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Home / News / Ultimate setup – guerrilla cinema

Ultimate setup – guerrilla cinema

Monsters' director Gareth Edwards takes us through his essential guerrilla cinema kit

Canon 5D Mark II £1950

Considering it shoots ‘cinema resolution’ with a narrow depth-of-field, this is amazing – like owning your own 35mm movie camera for the price of an exotic holiday.

Zacuto Z-Finder Pro 3X £300

This optical viewfinder with 3x magnification makes focusing much easier, which won’t seem too important – until you show your film on the big screen.

Litepanels LP-Micro £200

Modern camera chips are already strong in low-light, but if you need some extra illumination these dimmable lights are so portable you’ll forget you’re carrying them.

Adobe Production Premium £1815

With Photoshop, After Effects and Premiere, this is a complete post-production facility in one box. For real film-making it’s practically essential.

Autodesk 3DS Max £3425

Excellent 3D software that comes with a ‘drag and drop’ creature animation plug-in called ‘Character Animation Toolkit’ which saved me weeks of tedious foot-planting.

Flourescent vest £1.65

Cheap as a cut-price bag of chips, invaluable for keeping busybody officials at bay, and also pretty handy as a piece of safety equipment, especially if you have to cycle home after the shoot.

Cinekinetic Cinesaddle £340

More versatile than a tripod, this stabilising cushion lets you keep your camera steady either on the ground or hanging out of a car window. A great alternative to a dolly.

Micron Explorer-100 System £1000

A professional sound kit is much cheaper than flying in your local non-actors to replace their dialogue in a recording studio six months after the shoot.

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Profile image of Dan Grabham Dan Grabham Editor-in-Chief

About

Dan is Editor-in-chief of Stuff, working across the magazine and the Stuff.tv website.  Our Editor-in-Chief is a regular at tech shows such as CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as well as at other launches and events. He has been a CES Innovation Awards judge. Dan is completely platform agnostic and very at home using and writing about Windows, macOS, Android and iOS/iPadOS plus lots and lots of gadgets including audio and smart home gear, laptops and smartphones. He's also been interviewed and quoted in a wide variety of places including The Sun, BBC World Service, BBC News Online, BBC Radio 5Live, BBC Radio 4, Sky News Radio and BBC Local Radio.

Areas of expertise

Computing, mobile, audio, smart home