Bad audio? Blurry video? Stop letting gear confusion hold your YouTube channel back! As a filmmaker with 10+ years of experience, I’ve broken down the 5 key YouTube gear items you need for 2025. Save money, avoid mistakes, and produce pro-level content.
Introduction: From Hotel Doorman to Open-Mic Survivor Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you enroll in MasterClass via my link, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions are my own, based on multiple completions of the course and 50+ open mics since 2021. I spent three years opening … Read more
The Night I Learned What Clothing Rustle Actually Costs Episode four of Maid — the Netflix series — was a twelve-hour overnight. It was February on the coast of British Columbia, and the set was inside a house that smelled like old carpet and practical lighting gel slowly cooking on a too-close fixture. The sound … Read more
Best Budget Lenses for Filmmaking in 2026: What Actually Works Under $500 Quick affiliate note: PeekAtThis participates in affiliate programs with Amazon, B&H, and Adorama. If you buy through our links, we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Recommendations below come from real production experience, not sponsored placements. Direct Answer (for … Read more
Introduction The tent poles snapped with a sound like dry spaghetti breaking. 2 AM. Rain hammering the campsite at Cypress Provincial Park. My neighbor’s brand-new six-person shelter folded in on itself while he was still inside it. I could hear him yelling from three sites over—sharp, panicked yelling that wakes up half a campground. He’d … Read more
When LEGO Became Cheaper Than Therapy I bought the LEGO Millennium Falcon after wrapping Maid on Netflix. Ten episodes as a set dresser means ten episodes of watching Assistant Directors yell at grips for putting C-stands in the wrong corner. By episode eight, the effective communication on a film set we’d established in week one … Read more
Introduction The air in Victoria at 4:30 AM smells like sea salt and industrial-grade espresso. I spent 10 episodes as a set dresser on Maid, moving furniture and aging practical locations to look lived-in and worn. “Budget” isn’t a word you hear on a union set. But “efficiency”—that’s the only religion that matters. Three hours … Read more
How to Capture Emotion Without Dialogue in Film A few years ago, I was shooting a short called “The Space Between” with basically no budget and an actor who’d never been on set before. The scene was simple: a guy discovers his wife left him. No big monologue. No tearful goodbye. Just him, an empty … Read more
Introduction – Smartphone Filmmaking Guerrilla Style You don’t need a $10,000 camera rig to make a film. The smartphone in your pocket is a filmmaking powerhouse, and guerrilla techniques let you shoot anywhere, anytime, on a tiny budget. Fast forward to my festival-screened projects Two Brothers, One Sister and Doggonit, both shot guerrilla-style on an … Read more
The Tripod Incident and What It Taught Me About Solo Filming The tripod hit the ground at exactly the wrong moment—mid-sentence during what should’ve been a clean establishing shot on a ridge outside Squamish. I was alone, twenty minutes from the trailhead, watching my rented A7 IV cartwheel down granite. The camera survived. My shooting … Read more