Since the company started three & a half years ago, it’s safe to say that Moorhen Media have accumulated a serious amount of kit. We’ve gone from one sparsely filled shelving unit in our original office, to four shelves filled to the brim in our new location in Bethnal Green.
We have everything you’d expect – cameras, microphones & all that jazz, as well as the less obvious that you wouldn’t. A black mist lens filter and some obscure converters for a cable that you’ve never heard of. Many of these items we use on almost every job, whilst others wait patiently until the need arises and they’re drafted back into Moorhen service.
Our aim is always to offer our clients a compact, office and travel-friendly solution, whilst still delivering the highest-quality end product, be that a livestream, recorded video or something else. Amongst our wide variety of equipment, there are eight essential pieces of kit which I believe allow us to uniquely achieve this goal. Eight pieces of kit that we just couldn’t live without.
1. TrojanPro GearCart 250 Trolley
The first item I’m picking is our trusty trolley. Working in office spaces a lot of the time, we need to have a solution for moving equipment that is quick, efficient and causes minimal disturbance.
We know that many AV production companies favour large flightcases, but we feel that these aren’t the best option for an office environment. They’re too big, too loud & not versatile enough. And while we’ve had other trollies before this one, they’ve never quite lived up to our standards. Too small, too difficult to steer and too unstable.
This bad boy has none of those issues. It’s adjustable in size, it’s quiet, and it’s also easily manoeuvrable thanks to having proper tyres. Most importantly, it can still take up to 250kg in technical kit!
It is also the perfect width to fit through office doorways, and once the equipment is unloaded, the trolley folds away to a compact size that can be stored neatly out of the way until the end of the job. Ideal for both us and our Moorhen Media client!
2. Amaran F22X Panel Light
We have a range of lighting solutions, but my favourite piece is this panel light from Amaran. We chose the F22x specifically over other panel lights because of its power output of 200W (which rivals the output of Aputure’s 300x LED lamp from Amaran’s big-sister, high-budget brand). Where our other lights are fairly singular in purpose, we’ve found that the F22x is ideal for a wide range of scenarios.
Being compact and lightweight means that it can be used when a larger light wouldn’t fit, while still providing a powerful light source. Plus, it packs down into a briefcase size, ideal for taking on a train or public transport. For office-based live events, it’s been a worthy substitute for our full-conference lighting solution. And it’s an ideal backlight in an interview scenario (and functions well as a key light if space is limited).
Another great feature is that it can be battery-powered so great for the versatility of filming outdoors. This was especially effective when we were shooting McArthurGlen’s Christmas All-Company Call around one of their centres last December.
3. Sony Cinema-Line FX30 Camera
Next up, we have our general camera of choice, the FX30 (or the full-sensor version, the FX3). Whilst it looks like a DSLR camera, it contains the same sensor as the FX6 cinema-line camera, albeit a cropped version. Once upon a time, you would have needed a much bigger camera to achieve the quality that’s possible with the FX30 but with modern technology, Sony has achieved incredible video quality from a compact & lightweight camera.
The size and weight of the camera make it not only ideal for the office environment but also perfect for use on a camera gimbal for tracking shots. Alongside Sony’s fantastic in-built stabilisation (which works together with Sony’s lens’ stabilisation too), this creates incredibly smooth and dynamic footage.
And as if that wasn’t enough, Sony was forward-thinking enough to include properly useful IO ports on the camera. You won’t find any horrid micro-USB or mini HDMI on here. The camera is equipped with a full-size HDMI port, ideal for transmitting live video, and a USB-C port, which can be used to directly power the camera from mains. Whilst that may sound fairly basic, you would be surprised how many cameras of this size don’t offer this.
4. Birddog Mini NDI Converter
For transmitting videos between cameras, laptops and screens in a live production scenario, we use NDI (Network Device Interface). This is essentially a way of transmitting video over an IP network. Any device connected to our router can both deliver and receive video that is being sent via NDI, offering super flexible options for viewing video feeds, transmitting multiple video feeds to multiple different screens, and each only needs a single cable.
To convert video to NDI we use the Birddog Mini to both encode video from cameras to NDI and to decode it for use on screens. As well as simply being a converter, the Birddog Mini will also function as a tally light for a camera operator, indicating to them when the camera is live on a stream or in preview, ready to be made live. And when being used to drive a feed to a screen, they not only allow a main NDI source, but also a back-up to be chosen, so that should there be an issue with the main feed, it will seamlessly switch over!
5. Laptops. Lots of laptops.
Now, you might think it’s cheating to choose laptops as one singular piece of kit, but there’s no doubting that we could not live without them.
We use software-based video encoding and vision mixing tools as these are best suited for working with the NDI solution. And when we do have physical controllers or sound desks, very often these will also have a software control option, which will give you more advanced control. All of which need laptops to run them – see? No cheating here.
On a typical live production job, we could have up to 10 laptops controlling various elements of the show. Laptops are the backbone of our whole approach when it comes to live streaming. And again, the benefit compared to a rack-mount OB unit or using many desktop computers is that they are compact and easy to travel with!
6. Focusrite 4i4 Audio Interface
In our system, where everything is run on laptops, a solid wired connection is essential for distributing audio between devices. The Focusrite 4i4 provides us to get up to 4 inputs and outputs for any laptop, allowing us to deliver audio from our sound desk to a laptop running our vision mixing software or directly to an encoder.
Whilst we could use any audio interface unit for this, it is an essential part of our system, and the Focusrite 4i4 provides a good number of inputs and outputs, whilst still being a compact unit. Not the most exciting piece of equipment but we always have at least two on hand at each live event and we couldn’t live without them!
7. Stream Deck (and BitFocus Companion software)
Another component of our compact software-based vision mixing system is a Stream Deck. You might be familiar with this bit of kit from Twitch streamers using them, but we take them to a whole new level.
A Stream Deck is a small control panel with 32 fully programmable buttons. With the BitFocus Companion Software, we can link the Stream Deck to pretty much any piece of equipment we own that sits on the network – vMix, the sound desk, a physical ATEM, etc.
This is the ultimate tool for customising how we run an event. Need multiple different versions of the show cut for an in-person audience, online and remote presenters? It can all be done with one push of a button. Seamless transitions between videos and slides? Pre-programmed and ready to go. Running a countdown timer for presenters on a comfort monitor? We just made that really easy.
No need for a big control desk like you might see in a TV studio and once again perfectly compact for a livestream from an office.
8. Tech Hides
To round out our list, we have this unremarkable but unwaveringly essential item. A tech hide is quite simply a large wooden frame with black canvas stretched over it, which we place in front of the desk or table where we have our gallery set up.
When we have all of our laptops, mixers, audio interfaces and more, that can be a whole lot of cables to power and connect to all the various devices. No one attending your event wants to see that mess so, the tech hides allow us to hide all of that tech, so that everything looks neat and tidy. And hey presto, we’re ready to go.