There’s this sentiment in the photography and film making world that “Gear doesn’t matter.” There’s Youtube video after Youtube video on this topic. People saying how the gear that you have isn’t important, the only thing that is important is the story you’re telling.
And frankly, I’m sick of hearing it.
A few years ago, the grandaddy of Youtube, in it’s current incarnation, Sir Casey Neistat said this: “Gear doesn’t matter”, I don’t know if he’s the one who originally said it, but he’s definitely the one that made it popular and I distinctly remember the video, as do many.
Now, I’m as big of a Casey fan as the next person. He had an incredibly profound impact on me and what film making could be in his daily vlogging years. But to understand this, “gear doesn’t matter” situation, we have to understand the film making world that Casey came from. Casey cut his teeth as a film maker when DV tapes were the consumer video media of choice, when it came to mobile, affordable run and gun film making, it was the only option. He filmed a series and sold that series to HBO, home movie, vlog style before the word or the style “vlog” even existed. Up until that point a vlog was just a home movie; something meant to capture memories for you and your family to enjoy, not for other people to see. But Casey changed all that.
So as Casey lived through the digital revolution and affordable film making gear became commonplace, affordable, and better than the hundreds of thousands of dollars of gear that feature films were being shot on just a few short years prior (I’m officially at the age where a decade can be summarized as “a few short years, oof) his perspective of film making was, here we are with better gear than Hollywood was using to make feature films not so long ago and our stories don’t hit nearly the same level of emotional impact as those. So the impact that we have must not be directly correlated to the gear, therefore, gear must not be the most important thing.
Emphasis on the most.
I’m a film maker, and an admitted gear head. I love gear, I have a lot of gear, some of it I use every day, some of it not so much, but all of my gear gets me excited and serves a purpose in the work that I do. The work that I have created in my career would look, feel, watch, hit differently if I didn’t own or have access to the gear that I used to make it. Nothing was unnecessary to achieve what I wanted, everything was intentional and thought out. Could I have told the story that I wanted to without all of the different lenses, and lighting, and monitors, and audio equipment? Yeah, absolutely I could have. Would those stories have had the artistic impact and conveyed the same emotion that I was going for had I not had the proper gear to light for mood or really emphasize different things that I wanted to draw attention to? Nope.
And I think this is where people get hung up. When Casey said that “Gear doesn’t matter”, I think what he was saying is that if the thing that is keeping you from creating is the gear that you don’t have then you’re missing the point. Your focus is in the wrong place and you need to stretch your creative problem solving skills a little bit to figure out how to make it work with what you have. Do some guerrilla film making and make it happen.
But the gear matters.
I’m at a point in my career and my production company to where I own, basically, everything I would need to pull off just about any shoot at my current skills and abilities. And there’s relief that comes from knowing that I’m not going to be hindered by not having a light that I need or not having the right modifiers or motion control, or support, or not having the correct focal lengths. I am more creative because I know my gear is capable. The possibilities are wide open, now the only limiting factor is my imagination.
There’s certainly something to be said for how rich and organic thoughts can form when you get outside the box because you’re being limited by the tools that you have, but trust me when I say that I’ve been in both positions and I’m far more creative by relieving the burden of whether or not my gear can do what I want to do and I just let my imagination run wild with the concept. Heck there’s entire film festivals devoted to films made entirely on iphones. And the films are incredible, better than a lot of the work I’ve ever created. But if you ask many of those film makers, if given the option to shoot the project on an iPhone or on a $150,000 Alexa mini LF package, they would pick up the Alexa, and probably do on other projects. They like the challenge of making something outside the box, entirely on an iPhone, inside the isolation of one project but they also wouldn’t choose that workflow very single time given the option.
So I could rant for hours about this but I’m trying to keep it concise. So what I’ll say is this: stop saying that gear doesn’t matter. It does. It’s just not the most important thing. But it can not be the most important thing and still be important. Story, emotion, feeling, and impact is the most important thing. The only reason we do this stuff is to create an emotional reaction in people who watch what we create and there’s some pretty conculsive scientific proof that the gear we use in terms of lighting and visual distortions with lenses and cameras and color goes deep into the human brain and affects how we feel when we see something.
Gear shouldn’t be the thing that keeps you from creating and having an impact. Heck, you don’t even need a camera to tell a story and have an impact. You don’t even need a pen and paper. All you need to have an impact is passion and a willing ear to listen, but we’re not just talking about having an impact, we’re talking about having an impact with our film making. And for film makers, gear matters.
So please stop saying otherwise just because Casey said it in a video one time (okay, multiple times in a couple of videos). It’s out of context and doesn’t paint the whole picture.
Thanks for listening to (read “reading”) my rant.
Much love. Peace.
