Recommended gear.....

Got a ton of new toys this summer, thanks to some great paying gigs.




And managed to assemble a complete professional lighting rig as well as consoles.

It's movie time!!

Very Nice! I'm impressed.

Can you break down the Components? I just bought my DVX100 and I'd love to add those cool accessories. Thanx!

first is the baseplate with rails.

second, 4 x 4 matte box

3rd is a gear ring. If you look closely at the manual focus ring on the camera, there is a
bunch of gear teeth on it. This is a ring that fits over the focus ring.

and finally is something called a follow focus. This is basically a rig to allow adapting the
manual focus ring to be turned by the huge knob seen in the picture. Basically it is a series of gears. Very smooth, and it makes it very easy for the camera man to focus manually without having to worry about hitting the built in mic while focusing.

How much did all that cost?

base plate and rails 355.00

Follow focus is 795.00

As a package, base and follow focus were 1195.00

the matte box was 621.00

I see...

I also purchased a bunch of really great lighting gear to go with it.

I got 4 650w Fresnel lights (all new) 2 of them I purchased 300w bulbs for so that I could switch betwen 650 and 300 as needed.

For BIG work, I purchased soem used/refurbished Mole Richardson lighting, 2k and 5k units, and I am probably goign to grab 2 or 3 10k units since I have an outdoor shoot at night coming up that needs to be well lit.

Also, I found a killer deal on eBay, 13' heavy duty light stands, air cushioned. I bought one to try it out for 49.95 and the quality was identical to the bogen Lightstand at 120.00, so I called them back and ordered 3 more.

Also got a 13' x 21' background stands and system for greenscreen.

The only gear I did not purchase yet is a lighting panel to hook all the lights to so I can have a lighting director do all his work from one spot. It saves a lot of time over having multiple dimmer switches all over the place and having someone run around and tweak everything.

I'm also not in possession of an audio console yet, but I'm looking for one.

Planning on making a movie then?

I currently have 3 scripts for feature length action/Sci-Fi and Horror.

Add to that, I have a stack of really good shorts just waiting to be filmed.

Oh, and 3 commercials, a copuple of music vids and a bunch of training videos to do.

Ahhh... gotcha.

I got tired of renting gear.

All together, I was spending like 1500.00 per day on rental gear. I figured after a week or two, I would end up as much as if I had just bought my own gear.

Camera rental alone was 250.00 per day, 75.00 per day just for the matte box.

every cord, screw, you name it, cost a small fortune.

So it occurred to me that I had to allot an additional 1500.00 per day in costs that took money out of my pocket.

My next couple of gigs I won't see it, but after about 4, I'll be making an extra 1500.00 per day for my time.

[Hito]

Very nice setup DO.
When can we start seeing some previews?

If you don't mind answering - Who's the manufacturer of your rig? And does it accomodate the century optics wide angle adaptor with that mattebox?

Follow Focus and base is by JBK, and I'm not sure about the Century W/A. Haven't tried it yet, but as I recall reading somewhere, the answer is no.

Hito: Hopefully soon. I'm going to setup a website for previews.