The Ideal Camera Package with Mick Jones

G', day, guys, and welcome to another episode of the podcast. Thanks for tuning in. I really do appreciate you being here. Now, this week we are on to episode three of a three part series with Mick Jones from Filthylook Films. And this week we're going to deviate slightly from the script and talk about gear. Mick hasn't bought a new major camera for about seven years, so I wanted to ask him, what would he buy today? And the answer might surprise you. But before we get into that, I have just written a new ebook called Video Business Breakthrough. Nine Growth Accelerators for creating a Successful and Consistent Video Production Business. And I want you to have it for free. It's only 16 pages long. All you need to do to get it is go to my website, filmmakersbusinessacademy.com and click the orange button at the top of the page and you can get it. Simple as that. Anyway, hope you enjoy the ebook and I hope you enjoyed the shore.

Welcome to the Video Business Accelerator Podcast. Each week we uncover the secrets to creating a wildly successful and scalable video production business. With your host, Dan Lenny, discover how the accelerator program is transforming the lives of our members@www.videobusinessaccelerator.com. enjoy this episode.

Mick. We're back here for number three of this series. I hope we can do more of this. Actually, I've really missed our chats because we got into these mics and we just kind of go places which I think are really valuable for the audience.

It's good fun.

This, I think is gonna be a very popular topic which is about cameras and gear. You know, what is your ideal camera package? And.

If you were to start from scratch today, what would you buy and why?

Wow, that is a polarizing question.

I know.

I love it on many levels. Right, let's go there. There's the. There's the.

Fuck with the audience. Yeah.

Okay, here's my honest take on it. And this is.

Totally brutally honest. I don't, personally, I don't give a shit about what camera I use, but this is why it's polarizing on this level as well, because then I also do. But any camera that's out there at the moment, from an iPhone to a red to an Alexa, any camera is capable of doing almost anything. Like it is just.

I roll my eyes when I see discussions, deep discussions about the new camera that's coming out because, like, it's going to change anyone's life. I'm excited as the next person about new gear. I'm a gear head, but I'm not, I, it's, it's kind of a weird one, I would say. What's my ideal camera package? I love ARRI cameras. I love the user experience of them. I have never owned one, I've used them. They've always been, they're at the high, high, high end of.

Film production and always have been. And they've always been what? The look that comes out of a film camera or a digital film camera has always been the aspirational thing that we, that has been the holy grail ever since I started in this game, which is why it was so life changing when the 5D came out because you could achieve a lot of things that weren't possible before for cheap and accessible and easy, easy to use. So it's a really double sided thing for me. If I was gonna, if I had the means, I would get an ARRI Alexa mini lf. To me that's the ultimate camera. And that's easy to say. I'm sure so many people listening go, who wouldn't want that? That's just amazing. All the, all the Oscar movies and everything that's cool and looks great is shot on those. Can you achieve the same look essentially with a cheaper camera? Absolutely you can.

The DSLRs and mirrorless cameras that can have a full frame look if you want it, or a Super 35 crop if you want it look, they're all.

Completely can achieve high quality look. There's so many different reasons to choose a different camera package.

The one that I hate the most, the reason to choose a camera package is because of its perception of being high quality.

Oh, I've got the bee's knees camera, therefore I should get more work because this is the best camera. So it's going to improve my quality of work. It doesn't in the least, I don't think, improve your quality of work.

It's like I had this discussion with Steve Weiss years ago when we were talking about great camera shootouts and these kind of things, which are all great fun.

It becomes tiresome though, when we get down to it, because all these cameras are very capable. And I think that it's the least important thing on a production. Is the camera the least important. Yet so many people put it as number one. What are we shooting this on?

I used Game of Thrones as the example when I was talking to Steve, I said everything that's good about that show happened before the light hit the sensor. The writing, the costumes, the locations, the acting, the performances, everything about that show is good because of what happened before the light hit a sensor or a lens even. You could shoot that on a 5D or a GH5 and the audience, it's not going to make any difference, a lick of difference to how popular that show is. But of course they don't shoot it on those. They have the means to shoot it on other cameras. But the point I think is clear that they're all capable but there's different reasons and there's client needs and there's deliverables and tech specs and scale of footprint, how much crew you've got, you know, whether the cameras are operatable by one person or you need two, three or a crew to work it all that. So it's a long way to answer your question. But personally the user experience, because I spend so much time doing it, the user experience of ARRI has made me want to just go into that camp. I've been in, in the production industry for 22 years and they're the cameras that simplify the process and allow me to focus on the important stuff which is what happens before the light hits the sensor. That's the important stuff. And the ARRI cameras get out of the way. The other camera brands.

Seem to have these like complex menu systems and, and just digging deep into things and color matrixes and this stuff that's born out of hybrid, you know, broadcast cameras. And the simplicity of the, the ARRI makes it just a pleasure to use now.

And what, what have you been using in the last five to 10 years?

The Sony F55 and that's seven years.

You'Ve had that for.

Yeah, early one of the first cameras that shipped in Australia I got that for.

And the reason I wanted to say that is to give the audience context. It's not just like, hey, I want an ARRI Alexa. Actually you've been working with F55 for seven years. C100 mark 1, mark II. Other cameras you've been working with regularly.

The workhorse has been the F55.

And yeah, I haven't bought, haven't changed cameras in seven years. So it's been a long stint. Before that it was very, it was a FS100FS700HVX100 with a adapter and 7D. And there was a lot of a period of a few years before I got the F55 of switching up cameras, new stuff was coming, coming out C300 mark 1. C300 mark 1 was a life changing camera. I thought really nice.

But then I got, yeah, I got the F55 and just kind of stuck with it. It just did everything that.

So from a business perspective, it's been a great investment.

Yeah.

Because it's returned for you, which is obviously part of what this is all about. I mean, you're running a video production business.

Yeah.

And so obviously the investment to an array is considerably more. But you feel now that's, that's, that's the right tool for you.

It is. Because I've become.

I feel like I don't want to fight with the camera. It's not, it's not a new.

Thing for me to want to get into. I'm not kind of testing the water as to whether I want to be in cinematography or this kind of level of production. It's definitely, you know, that's not a gamble for me. So I'm paying, I will be willing to pay a premium to have the user experience that I want. And it's not necessarily solely a business decision. It's a work pleasure decision. I do, I spend a lot of time on the lens and I want a tool that is easy for me to use and gets out of the. That I'm not fighting with, you know, and that I've waited and danced with a lot of other types of cameras that I'm constantly trying to replicate. The ARRI user experience. It's again, not so much down to the look that can be achieved, but you got to work a bit harder to get that look. You got to fight the camera a little bit, which, you know, like I said that it's a bit like driving.

A car, isn't it? I mean, they say that very few people who get into an F1 car and drive it without stalling it.

Right.

But almost anyone can get into a Volkswagen Golf automatic and drive it. But if you go to a manual, you know.

Ford, it's going to be a different experience from driving the Volkswagen and a different experience from driving a Mercedes.

Yeah.

So I guess, because I know you've talked about going down the ARRI route, I think when the Arri Alexa Mini.

Came out four years ago, maybe look at that.

So I think it's worth just bringing back. We talked about this a couple of episodes ago about patience, but you're someone who is constantly busy charging significant, you know, rates at the higher end. But still you've waited seven years. Well, you had your camera seven years ago. Four years ago. You danced with the idea of changing it. Seven years with the same camera. You're a very patient man.

Yeah, well, it was achieving the results that I want, and I've got it dialed into. There's some familiarity with it. You know, I just have. I haven't upgraded the firmware in four years. Because it works for you. It works just. It's like having a film stock that you like or, you know, it's now that that is just a box that's set up that I don't have to change anything on, setting it up for the first time. There's a lot of experiment, there's a lot of trial.

I love that. Because, you know, just because you can doesn't mean you should. And I think this instant gratification culture is like, oh, you know, Apple's got a new operating system out, or there's a new version of Resolve. There's a new version of Adobe. Just because it's there doesn't mean you should. And how many times have you gone and made that decision to upgrade the OS and instantly regretted it?

Every time.

Yeah, Every single time.

I'm dragged into new software or new scenarios, kicking and screaming, because I know that everything's a public beta, whether it's advertised as one or not. And we're the guinea pigs for it. With your business, you pay for it because if you upgrade a piece of equipment, upgrade is a loose term. Update the firmware or update the software and you put it on a shoot the next day, that's got to be reliable. And it fizzes. You're burning money straight away.

I upgraded to Mojave a few months ago on my desktop, and I run everything off Google Drive and suddenly Google Drive wouldn't load on my desktop. Like, it's so frustrating. It's like, oh, yeah, Google Drive is not supported yet. We're not sure when it will be. It's like, holy fuck. My entire life on Google Drive.

It's unacceptable.

It's like, what? What is going on? And then I got a new laptop and I did. The same thing happened. And I was like. I was like, I've got to set some time aside to figure this out. And I sat for an hour trying to work out how to load Google Drive. Now they fixed the mist, fixed the bug, but it was like I had to go into my preferences, I had to untick something, and I had to go somewhere where I hadn't. My brain didn't go, oh, I have to go to that menu. Then back a step to untick a box. It took me like an hour.

And there's a whole.

And I was like, this is insane. It's so frustrating.

It's even more frustrating when you think about it like this. All this technology we've just talked about, just with cameras alone, you're touching on it with computers. There's a, there's a fucking conspiracy theory out there. Are we serious? We're seriously. We can, we can broadcast to the world in 1080 4K footage from our phones and reach millions of people wirelessly live in high production value, but we still can't get a fucking PC drive to plug into a Mac and work. What's going on here? Are we. Come on.

Some people see the Earth is flat.

I watched the dock.

How good was that?

Oh, my God, that is that.

We've got to do an episode on the flat Earthers. Shit, it's insane. How funny was it? Just digress. When they were like, we've got this test we're going to do and there's like guys with laser beams and standing on top of the cars and their sheer despair when it didn't work and it didn't prove the theory. They were just, they were broken.

Every time it worked against them, it was so funny and they just still in denial. Even their own experiments are proving that the earth is round. And they're like, no, no, we'll figure it out.

My favorite was the astronaut who, who had been on the space station. He's just, he's just, he's just, he's literally laughing. Yeah, he can't, he can't speak because he's like, it's so ridiculous.

It's crazy.

But, but, but, you know, it does, it does kind of play into the whole people's belief systems.

Yeah.

And people's belief systems around camera technology is very territorial.

It is, yeah, yeah. There's lots of, lots of different attitudes you meet with people when it comes to this. I, you know, it's again, an eye roll moment for me. I'm of course, like, I'll engage with people and I love talking about the gear, but it's, it's just become so.

You know.

Pointless.

But I also want to just, you know, back up what you're saying. You have been running, you've been in this industry 22 years, you've been running your business for a significant amount of time. You have a strong client base and you are openly saying it's not just a business decision to buy the arri, it's about a user experience decision. I don't want anyone listening to this to think, hey, to be like Filthy Luke and be like Mick John's, I need an ARRI Alexa.

I Don't have one. I want one. I don't have one. Yeah, I'd like one. That comes down to what I would, what, what would be my ideal package. Now that's what I would like. For another reason though is that I think they really threw down with that Alexa lf because it's a completely sort of camera apart from high frame rates. It takes any kind of lens. You can do anamorphic, you can do 4, 4 by 3 anamorphic, you can do 2, 39 to 1 spherical. You can do. Put any lens on it and just shoot it as an open gate and use the image however you want and make it fit any format you want. 4K 2K HD, you know, and it's not restricted in that way. And it records to one card inside it records raw or prores to the same card. No external boxes, no license upgrades. Finally, this is a camera that.

Can do. It's versatile in the true sense. That's the other, you know, reason I would want one. It's. Yeah, definitely. I, I'm so. I'm the complete opposite in that if I would. If you're starting out, just get any camera, whatever you can get, make it look as good as you can.

Well, at the other end of the scale, we did the under the hood shorts in under hood Shore under hood, under the hood course three or four years ago. And we talked about the power of the C100 and how much work you were doing at the time on that camera.

That's still probably my favorite camera of the last decade, the C100 Mark II. I love it.

You know, not to get caught up in specs or anything. I get that as a user experience. I prefer to use that over the F55. It just feels right. I love the images out of it. It's so versatile and easy to use and work with. This again, this comes down to a client. Want some? I, you know, the reason I got the F55 was I had to deliver 4k for a green screen animation production. So I needed a 4K camera. And that was the, the choice at the time. That was the right choice, I guess.

As well, you know, as, as a, as a maturing business. Why not? I mean like you've worked bloody hard and why not have that Rolls Royce of the camera that you want? Because you spent a very long time building your business up and gone through some tough years and some great years. That's business, isn't it?

I'm definitely not a gear elitist at all like this. I've been building A new show. I haven't done a showreel in four years and it's time to do one.

And is that because you've been too busy working? Probably the irony.

Yeah, I mean, I haven't really.

So are you really making a show reel for the audience or is he making it for you?

It's for. I just think I need. It's almost half a decade. I've got to update what I've put out there, you know, and there's so much content to choose from. But I was going back through some of the stuff I shot on the 7 day and the 5D and that's making the cut to my new showreel because it's still some of the best work I've done.

Levi's commercial, man, that started a whole. The movement. Sorry, the. Right.

I did Levi's one as well.

Yeah, but the Wrangler one is what? Tell me the story. I think you said once upon a time you went for a client meeting and they were like, hey, this is the reference footage we want to use as a reference.

And it's like I said, I actually shot that.

So they. So they.

Yeah, I got a story. It's happened a few times. I got a storyboard.

Image, a mood board reference from a client that had multiple frames on it that were already my own work, but they didn't know it. And it was kind of a funny, semi awkward moment. Yeah, I know this. Yeah, I actually shot that image. It was kind of bizarre. But yeah, the stuff that I. This is. I've been thinking about this in conjunction with this new Arri camera and it's. These are polar opposites of the gear spectrum. Some of my favorite work was done with the old Nikon Zeiss ZF prime.

Beautiful primes.

I've still got them. And on. On the 7D. And it had a tone and a texture to it that was just so. And 5D. It's so good. And I've figured out that I've been chasing that look ever since and not been getting it.

So funnily enough, I'm excited to try one of these new large format cameras with those old lenses on them. I think that'd have a really nice look to it. And it's come back again. Looking through this footage to build a new reel is everything I shot with those lenses is making the cut. And I don't get to shoot with them that often. They're not considered high end to clients. They want sharp cine primes and these kind of things. And these Are kind of got chromatic aberration wide open. But that's all the stuff I love. It's kind of character and texture and stuff. But you know that you've got to fight with them a bit because they focus the wrong way. So getting the muscle memory into it, pulling like.

It's like driving a Japanese car. I hired a Japanese car the other week there and the indicators on the wrong side and it pops down and down is up and it's like messes with your head.

Yeah. So I'm, you know, this whole ideal gear package thing.

It's really weird because, I mean, I got a foot in each camp. I don't give a shit. But I do give a shit.

I'd go out and shoot anything. I'd be confident that I can deliver.

Anything that I've shot in the last eight years. I could deliver pretty much the same quality on whatever camera it was like. It's to the client, it's going to look the same. But there's this whole other thing that comes into it about appearances and whether you've got the. The big spec'd up camera and the bits of gear hanging off it and all that.

It would be interesting if you do decide to go down the ARRI Alexa LF route to have another podcast discussion about this in the future. Once you've been using it for six months to go. What are the clients saying about it? Are they. Is it changing your business? Well, because, you know, you can't really go better.

No, I don't think so. I mean, there's no question in the ability for those cameras to deliver quality images. It's still going to still got to come down to how I light stuff, compose it and what's going on in front of the lens. It comes down to that. But just to give you an example, at the last shoot that I did with an arri.

I noticed significantly different reaction from the client on the monitor. When I've got a monitor feed going to the client monitor when you. They just have a pleasing look out of the box. Canon do as well, I'll give them that. But my workhorse camera has been an F55 that I shoot with S log 2. And you've got it, you've got to muck around, you've got to overexpose it a bit to get the most out of that sensor. You've got to do this stuff that on set, if you're just running a live feed of it may not look that appealing to a client. Now you don't need to do that with an arri. Sure, you can get luts and things to do with the, to put on the look for the Sony, but it's not a very easy thing to achieve with it. And they're very inconsistent, I find, in color and how they're represented under different color temperatures. But the way that just a basic arri, even their log, straight footage straight to a client monitor, people look at it and go, oh my God, this looks amazing. Yet when I'm using another camera like a Sony, I tend to have to go, that's not how it's going to look. That's going to be great. And they go, okay.

Which comes that whole user experience. You can just show up, do your job. People go, that looks amazing. Thanks for it. Justify and explain.

Yeah. The amount of conversations I've had with clients around how an S log image looks on a screen and it's not really what they're going to get and they've got to imagine it this way, that way. And then you put a LUT on and that looks worse because you. I expose my eye for these things and I've got it dialed in and it ends up looking great in the end. But there's, you know, a few little things that I got to do on set and to me, that's one of those. I don't, I don't want to have that conversation anymore. I don't want to fight with it. I just want to. And look, I haven't been able to drop. No, no. Very few people drop the money on an ARRI camera. You know, it's just, it's a business decision and it's a user experience decision. But. And yeah, there's a, there's a premium and it sounds like, oh, you know, it won't, it's unrelatable. Like, it's unrelatable. For me, it has been.

It'd be your last camera you bought seven years ago and I think probably pretty much paid it off in the first job. So that's seven years of gravy.

Yeah.

So the chances are it might take a little longer to pay the ARRI off, but if it's going to last you seven years, you're going to make your money back and, and be, be in profit.

My attitude to this has changed so much. If I never, if I never got another job again, I'd go, well, sell it. I don't care. I just don't care. You know, it's going to hold its value. I'll lose a, lose a bit of Money on it or whatever. It'. Again, I'm not, I'm not experimenting in this industry anymore. Not that I was. But I mean I'm not just starting and going, maybe this will work for me or it won't. This is my life and what I want to do. And I'm just gonna, I'd like to, to go down that road of just having, you know, the bit of gear that I get pleasure out of using. It sort of sounds sort of weird because I don't hate the F55. It's been a great camera. I don't hate it. Got it dialed in. But the process of certain things to do with those cameras and I think Sony and Canon and Panasonic got, just.

Could have revolutionized the industry, but they didn't and they, they've had 10 years to do it. I think Red and Arri push the, push the limits and they consistently the ones. Let's look at, look at it all the movies and the TV shows that everyone loves and they're talking about those cameras are used on them. And they're used on them more than the others for a reason. You know, they get out of the way. You know, time is money and if you, if you're fucking around with luts and trying to tweak bits and pieces and you know, it's time, it's time and it's like there's just an instant result that is achievable with those. And you know, I remember hearing people like Rodney Charters, who loves shooting with Aries, and how they handle dynamic range and highlight roll off and stuff. And when I use them, I see the same thing. I'm like, wow. You can kind of point at a scene and then get down to the fun of lighting, the fun of crafting that look and what you're seeing is what you're getting and you know with absolute confidence that it's going to look the way you want it to look. You're not sort of second guessing the behavior that it might have on a clipped highlight or anything like that or noisy shadows or anything. So. Yeah.

Well, let us know how you got on if the arrow pays off and.

If I get one.

If you get one. Let's do this again sometime.

Yeah, sounds good.

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