When it comes to filmmaking, there is so much gear out there, and its easy to get caught up in the latest and greatest. But there’s another side to gear for creatives, that is important to take into consideration, and that’s the ability to travel with it, and setup and take down when you’re a one person show.
I’ll admit, that I too get caught up in my gear. Whenever I have a big project, I’ll often use that as an excuse to invest in some more gear to help me make that a better production. But if I was to take all of that on a shoot, it would fill up my truck and take hours to pack and unpack. So I needed a very portable setup. Here it is, and best part is, I can carry it all on my back.
- For The Single Person Film Shoot
If you haven’t seen any of my videos, you should check out my YouTube Channel at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCosUlYjbzVQ4_Zv9xFNVOqQ there you’ll find a bunch of my videos, and in those videos near the beginning, I like to add in a short skit. Most of these are done all by myself, or with the help from my wife.
The problem with being a new content creator, is that your channel may not be monetized yet. So how can you afford to pay for help? You can’t. So you make due with as little as possible, and hope that eventually you can afford to hire crew.
Most of my skits were filmed almost entirely with this simple setup (keep in mind, I’m not an affiliate for any of this, so I’m just giving my honest opinion on these things):
A Kemimoto hunting duffle bag. Cost was: $90 on Amazon.
- This thing is amazing. It has duffle styled straps to hand carry it, but also has backpack straps to hike with. In addition to that, it has several pocket for organizing stuff, and my favorite thing, the bottom unzips, and where it would normally hold guns, now becomes a perfect spot to hold tripods, umbrellas, and light stands.
- Inside my bag
FHI, most of these prices were as of early 2025.
I have a Panasonic HC-VX981K camera $800 from B&H (most everything else I got was from B&H, so I’ll just mention this the one time.)
- Not my favorite camera ever, but its lightweight, has great autofocus, and some manual functions. Honestly it does the job, and I use it a lot.
DJI Osmo Gimbal. It also came with a Hohem mic-01 $268.
- I haven’t had a chance to use the gimbal much, but I’ve really liked the Hohem mics. Their sound is a lot better than my Tentacle lav, and so I use this quite a lot, and especially if I’m using my android phone to do video, I can plug it right into that and get great audio.
Sennheiser AVX-ME2 mic $800.
- This is really handy, as I can plug it into my Panasonic camcorder hot shoe, though you still need to plug the jack into the mic receiver on the camcorder. I don’t care as much for the audio on this as I do for the Hohem, but its still good, and might sound better with your voice than mine. It’s very sensitive, and often I like to use it as a hidden microphone in nearby plants or other things, not just on my person.
Smallrig RC100B lights at $200 each.
- These are great. They’re small, lightweight, bicolored, and using my goldmount adapters ($80 each) I’m able to keep all my batteries here and in my nicer filming gear the same format. I’ve got these mounted to some umbrella foots which were about $25 each, and that allows me to quickly set them up and attach one of 3 of my umbrellas that fit in the gun case portion of the bag. As you may know, those umbrella lights are pretty cheap, but very effective. I’ve got a white translucent umbrella, a silver reflector umbrella, and a deeper white reflector umbrella. In total, those 3 cost about $65, and they take up hardly any room.
Also in the gun case portion of the bag, I’ve got three 7 ft Westcot light stands at $55 each.
- I like these, because they don’t weigh much and they fold up really tight. For the lights I’m putting on them, they are perfect.
My kit would not be complete without my dummy head. $35ish from Amazon.
- When that first showed up at my house, my family was pretty weirded out by it. I think it would be fun to put it in someone’s bed for them to wake up next to, but I haven’t gotten around to that prank yet. But I use this head on a tripod that I got from AliExpress $20 for almost every skit I shoot. In fact, I sometimes wonder how I ever got by without it.
- I use it for shaping light where I’m going to stand. I use it when I’m pulling manual focus, and I need a stand in. I use it also if I want to do a quick color grade clip. Of all the high tech gear I own, that has quickly become one of the most useful tools I own.
- How much did it all cost?
Don’t worry about going back through with a calculator. I’ve already summed it up for you. I spent about $2512 before tax. Shipping was mostly free. Then again, there are a few things I forgot to add into this. Like the misc grip gear, maybe $100. SD cards, another say $50. My gold mount batteries, would have cost a pretty penny too, but I have a bunch of those lying around from my normal film gear, but if I were to buy them, that would probably add another $81 per battery, so about $240 for an equivalent setup. I had a 5 in 1 reflector and a GoPro 360 camera that I threw in there too. I don’t recommend the GoPro. If I could justify the cost, I’d probably trade it in for an Insta360. But you don’t really need that, and I rarely use it. Oh, and don’t forget to buy an extra battery for your camera. That comes in handy too. I don’t remember how much that cost me. Lets just say $100 to round it all out.
That would bring the final price of my kit to about $3000.
So while there might be some cost savings still available, I can tell you that I’ve spent more than that on a single piece of equipment that gets used far less than this entire kit.
And while I won’t be wowing anybody with my fancy gear, I can get quite a bit done with this simple setup, and if I wanted, I could even go back country, by myself, which I have done in a skit for an upcoming video, and still have everything I needed.
If you want to see how this all fits together, check out my YouTube Video, where I show this kit in all it’s glory: https://youtu.be/fL_vqdK-kPM
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