This shoot pushed the limits of how much gear I could set up and manage solo.How To Successfully Push
The Limits Of A One-Man Band
Text & Photography by Daniel BrockettIf you’re going to go with an OMB approach, follow these tips and suggestions
An interesting and significant by-prod-
uct of the digital revolution is that
most of the gear used today to create
television and film is now significantly
lighter, smaller, less expensive and
higher-quality than anyone could
have imagined 15 or 20 years ago.
Many of us are using cameras that,
for a little over $1,000, can shoot in
high-quality 4:2:2 10-bit 4K-resolution
formats that would have been unimagi-
nable just a few years ago. Heavy, heat-
generating Tungsten lighting instru-
ments have been replaced with much
smaller, cooler, more flexible and versa-
tile LED instruments. It’s now possible
to easily and effectively edit not only onnon-computer devices like tablets but to
edit 4K video on our mobile phones.
Yes, although the digital revolution has
given us these benefits, there’s a down-
side. Budgets. That’s right. If you were in
video production in the 1980s, ’90s and
early 2000s, it cost significantly more for
clients to produce programming at any
level. Gear was expensive, and the skills to
use it professionally were rarer than they
are today. The advent of web video has
changed who creates video today. Even
as little as a decade ago, the expense and
complexity of pro video gear meant that
it simply took more skilled labor to create
video and cinema.
What that all means is that oneperson—you—needs to know more
about all aspects of the production.What Is An OMB Approach?
The “one-man band” approach to video
production is a phenomenon that has
grown side-by-side with the advent of
new smaller, lighter and simpler-to-
use gear.
A decade ago, a small documentary
or corporate shoot would typically
have a cameraperson, sound mixer and
perhaps a PA or a gaffer as well as a
producer/director/interviewer.
A crew of three to five people was
considered a small, minimal crew. In
2019, a small crew is often just you.
Video and film are definitely a collab-
orative medium and were designed to
be shot with a crew, with each position
filled by a person whose job it was to
light a scene, shoot it with a camera
and record the sound. But the real-
ity is, today that paradigm is shifting
from working in a group to work-
ing solo.
Personally, I most enjoy working
with a small crew of between five and
10 people. Such a group gives me the
benefits of being able to concentrate on
doing just one job really well (directing,
cinematography and interviewing are
what I like doing most), while leaving
the lugging of gear, setting it all up,
setting lights, recording sound, hair,
makeup, props, wardrobe and produc-
tion design to my crew.
Others I know in the field prefer
working on an even larger crew of 5056 | Digital Photo Pro digitalphotopro.com