Tools of the Trade

Today, we're taking a trip down memory lane as we ask the team to reflect on the most important piece of film equipment they’ve ever used. From cutting-edge cameras (circa 2007) to trusty tripods, we’ll be sharing the unassuming tools that somehow ended up being crucial to our careers.

So strap in, forget about the latest Alexa, and cast your mind back to a different time. A darker time, when Justin Timberlake ruled the airwaves, and all of us had much lower standards for professional image quality.

Phoebe Brooks, Director

DIY plastic pipes glued together with gaffer tape

As a teenager, I would run around with my friends shooting ridiculous thrillers and murder mysteries, and without fail our footage would come out looking like outtakes from ‘The Blair Witch Project’.

A way to avoid this is to buy a shoulder rig for added stability. But those are expensive, and I was 15.

So one afternoon I bought some plastic pipes from the local DIY shop, and glued them together in my back garden into a strange four-sided handheld rig. It looked awful - like a terrible low budget prop from a sci-fi film, finished with a coat of black spray paint and copious amounts of silver gaffer tape.

Dear Reader, I ended up using this tape-covered monstrosity on every shoot I’d do for the next eight years. The camera mounted upon it increased in cost and sophistication, but the Shitty Rig stayed constant.

It taught me that sometimes you don’t have to spend money to get results, as long as you don’t care about looking like an idiot.

Peter Jones, Director

2008 Apple iMac

The year was 2008, and ‘emo’ was thankfully starting to wane in popularity. I was young, clean shaven, and completely unaware of the upcoming recessions which would befall my generation of avocado addicts.

It was also the year I got my own computer for the first time, an iMac with 2GB RAM (your phone has more) and a pirated copy of Final Cut 7 (I don’t endorse illegal activity).

It was on this iMac and its stolen software that I taught myself the basics of editing, by cutting the music videos I was directing for local Cape Town bands. This led to a job in the UK as a runner in a post-production department, ultimately setting me on my current career path.

I kept that iMac for 10 years and completely ran it into the ground. RIP.

Thom Wood, Managing Director

Vinten Tripod

We spent a whole morning circa 2007 arguing about whether or not we should buy our first tripod, a Vinten that was to set us back a cool £450. This was precisely £450 more than we could afford at the time. Tripods are bulky, boring and excite precisely nobody at the outset of their filmmaking career - it was so easy to argue that we’d be better off paying £15 to hire one each time we needed to shoot.

Thankfully, Guy won the argument that day (in fairness it was his credit card taking the hit) and we went on to use that trusty shoulder-chaffer for well over 10 years, on several hundred shoots. And while we gawped and fawned over each fancy new camera we got our hands on, it was the unsung hero in our kit bag, the sturdiest of sturdy foundations.

Morgan, Studio Manager

AmazonBasics Ring Light

Sometimes it’s the most useless, cheap, annoying, piece of kit that stays with you the longest and that’s true for my Ring Light. Its best features include an infuriatingly short plug cord and a loose ball joint that refuses to hold the ring up for more than 30 seconds. But I only say that with the utmost fondness of course.

This ring light marks the start of finding my footing in creating content for social media. There’s something legitimising about owning a piece of equipment for filming (other than an iPhone) that gives you a push of confidence to join the youths on TikTok.

So I did, and now somehow my cat has 700,000 followers. But that’s a story for a different time. 

Kelvin Fred-Horsfall, Production Manager

Nikon D90

I started my filmmaking career as a self-proclaimed ‘smartphone shooter’. Snapping on the iPhone was a breeze - point, shoot, point, shoot, repeat. I liked to keep things simple, and this was a formula that had always worked for me.

That was until I met my first manual camera, the Nikon D90. 

Jumping into the ‘techy’ world of DSLRs changed everything. I became obsessed, I wanted to know everything about how to maximise image quality and elevate my work to the next level.

But I’ll always remember my roots, and now and then my fingers are tempted to flick the dial to the shiny green auto mode, and go back to a time when life was less complicated.

Charlie Maxwell, Junior Producer

Lowepro Backpack

By far my most enduring item of kit is my trusty camera backpack, Lowe Alpine’s finest. Aged 16 and just getting into photography, I was absolutely chuffed with its swanky looking facade that housed the very budget-looking setup I had cobbled together so far.

Fast forward to university, I slung it proudly over one shoulder, showing up to my first ever paid videography jobs, covering obscure student union events and competitions at the local primary school.

The backpack has travelled with me around the world, across fjords in the arctic and on sleeper trains through the middle of Australia. Over a decade later, with several holes in the pockets and a missing zip or two, it’s still the first thing I grab when embarking on any trip.

Guy Saville, Creative Director

Canon XL1s

My first camera as a ‘professional’ shooting director was the Canon XL1s, all the way back in 2007. One of my earliest projects shooting with it involved a trip to Paris, to interview political rappers in the run up to Sarkozy’s re-election.

After an eye opening day of filming in the Banlieues, things really kicked off in the centre of town as we filmed a peaceful protest. The police and protesters clashed and I found myself in the midst of a full scale riot - a battalion charging at a bunch of irate students and throwing tear gas at them. I was caught in the crossfire and stumbled out of a big cloud of noxious fumes, still gripping my trusty XL1s, beaming with the footage I’d caught. I was hooked.

We still keep the Canon in the office for sentimental reasons, having stopped using it when it ate up more DV tapes than it recorded. They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.

And with that, our trip down memory lane winds to a close. We hope you've enjoyed learning about the dusty old bits of kit that played such a surprisingly formative role in our careers.

Now, let’s have another look at that new Alexa they’ve just released…