5 Tools You Must Have for Making a Short Film – Look Professional

Tools For Making A Short Film

Short film making is not as easy as it seems. It took hours, days, even months to complete. You must do the preparation carefully when you also have a budget issue with it so that you can do your shooting smoothly. And the most important things you need to prepare is non-other than the shooting equipment itself. Maybe you might think that the shooting equipment for making a short movie would be a headache. 

But It is not because you only need to bring only these 5 mandatory pieces of equipment to make a short movie.

Camera

It is nothing to explain or not rocket science that to click video footages or making a short film we need a camera. However, the question is that what camera is good for making a short film in a budget?

If we looking for a camera for budget film making then we have 4 options available today that is the mobile phone, Action camera, Dslr, Mirrorless camera. For budget film making I first prefer the mobile phone why because it is the most common available equipment and has very good potential in film making. There are so many renowned films today shoots in mobile phone only like Olive (2011), Rides (2016), Unsane (2018) and so on. But only having a mobile phone is not enough you must have some apps for it so that you can use that gear to its possible extent like.

Recommended Apps:

Filmic Pro (Andriod and iOS)

Cinema FV-5(Andriod)

Protake (Andriod and iOS)

Moment(iOS)

Sun Surveyor Lite(iOS)

Now let us take about other cameras, my second preference is either DSLR or mirrorless camera and then at last action camera. Now why I put action camera at last because of its less connectivity option mean you don’t have enough option to connect extra things or gear with an action camera which makes it unsuitable for film making. Investing money on an action camera is better to spend it on an entry-level DSLR or mirrorless camera. At least you will get good connectivity for extra gear and in future, you will have an option to upgrade it by buying good lenses.

Recommended DSLR & Mirrorless camera (Entry-level/ Budget/under 50000):

Canon EOS M5 or M

Sony A6000

Sony A6100

Sony A5100

Nikon D3500 or D3300

Canon EOS 1300D

You can also purchase used camera form online or offline to get within the budget.

Microphone

‘Without good audio, great quality video is useless.’ 

Always keep the line remember while making a short film because most of the time new filmmaker ignores the audio. But they don’t know that audio is something which connects the story with the audience. The audience can watch a movie with bad video and good audio quality but never like to watch a movie with good video and bad audio quality. Before talking further, we have to first know that the audio of a film or short-film comes in three categories that are Dialogues, Background music, and Sound effect (SFX). 

Dialogues are oral expression between fictional actors.

Background music is the music playing behind the scene to express the emotions of that scene. Sound effect (SFX) are the small materialistic sound to make the scene more natural and alive like a doorbell, footstep, wind blow etc. 

We have to capture both the three audios separately; background music and sound effect can be added in post-production from some online sources or website but dialogue must need to record by its own. To capture better audio quality dialogue, we need a good quality microphone so for budget film making there are some microphones given below.

Recommended microphones in the budget:

Boya BYM1 

Maono AU-400 

Sony ICD-PX470

Sony ICD-PX240

Zoom H1n

Boya BY-MM1+

Comica CVM-V30 

Rode VideoMicro

Except for the Lavalier Microphone, you can use other microphones as boom mic by attaching them to a long rod or pipe so that with a single mic you can capture multiple character dialogues.

Tripod

The next tool that you must bring is a tripod. We can capture a scene either by holding the camera in hands or you can put it to some device like gimble, crane etc. For taking the handheld shoots we need an option of stabilization either in-camera or in the lenses but cheap or budget camera don’t come with this option so, to take smooth shots we have to depend upon devices.

Tripod is the most budget-friendly and useful equipment to take steady shots. There are some features which make it very important. You can take steady shots at any type of surface with a tripod. Its two-axis head helps us to take various types of shots. Tripod gives us the flexibility of height also.

Recommended budget tripod:

Simpex Tripod C-606

Simpex DSLR Tripod HW 720

Simpex Tripod VCT 880

Fotopro S3 

DIGITEK DTR 550 LW Tripod for DSLR

Benro Digital Tripod Kit T660EX

HIFFIN® Professional Tripod HF 880

Lighting

Lighting is the element which makes an ordinary shot to extraordinary. The actual difference between the professional and the beginner is the lighting technique. Before buying or rent the lighting equipment you must know the basic lighting technique, if you want to know about it then check out the link below:

First thing is to use led light because led lights are cheap and consume less electricity, you can run with batteries also. Second thing is to use those lights in which you can control the intensity of it, means the lights which has dimmer.

You can check out this article. http://reversetreemedia.com/best-light-setup-for-youtube-with-a-single-light-three-point-light-setup/

Recommended budget light (under 10,000):

DIGITEK Bi-colour LED D520B

DIGITEK DCL 60W Continuous Video Light 

Simpex SL-100 100W

Godox SL-60W 

Simpex LED 800

Simpex SL 50w 5600k

Yongnuo YN360

Computer

The last tool is the Computer. For post-production or editing work you need a computer or laptop. There are lots of editing software out there which are free to use and professional. Post-production is the final touch to the film. You can also eliminate the shooting defects while editing so, it is very

important for filmmaking. To build an editing machine you can go for assembled computer why because they are budget-friendly in comparison to editing laptop. Editing laptops are very expensive and delicate but assembled computers are built for rough use.

Recommended minimum configuration for editing computer:

Full HD Monitor.

Processor (AMD Ryzen 5 3500/6 core/6 threat)

16 GB ram minimum 

Graphics -Geforce GTX1050 Ti – 4GB

SSD hard drive.

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-A320M-S2H

Power supply: Corsair VS450 450-Watt

Check out our YouTube video for free editing software:

By Rajib Sinha

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Hey guys you would also find the following article useful for making a short film https://www.businesstoday.in/magazine/mobiles/smartphone-short-film-shoot/story/184451.html#itgdcommentMod184451

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