Add to your filmmaking with these inexpensive bits of kit. Each piece of kit is designed to complement your main footage and fit straight into your camera bag , so you can bring these with you on every shoot.

Want to add a bit of wow into your wedding filming, music videos or impressive roll into your documentary shooting. Well this is all about adding that little bit of movement into your films with no bulky camera slider in sight!

I am going to take one pretty big assumption for this video and presume you already own a fairly modern mobile phone or action camera to use with all these accessories. As they are intended to be used for insert shots and not the main footage.

The first bit of kit you will just need the ability to capture time-lapse and my iPhone 12 works great for this. Now time-lapse by itself is often a great thing to introduce into your filming to add a transition of time passing or to quickly show an otherwise uninspiring outside atmosphere and space. But adding a bit of movement to this time-lapse turns it into a wow moment. There are several turning tripod heads which you can mount kick off you time-lapse and leave to do its magic. You don’t even need a tripod really, why not set it on a table when the guests are walking into the reception for a shot like this and go film so other shots and hope no-one has moved or stared straight into your time-lapse! The Newer version is about £50 and it has a couple of speed setting for you to play around with . The great thing is it really doesn’t talk up any space in your camera bag and can add these moments to you film and up the production value quickly. Well as long as it takes to film a time-lapse!


The next bit of kit I have used to quickly do a dolly shot, I actually use a mirrorless onto of this with no problems at all ( it has a 5kg payload limit) but again you could use an action camera or smartphone mount onto of it. It has 3 variable speed , but I often set my camera to a high frame rate for an even smoother look in post. It comes with a remote control to start and stop the motion of the dolly. It has adjustable wheels so you can pan around any object in a circle or use it straight like a camera slider shot.

Charge it up chuck in into your bag and quickly get some product and detail shots that are quite impressive.


With the quality of images now on something like the iPhone 12 pro max it really has opened up the possibility to use it for some brill footage and quick setting shots when being a solo shooter.
3 axis gimbals have been around for an age and they really have come down in price and have become better and better

This gimbal is £71 ! I actually use it to grab some vertical videos to promote my work through channels such as TikTok. The ability to stabilise vertical video has meant I can quickly and easily leave this setup for grabbing pieces of vertical video throughout a shoot. As my main cameras will be capturing horizontally as all video should be!

It come with its own app so you can capture some motion time-lapse with it as well , vertical motion time-lapse if you want to. It has a handy 3 ¼ Screw hole at the bottom for you to mount it to a tripod for this or you can use the mounting point to add a light to the gimbal whilst filing .


Mentioning lights, if you don’t already use some form of on camera or off camera lighting for your filming. Portable blogging style ring lights have really dropped in price and are always worth carrying in your bag for evening shots, interviews or anytime when lighting could quickly make a difference to a shot.

This newer one has a variable lighting from 3200 to 5600 , 10 different lighting levels and various mounting options and includes a table top stand. All for £20. Power in via a usb power bank or laptop easily.