Most “no-budget” filmmakers are able to work “no-budget” because they have access to equipment through a school, work, or local film/video coalition that loans out gear. True “no-budget” shooters can work with an under $1000 consumer camcorder that has paltry imaging control settings and use only available light. But once you grow tired of just how awful ninety percent of your footage looks when shooting that way, then it’s time to invest in some decent gear. Renting, of course, is also an option. It depends on how much you shoot.

So if the filmmaker in your life is active enough to use their equipment so often it’d be cheaper to buy than rent, here’s some gear to consider:

(read more “below the fold”)

Cameras

HD video cameras under $5000 are pretty good these days. Though I am still a Canon XL-1 owner, I have a hard time recommending its HD successors because of the lack of 24/1080p (it does 24F/1080i instead). I wish I could heartily recommend the XH-A1S, as all my other camera gear is Canon, but I can’t. Instead, any of these three cameras are good options.

The Panasonic HVX200 has become something of a standard among NoLo filmmakers, mainly because it arrived on the scene first. It does true 24/1080p, and accessories for it are very common. I’ve been involved with three or four shorts shot using this camera, and it looks pretty good (but gets a bit noisy in low light situations). My main complaint is that the P2 storage is very expensive.

I have also shot with the Sony FX1, the non-24p brother of the Z7U (which can do 24/1080p). Image quality is great, and you can get Sony brand HDV tape for as little as $6 for a 63 minute tape. Another good thing about the Z7U is that it has XLR audio inputs, though squeezing your audio signal onto mini-DV tape isn’t necessarily optimal.

The only camera on the list I haven’t used (or used its predecessor) is the JVC, but I’ve read a couple of articles praising its low light capabilities and am sufficiently excited that I intend to rent and test one. Also, 32GB SDHC cards are about $100 as opposed to about $1000 for a 32GB P2 card.

HDSLRs are also gaining popularity with NoLo filmmakers. Though Nikon was first out the gate with a viable option, I am a Canon owner and am more impressed with Canon’s offerings in this area.

The $1700 Canon EOS 7D is an amazing value for 24p with interchangeable lenses, but it’s not a full-frame sensor (which means a 1.6x multiplier on standard lenses, among other things).

Though it doesn’t have 24p yet (a firmware upgrade has been promised for the first half of 2010), the Canon EOS 5D Mark II is a full-frame sensor camera, available body-only or with an excellent 24-105mm L-series lens. If the filmmaker in your life can tolerate shooting 30p until mid-2010, then this may be the camera for them (especially if they already have a lot of Canon glass).

Lenses

Quality lenses are the foundation of a shooting kit. I’d rather have a collection of lenses than cameras, because HDSLR and HDV camera technology is changing rapidly enough that three year old cameras may seem obsolescent, but if you know what you’re doing you can still make good use of even 50 year old lenses.

Primes

Primes are lenses that have only one focal length. They tend to also be “faster” (which means they have a lower f-stop number, which means their aperture is larger), which means the lens is capable of both shallower depth of field and capturing an image with less light.

All the primes listed above in the 14mm-100mm range constitute a standard kit of primes (the most likely to get left off a list of “standard” primes is the 14mm). Those six lenses will cover the vast majority of shooting situations.

The two exotic and rather expensive primes, the 200mm and 400mm, are mainly for specialty situations such as shooting sports or wildlife footage.

Zooms

Zooms are lenses that have a range of focal lengths (and sometimes a range of largest apertures). What they lack in depth of field and low-light capability they make up for in versatility. One zoom lens can cover the focal length range of as many as five common primes. Zoom lenses tend to be slightly less crisp than primes, but these days, only slightly so.

The most versatile of the zooms listed is the 24-105mm. That covers the entire range of common primes, albeit at f4 (rather than f1.2–2.8 range the primes all fall in). For longer focal lengths, 70-200mm at f2.8 is also quite an appealing lens. I have the 16-35mm (actually the 17-35mm predecessor) and 100-400mm, and they are quite good for the specialty situations they cover. All these Canon L-series lenses are optically excellent, so it’s just a matter of picking what’s right for a given shooter’s needs.

Redrock: Lens Adapters, Rails & Matte Boxes

Rails and Matte Boxes are common camera accessories that provide support for the camera body, lens, and accessories (rail systems) and facilitate blocking stray light and housing filters (matte boxes). A common accessory to mount to a rail system is a follow-focus rig, which allows one to more easily rack focus under the moving camera conditions found in cinematography.

Lens Adapters allow lenses for one kind of camera to be used for another. Mount adapters are very common in the world of SLRs, but what is presented here is a system in which the lens mounts onto a backplane that is subsequently rephotographed by the video camera’s taking lens. With such a system, SLR (or Arri PL, given the right system) lenses can be used with video cameras, even with ones that don’t have interchangeable lenses (which is most of the inexpensive ones).

Many companies make such systems, but fellow Bay Area residents Redrock Micro are a favorite of many Bay Area NoLo shooters.

The “Encore Indie Bundle” systems above are lens adapters for HDV cameras, providing either Canon or Nikon lens mounts. The “Field Cinema” and “Captain Stubling” kits are rail systems for DSLR cameras, whereas the matte box works with both kits, and the support rails work with the matte box if you don’t have one of the other kits. A lot more info, and many more kit options, are available at the Redrock Micro site.

Lighting Instruments

Cinema lighting comes in three main types: tungsten, HMI, and flourescent. Tungsten is still both the most common and least expensive. You may think that available light is sufficient for filmmaking, but it rarely is. It’s generally either too dim or too bright, and almost always either too evenly distributed or falling in the wrong place. Color balancing with available light can also be tricky (especially household and industrial flourescents).

The two main types of lighting instruments are floodlights (wide beam) and spotlights (narrow beam). Fresnels are a common type of cinema spotlight that is focusable (the beam can be made narrower or wider), while open-face lights are a common type of spotlight. Some fresnels also allow you to swing aside the fresnel lens and use the light open-faced.

Even a single lighting instrument in a dark room can give you more control, and a more interesting lighting result, than available light. Arri and Lowel are two makers of tungsten (and HMI) lighting whose gear is frequently found on NoLo sets.

The Arri kits listed are both open face and fresnel (the first kit, which includes a “softbox” diffuser), only fresnel (the second kit), or only open face (the third kit). All include barndoors for the lights. The Lowel kits do not include any fresnel lights, but the Omnis are somewhat focusable, and they do include more diffusion. Most of the Lowel lights are lower wattage than the Arris listed here, which can be a good thing when shooting DV.

Either of the first two Arri kits are, in my opinion, the best basic kits, and adding one of the Lowel kits would give some lower wattage, small footprint lights to use for fills and other “light sculpting” purposes.

Support and Monitoring

As boring as it may seem, a good tripod, tripod head, and offboard monitor can make all the difference in the world between a good shoot and a miserable one. I’ve shot a bunch of stuff with the Manfrotto tripod and head listed here, and love it. Add a matching tripod dolly to it and life is even better.

Monitoring is also essential. This particular Marshall monitor comes recommended from several sites, and I intend to get one soon. Shooting without an offboard monitor, especially considering how mediocre so many on-camera viewfinders are these days, is no longer a sensible option.

A Steadicam system is used for stabilizing the camera while walking around with it. If your shooter does a lot of “handheld” then a Steadicam can make their lives a lot easier (note, though, the low end model listed here only carries up to 10 pounds of camera and lens — maybe ok for an HDSLR, but not a HDV camera with a Redrock rig). You can build a pseudo-Steadicam for next to nothing, but the real thing is better balanced and includes a built-in video monitor.

Any one of these items would make the NoLo shooter in your life very happy (though, of course, if you’re going to buy SLR lenses or camera bodies, make sure they match the camera bodies or lenses your shooter already has).

Screenwriting requires knowledge of a very specific format. It is quite different than the formats used for novels, stage plays, interactive media (games, educational, etc.), or teleplays (which has different historical formats: one-hour film, half-hour film, and half-hour tape).

Using professional screenwriting software will make adhering to the format a lot easier, but doing so is not an excuse to avoid understanding the format and how to use it. It’s up to you to make sure you know how to use your software and what the results should look like, particularly with regard to things like whether or not you want default behavior from the software when it does something currently out of vogue (cont’d at the bottom of pages with continued dialogue blocks being the most obvious).

Why should I spend two hundred bucks on an overspecialized word processor?

Regarding such software, some people inevitably ask: “Can’t I just do all this in Microsoft Word, Word Perfect, OpenOffice, Framemaker, LaTeX, Emacs, etc.?” If you enjoy wasting your time setting up formatting in one of those pieces of software, and you don’t asipre to write for the screen professionally, go for it. (People also ask if they can use a font other than courier, the correct response to which is: “What benefit could you possibly attain by using a different font?”)

The reason I say that you need professional screenplay formatting software if you aspire to write professional is definitely not because I think that a truly great screenplay can only be written in the proper format — but its chances of being read by anyone who might help your career along are greatly diminished by failing to do so.

Furthermore, if you get to the point where you are collaborating with another writer, you will be expected to (a) know how screenplay formatting software generally works, and (b) already own the software they use and be able to exchange files right away (or one of you will rush out and buy the software your collaborator prefers and use your (a) knowledge to quickly get up to speed with it).

Being a screenwriter who doesn’t know how to use professional screenplay formatting software is like being a terrific carpenter who doesn’t use power tools: you may be amazing at the craft, but good luck getting taken seriously in the profession. The sad fact is that a better writer who isn’t as up-to-date with trivium about formatting, style, business approach and tools of the trade is less likely to succeed than a lesser writer who is. It sucks, but I didn’t make the rules.

Which screenplay formatting software should I get?

There are several screenplay formatting tools on the market (and available for free), but if you are serious about this business, there are only two that you will ever purchase. They are:

Final Draft Version 8

The heavyweight industry champion, Final Draft.

Movie Magic Screenwriter Version 6

And the scrappy challenger, Movie Magic Screenwriter.

Any competitor will have a long way to go to catch up with these industry leaders in terms of features and user base, and even those that do are unlikely to survive (case in point is Sophocles, which was a fantastic piece of software that just vanished one day — leaving you unable to buy it, and its owners unable to get support). Other dedicated formatting software is so utterly irrelevant, I am not going waste my time mentioning it.

I will mention Celtx, which is a free preproduction suite that also has an integrated script formatting tool, and even more importantly, can import and export to MMSW and FD (though it does so via text, which can be a lossy process).

Since Celtx is free (the right price for software that isn’t industry recognized), it’s a potentially good choice for your no-budget projects that are totally DIY, and don’t require professional-track tools. You can learn about screenwriting, storyboarding, and scheduling by using Celtx, and then move on to more industry standard tools as your skills and career progress (including transitioning by getting MMSW or FD to write with, and still doing your boards and scheduling in Celtx).

I happen to have both Screenwriter and Final Draft, because through writing classes, writing groups, and collaboration with other writers one-on-one I’ve run into situations where one or the other is required. Both are suitable for writing screenplays (and teleplays, stage plays, and so on — they come with lots of formatting templates).

Given the option to choose, though, my personal preference is for Screenwriter, and it is for one simple reason: I adore the docked left-hand panel that has outline, scenes, notes and bookmarks navigation views.

To me, this is a great writing UI.

Overall, the user interface feels better to me in Screenwriter. Even Final Draft version 8 seems a bit outdated, despite being newer than Screenwriter version 6. Here are the pros and cons of each package:

MMSW — Pros	FD — Pros	MMSW — Cons	FD — Cons
Scene view is integrated into primary UI, as is outline, notes and bookmarks view (you can get rid of it if you want, though).	Scene view has been restored in version 8.	Can’t print to a stack of individual index cards (a 1x1 layout option exists, but it doesn’t print 3x5).	Only one predefined index card layout.
Good customer service.	Good customer service.	Can’t pick the size of the individual index card in the custom layout.	Can’t pick the size of the individual index card in the custom layout.
More choices for index card printing.	Industry standard package and format.	Bug sometimes causes outline or scene view to redraw improperly, but panel is reset by switching to another tab and back (used to crash MMSW, this is now very rare).	Format Assistant used to frequently crash the program.*
More contemporary feel to the user interface.	“Preferred software” status with WGA registry (but you can register within MMSW too).	New version release schedule seems a bit slower than Final Draft.	Simply paging down the script caused redraw problems.*
More format templates.	Better general report options (scene, location, character, cast).	Can’t edit script when viewing index cards, though you can see both windows.	Cut and paste also used to crash intermittently.*
More options to cheat layouts by tweaking element styles.	Collabo-writer Internet real-time shared writing environment.	More options to cheat layouts by tweaking element styles.	No outline, notes or bookmark navigation view.
Better breakdowns and integration with Movie Magic Budgeting.		Annoying free-form title page layout is only option.	Can’t view index cards view and script view side-by-side.

* NOTE: These 3 bugs caused me to abandon FD until the recent version rev, and I’ve only briefly tested version 8 in which all 3 seem to be fixed (so far, under very light testing conditions).

Ultimately the two pacakges are not radically different (there are differences, but they ultimately do the same thing). Which one you choose is primarily a matter of personal choice: download the demos and try them out. The package that you like better is the one that’s best for you.