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First "big" production

H

Humble Street Productions

Hi,
Me and my co-writer has been working on a script for about two years and it's time to start preparing for the shoot. We have only made films with friends (That have acting backgrounds), but now we're going to work with a pretty famous actor (At least in Norway), and we don't have all the equipment we might need. We're pretty sure we're going to invest in a RODE mic, a mic pole, and some lights. Since we haven't made many "big production" short films,I'm wondering what kind of lights we should buy and what other equipment we should have ready before the shoot. Please help :)
I will be directing, my co-writer is the DP. Should we use a good sound man and use money to pay him, or is it wiser to let someone close to us do it and use the money for lights etc.?
 
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Is this a short or a feature? It may be cheaper to rent lights than to buy them. Also, if you can find a sound guy who has his own equipment that could get you better audio for the same amount you'd end up spending for low end equipment.
 
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Humble Street Productions said:
We're pretty sure we're going to invest in a RODE mic, a mic pole... Should we use a good sound man and use money to pay him?
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Absolutely hire someone. You've got name talent, and you want to do everything that you can to avoid having him come in to do ADR (where you'll have to pay his full day rate on top of the studio/engineer rates). So you see, getting the production sound right by hiring a professional with pro equipment actually saves you money on the long run. It means you don't have to worry about the sound while on the set and can concentrate on directing, not tech. You also, hopefully, will not have to do extensive, expensive noise reduction and dialog editing.
 
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Hi,
Thanks for all the great advice! The film is a short. The thing was that I live in a small place and there's not many places to hire/rent equipment. After hearing what you said, we've decided to change the locations to my second "home" that is a lot bigger, so it gives us easier access to all the things we need. There is also a filmschool here where we can find a guy that is good with sound. I totally understand all the time that is consumed with tech as on all of our previous work, we were the ones handling it.
Again thanks for your quick reply and great advice, I might have to ask a couple of more questions as we get closer to the start date.

- Joakim
 
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