Gear Help

Rental or purchase?

I'm gonna assume purchase based on previous posts about coming back to the states and starting a Production Company...I haven't done that research yet, but a variety of lights would be a good thing for flexibility if your purpose is to have a collection that you could apply to your needs.

names to search for:
Chimera
Lowell
Arri

I regularly see kits on ebay for $300 or so that have 4-5 lights, stands and softboxes. That might be a good start, and it would leave an ample amount of the 1-2k budget left for other lights.

Lowel makes nice kits. Tungsten lights with stands, barndoors and hard case. You can also check Arri lights more expensive and worth every penny. Not that the Lowel kits are bad - I have a 6 light kit with the Omni’s and Tota’s that I bought new in 1990 and am still using it 16 years later.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com

You want a good condenser (externally powered) mic with a “lobar” pick up pattern to put on your boom pole. Lobar pick up means the mic focuses its audio pick up to a narrow area. This is why you want to use a boom pole to get the mic as close the the actor as possible - you’ll get clean dialogue tracks with less ambient noise.

There are three main suppliers of shotgun mics:
http://www.sennheiserusa.com/newsite/
Sennheiser is the mic most used by professional sound recordists. They are expensive and worth it. Check out the ME-66 and the ME-67.
http://www.audio-technica.com/
Audio-Technica makes great mic’s and they’re cheaper. Check out the AT835b.
http://www.azdencorp.com/
I’ve never used Azden mic’s. They’re inexpensive but I’ve don’t hear too many good things about them.