Our Mobile Studio Set-Up

 

As you guys probably know, for the last three months we’ve been rolling out our latest helicopter series Heading: EAST and it’s ancillary posts! In this one we’re breaking down what was in our mobile studio kit. This is everything we used to shoot and record our interviews inside the cabin, apartment, hotels, and tent! TENT! Like off grid, no power, STUDIO LIGHTING IN A TENT!! Let me tell you, these lights are a GAME CHANGER for these kinds of trips. Having the ability to shoot professional interview set-ups anywhere, including off grid, opens up so many opportunities for storytelling!

Disclosure: This post contains gifted product from Aputure and RØDE. All thoughts are our own. This post also contains affiliate links. By purchasing through these links you are directly supporting our blog, youtube channel, and us as creators. Thank you!

You can check out our entire interview set breakdowns in this video:

You can find the entire series here:

The Mobile Studio Kit

Light Set Up

Amaran P60X with pop up softbox

Aputure hooked us up with the P60X for this trip and we love it! This was our key light for all interview shots.

Sony NPF Batteries

These allowed us to use the Amaran P60X off grid to get our interview shots inside the tent.

Worlds smallest light stand

I don’t think they make this anymore, but this is one piece we need to rework a little since it’s a touch too short.

Amaran AL-M9

This is a light we usually toss in our camera bag all the time and it came in handy this trip! We used this in the lantern during the cabin interview in episode 3 since the lamp itself was flickering on camera. This allowed us to have light in the background without the flicker.

Tin Foil

Yes… tin foil. We stole a large sheet of it from the cabin in episode 3, and we folded it up and carried it in the laptop sleeve of the bag and it worked PERFECT.

Mic Set Up

RØDE Wireless Go2

RØDE sent us these last year and we’ve been using them more and more. They were a key part of our mobile studio set up allowing us to get decent sounding audio by getting the mics as close as possible.

Aspen Lapel Mics

These are the lapel mics we’ve been using. They are quite old and some of them crackle a little but they did the job! We will be replacing these soon now that we know we will be using them more often.

Camera Set Up

Sony A7S3

This was the main camera we used for the entire series. We shot everything including our interviews in S-log3. You can find the full list of gear in our bag here.

Sony 24mm 1.4

This lens was so key for interviews since we were shooting in tight spaces and wanted some separation from the background. Shooting wide allowed us to get close to the camera, and shooting wide open at 1.4 gave us a nice shallow depth of field.

Sony 50mm 1.4

This was great when we had the space to get back a little further. We still shot at 1.4 though since in most cases the background was close to us (the subject).

During this trip I was convinced that i’d just be taking the holy trinity of lenses next time we do a project like this; 16-35, 24-70, 70-200. After creating this video I realized that the two prime lenses chosen are an important part of the kit. We could get a similar field of view with the 24-70mm, both focal lengths are covered, but I think I’d really miss out on the 1.4 as we leaned on this heavily to give us some separation between us and the background during our interviews.

Check out our full camera bag tour:

 
Becki and Chris