Filmmakers beginner guide: Camera, gear, software.

Movavi Screen 1

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We often get asked: “So what are the essentials that I need to start filmmaking?” Since there are several components involved – some necessary, some unnecessary, we will help you with this filmmakers beginner guide to learn about the things that you absolutely need to able to start with. There are a lot of software tools and programs out there, same goes for camera and gear that you can purchase. But, you don’t need everything that’s out there, for sure not right at the beginning.

We will show and recommend different things in the order of a film production that we think are really necessary and useful. Everything recommended here is really the right choice for beginners.

Website

In order to present yourself and let people know that you are out there, it’s important to build a small website that shows a picture of yourself, a description about you and especially about the services that your offering in the field of filmmaking or if your not into commercial filmmaking what genres you are working in, for example documentary. There are different page builders out there, but we recommend themeforest.net because they have great wordpress templates that you can purchase at very affordable prices and with a wordpress website in combination with a great template you stay independant from any platform or page builder and you can easily and pretty fast setup your website.

Themeforest
Themeforest

Camera & gear

We still think the Sony RX10 series is a great camera to start with. You don’t need to change lenses and at the same time you can cover most situations fairly well. This camera is especially great for shooting family home videos because of the auto focus or for travelling because of the small form factor and the fact that you don’t need to carry five lenses around all the time as well as the good image stabilizer. We do have a detailed review on the camera that you can find here: Sony RX10 review. We also made a short overview for you:

Sonyrx10 Pros Cons Graphic 594x334

Beside the camera you need: Battery for the camera and of course a memory card. Make sure the memory card is fast enough, dont use the cheapest one. In Addition a tripod is essential as well as a microphone like the Rode Video Mic Pro. Thats really everything we started with in the beginning. There is no limit to the gear that you can own, so its always up to you to decide what you really need or which things you just want to have because of some cool features that you can’t really often make use of. Also a lot or expensive gear isn’t a guarantee to get hired more, in case your looking for work. Thats a misconception that a lot of filmmakers have these days.

Editing software

We recommend Movavi Video Editor Plus because it is easy-to-use if you have no experience. We often see people managing pretty well to shoot their videos but then struggling with editing. Movavi is different and a great tool for beginners because the functions are self-explaining and intuitive to use if you know how to use a computer. Also the price is very affordable and your first software doesn’t have to be expensive – it is a one time purchase and you are not stuck in any subscription model. The symbols within the software help you to get a good orientation about whats possible and where you need to click. Also the structure of how Movavi is setup, nice and clear organized. We really find it easy to keep an good overview even if your adding different compontents into your project.

Movavi Screen 1

Also it can be an issue that some video editing softwares only run if your computer and the graphic chip is fast enough, Movavi also runs on every computer, even if your computer is already old. Last but not least we want to point out two features that we like: First, the Intro Maker: There is no need to find a special program to make an intro for your channel. Use the special Intro mode to create a professional-looking intro for your videos. Second: Another helpful thing is the Built-in Media Collection that safes you time in searching and gives you hundreds of build-in media files, titles and transitions.

Movavi Screen 2

The Movavi Video Editor Plus is great to start with but also offers advanced features and is in that price range the best software that you can choose. Free trial is also offered which is great to try it and play with the features, you can download the software here.

Present your work

You now know, how to become visible online and present yourself, you know which camera and gear is essential for your start in filmmaking plus you have great editing software at hand to complete your production process. Once your video is finished, upload it to YouTube and Vimeo. Setting up channels there is to easy as that you would need an instruction for it. When placing the videos on YouTube ensure, that title, description and keywords match in order for people to be able to find your videos easily.

Written by Marcel Fenchel, July 4, 2019.

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