James is a director and producer who is always on film sets. He summarizes the essential items he carries to facilitate his work, which include: 1) external hard drives to store and easily share footage between team members; 2) headphones or earbuds for editing workflow; 3) a phone to record ideas and location scouts; 4) a wallet to store SD cards containing footage; 5) a notebook to write down narrative and shot ideas by hand; and 6) a laptop loaded with editing software that allows him to work anywhere and interact with fans through social media.

1. Hello GQ, I’m James, one of the directors and producers of Welshly Arms new upcoming
music video “Locked” and these are my essential items
Intro with shots of close ups of items
I am always on set, so it is important to me that I always have these essentials with me, they
make a lot of the process of what we do a lot easier and simpler.
Hardrive. These are LaCie hardrives, 2tb, they never leave my bag, they’re amazing, I have
all the libraries and footage on these hardrives so they can be easily shared between the
other producers and directors quickly, the second I use as a backup, so I don’t lose all the
work, that one stays at home more. Really good, really rugged, a lot of my life is about
editing, and these are really good at being able to do that wherever I am, just need those
and my laptop and I’m ready.
Headphones. These are brilliant, great bass but sometimes a bit big for travelling with, so I
sometimes just opt for the more minimal ear buds, however, on the project I’m currently
doing having that heavy bass has really helped with my flow of editing and zoning me in so
for that, these are essential.
I love my phone, it used a lot recently for this project, whether its recording a voice note for
later of an idea, filming an area during location scouting, recording audio for our vodcasts,
this does it really well, but as you can see, it takes a bit of a beating, (Zoom in on cracked
screen)
My wallet is really important, not just as a basic everyday item but it holds our SD cards so I
really can’t lose it, footage from a day’s filming may be on it before I transfer it over to the
hard drives. We have loads of SD cards we use because we have lots of different cameras
we use for different angles and shots simultaneously, so this is really good at keeping them
safe
I remember in my old notebook it had a reward written in the front, that’s how much I value
this thing. It had $500. So, most people don’t need a notebook now because you have your
phone, like I said before, you can record your ideas on voice memos or writing them down
in notes, which is a good point, but I think that when I’m writing WITH PEN onto paper
there’s a bit more commitment to write it down and you kind of have to think a bit more
about what you’re saying, like, you really have to understand what it is you’re trying to say,
so it’s mainly just stories for narratives and new shot ideas for new locations.
My laptop (Slap down on laptop,) I think this is almost as important if not more to me than
anything else on this list or those items combined. Everything I do in post is through a
computer. All the editing and interacting with fans and publishing is done through my laptop
and it goes everywhere with me which is part of why I’m so in love with it, it’s so mobile. I
have a whole array of software I use on here, for editing I use final cut pro 10, whereas
some of the other editors use premiere pro but I just love the smoothness and flow of it so
much with the magnetic workspace and ease of accessing effects and LUTS and all the
different features, and I’ve used it for so long now I can’t see why to change. A lot of our

2. interactions with our fan base is done through social media, we use Facebook, Instagram
and twitter to launch competitions, update on new activities and get feedback, we also use
Microsoft teams for that, we have ran polls on audience knowledge of this genre to learn
about our key demographic and what they want and post rough cuts of our project to get
early feedback on what they would like to see changed and added. A lot of work we do is
through photoshop or Lightroom to create our digipak and album cover and lastly, we have
been using SoundCloud and YouTube to publish our work when finished, our final project
goes on YouTube, but we also use it to publish vodcasts and rough cuts as well as sample
scenes. Soundcloud is used for our production teams weekly podcast that updates on our
progress and journey.
One of my favourite accessories for my laptop is this dongle, it plugs directly in and gives a
much larger variety of ports then what’s offered, I also use it to setup my workspace at
home, with it plugged in via HDMI to a monitor and a keyboard plugged into it from there.
It’s really slick and slips right into the bag and stays with me all the time.
Similarly, to that is this USB port expander, sometimes when working with a large range of
devices I need more ports and that’s when this comes in really handy, giving me 5 extra
ports.
All these cables are the reason for needing that port expander, there’s loads and all for
different purposes. Charging phones, plugging cameras in to computers etc.
Cameras, as you can imagine are very important to me for what I do, but the only camera I
keep in my bag as an essential rather than on set is this small little canon, it’s really good for
getting some footage for cut always and has a massive zoom, 40x, it’s great for just
capturing something very quickly without any setup and I use it a lot.
Batteries, I need spare batteries a lot, if a shoot is longer than expected and is taking more
time the last thing, you need is for the batteries of your cameras to go dead and cancel the
shoot.
Lastly is my actual bag, a very basic, very cheap backpack, great for storing all those things in
them.
Right that’s it, those are my essentials and that’s me in a nutshell.