Starting Out as a Filmmaker: What You Actually Need

The photography version of this post was easy: one camera, one lens, a tripod, something to say. Filmmaking needs its own list, because while the principle is the same — the gear matters less than you think — the traps are different.

Here's what you actually need when you're starting out as a filmmaker.

Decent sound before a decent camera. If you learn one thing from this post, make it this. Audiences will forgive soft focus, wobbly framing, even dodgy lighting. They will not forgive bad audio. They won't know why they stopped watching — they'll just stop. A modest camera with a proper microphone beats a cinema camera with the built-in mic every single time. Your first hundred quid goes on sound. Not negotiable.

A camera that shoots video, which you already own. Same as photography: the phone in your pocket is more capable than what plenty of festival films were shot on. If you buy anything, buy used, and buy boring — a reliable body that records decent video and doesn't overheat. The camera is the least interesting decision you'll make.

A tripod. Still. My advice hasn't changed from the photography list. Handheld looks like a choice when you can hold a frame steady, and like a mistake when you can't. Learn the locked-off shot first. Earn the movement.

Editing skills, before almost anything else. Here's what nobody tells you at the start: films are made in the edit. Shooting is collecting material; editing is the actual filmmaking. Free software will take you a long way — DaVinci Resolve costs nothing and is genuinely industry-grade. Cut other people's footage, cut your own, recut things that already exist. The editor's instinct — knowing what to leave out — is the most valuable skill on this entire list, and you can build it at a desk in Doncaster for free.

A finished film. Not a showreel of drone shots. Not a folder of "projects in development." A finished film, however short, however rough. Two minutes is fine. Because finishing is the skill that separates filmmakers from people with footage, and every finished film teaches you the full cycle — idea, shoot, edit, the horrible moment of showing it to someone. You learn more finishing one bad film than planning ten good ones.

A story you can afford. The classic beginner mistake is writing something you can't make — car chases, period costume, a cast of twelve. Write for what you've got: two people, one location, natural light, a problem between them. Constraint isn't the enemy of good filmmaking. Most of the time it's the cause of it. Some of the best shorts ever made happen in one room because one room was what they had.

People. This is the one that makes film different from photography. You can be a photographer alone. You cannot really be a filmmaker alone — and the sooner you stop trying, the faster everything improves. You need someone to hold the boom, someone willing to be on camera, someone to tell you the cut drags. Crew on other people's projects, even for free at the start, even just carrying stands. You'll learn how sets actually work, and the people you meet doing it become the people you make things with for years. I've written before about collaboration being the whole job. Nowhere is that truer than here.

Somewhere to be seen, and the nerve to be seen there. Local film nights, community screenings, short film festivals with cheap entry fees. Showing work to a room of strangers is uncomfortable and irreplaceable — you learn exactly where your film loses people by feeling the room lose interest. It's information you cannot get any other way.

The business basics, when money arrives. Public liability insurance, release forms for anyone on camera, permission for locations, backed-up footage in two places. None of it is exciting. All of it is the difference between a professional and a hobbyist with an invoice template.

So: a microphone, any camera, a tripod, editing software, a story you can afford, people around you, and a finished film at the end of it.

Twenty years on, I'm still working off roughly that list. The kit got better and the projects got bigger, but the fundamentals never moved. Sound, story, people, finish the film. Start there and you're already ahead of everyone still saving up for a camera they don't need.