How To Travel Light As A Film Crew
There are a lot of moving parts when you’re shooting, and travelling with both your crew and your kit can be incredibly difficult. Whether you’re travelling abroad or you’re just travelling a few streets over, no one wants to lug around a heavy kit full of items you might not even need.
At Pictures For The People, we’ve done a lot of travelling to shoot locations and we’ve become experts in how to travel light. Make the packing process simple and stress-free, and ensure you’re only bringing the essentials with you to your location.
Why Does Travelling Light Matter?
Travelling light as a film crew is critical to ensure your day runs as smoothly as possible. Whether you’re travelling overseas or you’re heading to a location closer to home, only packing the essentials helps to save not only time, but also money in some cases.
By packing light, you can save money when it comes to overseas travel. We all know how expensive additional baggage can be on airlines, so ensuring your filming kit is as compact as possible can help you avoid extra costs. Taking less equipment with you to your filming location can also save you time. Having only the essentials makes set-up and pack-down easier and quicker, so that you can get straight into filming as soon as you arrive on location.
Taking only the essentials with you can also help create a more streamlined and stress-free process. This allows you to focus on getting the shot rather than keeping track of multiple pieces of equipment.
How Do I Know What To Pack & What To Leave Behind?
Knowing exactly what to pack and what to forgo can be an art that takes a lot of practice. We’ve done a lot of travelling to shoot locations, and we’ve got effective packing down to a science. Here are our tips on how to pack your kit best.
Know Your Shoot Requirements
Before you begin the packing process, you must know the parameters of your shoot inside and out. You need to know exactly where you’re going, the amount of time you’ll be filming, how far away the location is, and exactly what you’re shooting.
If you’re travelling quite far for a number of days, you may want to bring some additional equipment (just in case) that you wouldn’t need to bring if you were shooting somewhere closer to home.
Invest In The Right Case
Having the right carry equipment can also make travelling with your kit a lot easier. Travelling with your gear can overall be a huge discomfort, and making sure you have everything from camera gear and audio equipment to your laptop and lighting can be tricky. But investing in a steady carry-on case can make all the difference.
These are perfect for location shooting, and you can even make sure they fit international carry-on requirements so that you can take them absolutely everywhere. These cases are generally padded inside and also locked on the outside, so that you know your expensive gear is always well protected. This way, you can have all your equipment in one place, and you know it’s going to be safe even during travel.
Analyse Your Scenes
Travelling light comes down to really only bringing what you need, and analysing your scenes is a great way to figure out exactly what you should and shouldn’t be bringing.
When you know exactly what you need to shoot, you can pack your kit accordingly. A shoot plan also makes it easy for you to see which equipment you need each day, so you can look into the possibility of renting out heavier or bulkier items for a day or two as you need them.
A Compact Kit Makes For A Stress-Free Shoot
By packing only what you need and ensuring you’re travelling light, you can really take the additional stress off of shoots on location. If you need a hand figuring out exactly what to pack, or you’d rather work with an expert video production company, you can contact a member of our team today!
