From the course: Video Gear

Toss to next week

From the course: Video Gear

Start my 1-month free trial

Toss to next week

- Now Rich, when shooting around a car there is a lot of gear and we talked about quite a bit of it when we were on-set mounting things to a vehicle. So, as we've been doing, let's wrap up with some more information about some of the things that we're using. And, one of the first things that comes to mind when I'm thinking about doing things around a car is hey, how can I get more power? What about inverters or things of that nature to convert power from what the car is doing to plug in to devices, cameras, lights, things that we might need. - Yeah, there's a wide range of these that really depends on the number of outlets and if you want standard electrical plugs or USB plugs, depending upon your device. But any auto store, truck stops going to have these. I've bought so many of these while on the road in a pinch. Just make sure you get ones that are safe, that have the ability to shut off if they overheat, and just look over the features. Don't go for a cheap one here. This is a giant, electrical device you're putting in a car. - Can I tell you one other thing that I've learned the hard way? Some of the cheaper options don't have circuitry to kind of prevent that initial sort of power surge that happens when turning on the car. My recommendation would be to plug in the inverter, turn on the vehicle, make sure the inverter is powered on, then plug in your gear. Unfortunately I've lost, with some of the cheaper ones, I've lost a few pieces of gear with that initial surge that the inverter didn't really protect me from. - Good advice. And if you want to go for portable batteries, I've been a big fan of Anker. These are going to offer a wide range, and these tend to be able to power devices for quite some time. They've got all sorts of different options here, including solar chargers if you're really in a pinch. But these are big-size batteries, I use some of their bigger ones. And another thing, speaking of power, there's USB chargers, including ones that go from the standard electrical outlet in the car to three, four, five ports, so you can plug in every GoPro and USB device that you have! - Yeah, and I mean, these are those kind of things that you just kind of need to have in your kit, because you'll never know when you need them. But yeah, plugging in GoPros, or some types of cameras, their battery chargers are portable battery chargers that only power off of a USB connection, and don't actually have a wall connection, so having a little extra handy, or a few extra handy USB slots around is always a good thing. - We took advantage of these OxyLEDs these are small, USB lights, great for filling in small spots and at about 20 bucks a light with four levels of intensity, great, simple light. Not perfectly color-balanced, but cheap and rechargeable. - Yeah, and you could use them in a car situation on the floor, or mounted somewhere up in the visor. And these are not, again, primary lights. These are meant to be more of a little bit of fill, a little illumination on somebody's face, or something like that. But for 20 bucks, you know, they're kind of meant as camping lights, but they work pretty well. - If you want to go the other end of really controllable, high powered, and perfect light temperature, the ICELIGHT is the opposite end of the spectrum. You will pay for what you get, but it is a high quality product that gives you that ability to really have a strong beam of light that you can control intensity power. - It also doubles as a lightsaber so that's pretty cool too. - Absolutely. And, one of the things that was handy from a GoPro point of view was the Jaws: Flex Clamp. This made it very easy to attach a camera to one of the visors, to the rear mirror, to the back of a seat back. This is cheap and easy, you've got the standard GoPro mount. There are also third party versions of this, but this gives you a simple way to mount a camera. - Totally, and what I liked about this is that the gooseneck is actually rather substantial, so you don't have to worry about sag, especially with a camera sized like a GoPro. - And lastly, on the GoPro side, is what they call sort of their Hat Mount or Baseball Hat Mount. And so if you buy the clip here, the Head Strap, it comes with a removable clamp that's designed to attach to the back or to the front of a baseball hat. It's a easy way to get a camera, I find, on a belt. We actually attached this to one of the vents inside the car. There's so many different places that having a clip like this can come in handy. - Yeah, and this is just going to provide a little bit of security, so you can clip it somewhere so it's not going to roll around the vehicle while you're filming.

Contents