Technical and Equipment Specs for Your Event

Hey guys, this is Jay over at Firebrand Media and today we’re talking about technical and equipment specs at Firebrand Media. This is really exciting because this is everything under the sun that we love to do. It encompasses video tools, audio tools, and lighting tools and support tools. We’ll kind of go down the list.

Some of the video tools that we have obviously are cameras. We are Sony Purists. We love using the Sony cameras, the FX line specifically. And these cameras have great color, they have great specs, you know, large full frame sensors. They’re obviously relevant in the market.

So focusing on cameras first, at Firebrand Media, optics are super important. We use the Sony FX line cameras. I’d like to say we’re Sony purists, but at the end of the day, it just depends on Sony’s progression into the new age of global shutter and all the other cool things that other companies are doing. But currently we use the FX line cameras. Very reliable, they have a full frame sensor, their large compatibility factor for the lenses like E-mount systems. We carry seven of these cameras from large to small and they help us tackle all kinds of jobs whether you’re needing a multi-cam of a podcast or a single camera on a gimbal. It’s something we can handle.

If we’re going to the field and we need to film an interview outside, we have lavalier mics, again, Sony. But those lavaliers or shotguns or podcast mics help us capture clean audio. We like to record in 32-bit float, meaning that we have a large headroom in the post-production to clean up that audio if we do have issues onsite. Let’s say it’s windy or it’s really loud in a conference center, or there’s unanticipated noise interruptions.

The next focus that impacts production is lighting. Lighting is super essential in this day and age of production. We’ve seen Apple create a full-on, you know, like commercial/cinematic film with an iPhone, but no one sees it behind the productions. They got 15, 20, even 30 man crews manning large lighting systems. Lighting can take your production from boo boo to super clean. And the reason it’s important is because it shapes the subject and frame.

At Firebrand Media, we carry the Aperture brand specifically, being we have everything from 300 to 600 and we have multiple kits of lighting. Our lighting fixtures are complemented by a wide diverse variety of modifiers. Think of the fixture as the thing that puts out the light and the modifiers what diffuses the light. That could be anything from spotlight modifiers we carry, a softbox, lantern, parabolic domes, both large and small domes, and even an eight by eight scrim. We have a lot of modifiers to complement the production needs with those lighting fixtures.

A side of the lighting fixtures, we actually have lead panels as well. We carry the Nova C300Ps. These panels can completely shape a space with lighting, being that they could be used as stage washes, cove washes, we actually have them installed on our ceiling or half of them installed on our ceiling in the cove at the studio. They are an essential part of our production space.

Now we talked about cameras, audio, lighting, but there are several support systems that are integrated into the production lineup. Being like scrims, like we had mentioned in lighting, gimbals that are used with cameras, modifiers that are used with fixtures or lighting fixtures. We also have C stands and impact stands for grip. When we’re setting up lighting, we have to think about the footprint of the floor. Can we use impact stands on rollers being that they can move and are more flexible? Or do we need to use C stands with a smaller footprint? To carry this support, having sandbags, A-clips, Apple boxes for the talent to stand on are super important.

We also have a wide variety of tripods and drones. Drones are a part of that support and auxiliary being that they are the camera from the sky. We have small ones that can be used nimbly in tight spaces and we have larger ones for more cinematic quality from the one inch sensor that’s on board the camera of the drone.

In a nutshell, all of this gear can be used in different ways to suit your production needs. As an example, you could be looking at a large footprint for production or a small footprint for production. As a reference for a large footprint, we worked with a corporate company called Udacity where we needed to set up multiple lighting systems, several camera angles behind the scenes, as well as stage a full conference room. In that footprint, we were using the eight by eight scrim and eight light fixtures doing different things. For audio, we had a boom pole that was hanging over the subject as well as them wirelessly mic’d up with lavalier microphones. For audio, we had a boom pole fixed over and a lavalier on the talent. This was being fed over to a field recorder that was sampling at 32-bit or high-quality audio.

A production like this could take several hours to set up versus, like I said, being a life footprint production where our videographer was using a gimbal and a smaller camera body, like an FX3 with an autofocus lens and a lapel mic that was feeding audio to the camera. That shoot is a lot different than a full scale production. It takes less setup time to build that out, but doesn’t compromise on quality. Of course, will we like control over lighting and having that cinematic touch and shaping the lighting? We would, but in some cases, that’s not the call for the scope of work.

Whether you have a multi-day conference, a workshop, or a podcast or let’s say a one-on-one interview as a business owner. We have both small and large solutions that can fit your budget. If you have any questions about technical or equipment specs, please feel for you to reach out. We’re always here to help.