ULTIMATE SOLO FILMING SETUP FOR HUNTS

What's going on everyone? Welcome to today's video. I am going to go over a very highly asked question ever since I started filming my hunts and everything. It's how to solo film your hunts or just how to film your hunts in general. And I've had a lot of gear changes over the years and recently I've changed some gear. So I thought it'd be a really good idea just to kind of run through just my complete setup. What I do literally when I get up in a tree if I'm solo filming take my gear out how I have it packed up and everything. It's kind of a crappy day so we're filming some videos today. It's raining, it's super windy, it's like an east wind so we're not hunting today we're just filming videos. So what we're going to do is we have this tree right here we're going to get in it like exactly as if I was hunting. But I wanted to go over just real quick. I've been running this new backpack. It's an Everly stock. I do not know what kind it is. I can't find like a style or whatever on it. But this super small backpack why I've been running it small like this is because when I'm like hunting at home I have most of my spots already prepped. The only thing I need to bring into the stand is like literally camera gears and snacks and whatnot. So keeping it super simple small like a small footprint I think is super important especially with filming and there's just so much going on. So let's uh or first thing I do put my saddle on. I'm not really going to talk about like saddle and saddle hunting in general. I've done other videos on that but I have been hunting and filming out of a saddle a lot lately. Pretty much that's all I've been doing. It's really nice. It's also really nice too like if Mitchell's filming with me to be in a saddle also. Even if you have like the hunter in a tree stand and then the the cameraman in the saddle because you're like facing each other it's super nice. So not going to talk a whole lot about it but it is out of a saddle and everything I talk about it'll just be like reversed on a tree stand if that makes sense. So what I like to do is I kind of already have it all set up. Where's the airplane? Hold on. What I like to do is I put my backpack on this right side and I actually I'll grab my bow and I'll hang my bow on the left side. Let's get my tether groped out and when I'm all finished setting all this up this is literally going to be how I set everything up in the tree. There we go. So this is my legit setup. If I got up in the tree a lot of times what I'll do like all of like a permission property or any sort of private property that I have time to prep what I've been doing is putting sticks up and then I'll walk out with my platform. So I'll have my platform strapped on here get to the top stick put my platform on get up here I'll install I just got this like seat cushion I wrap it around the tree so it gives your knees some added thing. I'll screw in this step hang my backpack screw in either just a hook or a longer like bow hook for my bow and that's it. So first thing that I do is on this backpack there's a little tiny little pocket up here which fits really good for this fourth arrow camera arm mount. It packs away super nice and easily. I actually just picked this up like a week or two ago and I've been using it and absolutely love it. I bought this not sponsored or anything I just I really have been loving this. So those little wings fold out so it doesn't tear up your backpack and storage and what I'll do is I'll just set it right in my legs right there wrap it around and it's just a standard ratchet strap feed it through. I know a lot of people are worried about sound and everything when you're bringing more equipment into the woods but really this setup really isn't too loud and you can be pretty quiet with this ratchet strap. Get it semi-snug and you can kind of adjust it where you need it. What I like to do is about about like you know belly height is what I like to do when I'm in the kneeling position. So you see over here too if it's like super quiet in the morning or whatever I'll be really really cautious about this but if it's windy and stuff I mean they really can't hear these little clicks but to be really quiet I just kind of put my finger in there pull this clip back and then push set it down pull that clip push and I just do that over and over again and you're making very very little noise. I'll just ratchet the rest of it for time but you can go really easy on that and be very quiet so that whole system you're making no noise such a small footprint also like in your bag. Got some snacks in there of course some other things. So we open up the main part and I layer my backpack so I pull it out as I need it and as I'm setting up my stand it's all about efficiencies and getting set up as quickly as possible. So next is my camera arm pull that out of that bag right there I'll slide it in it's pretty close to level but if it's it was way off I would have to do this before putting it in. So just loosen that get it level good like that tighten it down and then up next is my camera this is going to be I'm going to go over some of the techy stuff in this also so I'm running a a7s3 with a 24 to 240 so this lens is actually a really good lens for solo filming just filming hunts in general because you get everything you get you get the selfie mode stuff and then you zoom in at a deer 100 yards away you do lose a little bit a little bit quality like with the f-stop and everything but overall performance of a lens it works really really good instead of like changing lenses out from a zoom to whatever but in as you guys know if you watch the channel we really try to bring good quality stuff so this a7s3 really does that and I really like this flippy lens or flippy display out so I can spin around do selfie mode that's super important to make I was running the a7s3 that didn't have that it was just stagnant like this so whenever I flipped it around I was just hoping that it was on so I really like that then I also have the battery grip it's not super necessary at all but I like to not worry about batteries at all so I just run it in and just run it and then we got two SD cards we are running this CF Express type A cards if you're really techie the SD cards we use the recommended ones but we kept getting weird issues Mitch and I kept getting weird issues we had to go to those so if you're getting an a7s3 anytime soon I would recommend that that's pretty much it for this we put this right in this camera arm is all like you bought together this head is separate I've had it for a long time it's a Manfrotto 128 RC works well it's kind of a lighter one but can still like handle the weight I guess we even ran the FX6 and stuff on this head and you just kind of manually loosen this as you need it which is so so but it does good for the how small it is and then I always take my mic off because I've broken a lot of these and broken a lot of audio jack ports so I always take it off when I store it away now and it's just the this is like 60 bucks on Amazon it is the rode video mic go works really really well and if I break one we can just snag another one and it's not a $250 mic so you break a lot of stuff by like using it so much and taking it in and out of backpacks so that's set up and obviously right when I get up in the tree I like to get the camera set up bring my bow up and I'm I'm ready to basically shoot a deer and film it in case I need to and then I can do the rest of the rest of the setup stuff whatever it may be trim branches do whatever oh also I do always in my saddle the saddle axe has a little bit of extra storage I always run a I got a bow rope in here I have a tree saw if I can get it out I have a tree saw oh that's a tree saw that's always super important you have a headlamp in there extra bow hooks whatever so these extra cargo pockets actually are really really nice okay so next up what I do is I have this bow hook hanger that I attached my second camera angle to so I'll take this out I always like to put it put it right up in here we had a pre-drill or not pre-drill but pre-screw this in because this is an oak tree so I put that in just about as far as I can reach if I was sitting down about level then I picked up on Amazon this this cheap clamp video tripod dealio it's like 20 bucks and it's actually worked pretty well what I will do probably is put it right on here every tree in every situation seems like it's always a little different but basically you loosen this little knob and you can spin this bad boy whatever you want which is kind of nice and then in the bottom of the backpack I have this guy which was my old primary a7iii and I have a 24-105 on it right now I really would like to upgrade to a wider angle lens I just haven't done that yet but 24 does get the job done pretty standard and a tip for that I always run this in like auto exposure if I have it up here because I never really know like if it's running for a long time it just auto does everything you screw that right in loosen it back up and get it pretty much right where I want it and I don't run a mic on here the in body microphone is good enough and a lot of times when I run that I'm running this guy also so we can sync up audio from this one mic and that's it like I'm ready to go I'm ready to film and like I was saying I like to set this up on the right side I like to set this secondary camera on the right side because a lot of times this quadrant is your least likely to shoot something I made a video before like set up all your shots in the four quadrants and it's like this first quadrant is number one priority then your second and then your third and then this is kind of last this is kind of the hardest to shoot you got to stand up spin around do something weird so I put the cameras there in my backpack so I don't really have to worry about it so now just to kind of show you like the full range of this this camera arm I'm really glad I upgraded it to upgraded to it because I mean if I'm in the sitting down position I can literally move all the way around the tree with it so if my main shots are all over here when I'm just sitting you know hunting waiting a lot of times I'll set the camera up just like this so all my shots I can get right over here and then obviously if I got to go over here just film something over there swivel around so this has been really awesome and I'll show you what I've been using which does work good it's just a beast this works really good this whole system works really good that came unclipped and then as far as my second angle I always put it about at that height so literally all I have to do reach up turn that on and I always try to do that if like say I see a buck chasing a doe around or I know like potentially a shot's going to happen I just turn that guy on and let it run I always make sure batteries and cards are cleared on it so I can just let it run for a long time and just kind of let it do its thing up there but let's say you know an instance where I'm like ready to go I pretty much zoom in just a touch when you're solo filming it's so hard especially with the DSLR if I was running like a regular video camera and had a little toggle switch up here it'd be a little different but I always just zoom in a little bit and then I just rock and roll with it if I'm like getting ready to shoot when I just to go like that autofocus everything like that you really can't do a lot of crazy stuff on your solo film it's all about simplicity efficiency all the way through the setup tear down everything you want to be super simple because basically you're trying to shoot the deer but you're also trying to shoot the deer the camera so you gotta shoot the deer twice which isn't really awesome it is awesome when it works but it can be also very frustrating so that's about it that is my full setup what I'll show you now is this other camera arm this is what I have been using it's a muddy pro arm it's really awesome but it is a big beast you can see this is the mount compared to the fourth arrow one and this isn't like to bash brains or anything like this is awesome if like Mitch is coming to film with the big fx6 or something we'll probably still use this this camera arm is also big which is very nice because it has a lot of like flexibility like look how far out you can get and everything but as far as solo filming it's super important to have something small light still super functional and everything so that is pretty much my setup and as I'm going over this I guess it's also super important like if you're if you're a beginner getting into filming you don't need all this expensive stuff like I've worked up to all this stuff when I started out I used to use a little like this bow hook thing you screw it in and there's the little tripod on the end of it like everyone has their own level of entry into it and if you're just getting into it you shouldn't jump into all this crazy stuff it's very similar to archery like I say like if you've never shot a bow or anything you probably shouldn't be going and buying the best best of everything unless you know you just have unlimited resources then that's one thing but you always should like progress into things and filming is no different the most important part is to learn how to use everything like you could film an awesome video with your iphone and this little tiny swivel mount and get the shot on film and do the intro and all the important parts to make an epic video or do this and don't get the shot on film and don't do an intro and don't do an outro but you have this fancy thing but you got no video behind it so it's the skills are always what is trumps the equipment and everything and that goes with archery equipment filming equipment everything so yes this is a very expensive fancy camera so is that so is this but this is my setup I wanted to go through it and like I said we've worked up to it and you know this is our business now filming hunts and everything so this is the deal hope you guys enjoyed this video hopefully it answers some questions I'm sure it caused some questions so if you have any drop them in the comments below I'll make an effort to go through them in this video for sure yeah hope you guys enjoyed make sure to subscribe like this video and we'll catch you guys in the next one