is that no matter how good an amateur filmmaker you are or you become, you cannot escape making essentially amateur style films by following the course of buying/upgrading gear and getting better at using it, no matter how much better the equipment or how good at using it one becomes! With almost no exceptions, even a very good amateur style film is going to stand little to no chance against the professional/commercial style of making features which dominates the top film festivals like Sundance.

You continually provide motivation for me to prove you wrong. I'm already working on things that'll render Sundance screeners blind to the difference between my next project and the typical Sundance film. :cool:
 
Interesting, I personally would say the opposite, if you try to learn "what tool is right for the job" you're doomed to fail!

I disagree. You need to know what tools you need for what you are making. Sometimes a 16mm Arri-cam is what you need, other times a Go-Pro, and sometimes a DSLR. Certain types of films call for certain types of gear and to not have at least a general idea of what kind of tools you need for a job seems like poor preparation and could lead to all sorts of unwanted consequences. Sometimes that means talking to a professional who will be renting the gear, or perhaps it's just a guy and his camera as he goes off to film a documentary. Filmmakers need to have an idea of how exactly they are going to shoot what they are going to shoot. But there is some validity in your point and I can see your point of view.
 
I disagree. You need to know what tools you need for what you are making. Sometimes a 16mm Arri-cam is what you need, other times a Go-Pro, and sometimes a DSLR. Certain types of films call for certain types of gear and to not have at least a general idea of what kind of tools you need for a job seems like poor preparation and could lead to all sorts of unwanted consequences.

I don't think we're far away from being in agreement, I just think we're coming at it from different directions. My response to Nikola was in context with my other posts in this thread, namely, making a feature of the professional/near professional standards expected by the top tier festivals. In this context, knowing all the various tools/combination of tools and knowing which is the right or best one/s for a particular job is an impossible and futile task....

To address your post in this context, the filmmaker does not need to know whether a 16mm Arri or a Go-Pro is what is needed. The DP sure does though! I realise that in amateur filmmaking, the filmmaker is also often the DP, and the Gaffer and maybe the PSM and the set designer, and in post, is often the picture editor and the sound editor, sound designer, ADR recordist and re-recording mixer and the colourist and may also fulfil some of the myriad VFX roles. And, not only does the amateur filmmaker take on many/all of these roles (plus maybe some others) they also often have to provide the equipment (and equipment expertise) for all the roles they take on. While amateur filmmakers sometimes achieve surprisingly good results considering what they're trying to do and how they are trying to do it, we're talking about surprisingly good results relative to other amateur filmmakers or near comparable results relative to one or two of the individual crafts in a professional standard film.

I for example know the difference between a DSLR, a 16mm Arri and a Go-Pro but not enough to be sure which would be the best for any particular job. Likewise, you might know that a particular situation might be better recorded in stereo than in mono but you wouldn't know whether to use a near co-incident XY pair, an ORTF pair, a spaced AB pair, an MS pair or maybe a larger mic array and you wouldn't know which actual types/makes of mic would be best suited for each pair/array. Maybe I'm doing you a disservice and you do know all this but you would need to be literally a superhuman genius to know all the other crafts in the same amount of detail. And, even if you were this superhuman genius, that still wouldn't help much because how are you going to set-up all the equipment for the different crafts and then operate it all at the same time, without compromising any of those crafts? Not to mention that the filmmaker will also be fulfilling the role of Director, directing the actors/action at the same time as well!

I've worked with a number of successful professional directors who knew essentially nothing about sound equipment and at least one who knew nothing about cameras. I only found this out because I uncharacteristically enquired how a particularly unusual shot had been achieved and the Director said words to the effect of "don't ask me, I hate cameras!". However, while many knew next to nothing about sound equipment they generally had a very good to excellent knowledge of how to use sound for storytelling purposes! I remember well over 20 years ago chatting with a veteran re-recording mixer who told me about a notoriously demanding filmmaker who asked him to do something which was virtually impossible with the equipment of the time. Upon being informed of this fact, the Director replied "My job is to tell you how I want the film to sound, your job is to do it, I'm not interested in how difficult it is". BTW, I'm paraphrasing and if you're interested, the director was Stanley Kubrik.

At the professional level of filmmaking it's really not important how much the filmmaker knows about the equipment but it's obviously essential that the operators of that equipment and their department heads are experts and it's also essential that the filmmaker knows how to employ all the crafts.

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