Is it possible to shoot with just one lens? Is it even a good idea? Is there any advantage to using just one lens? Also, which is the best lens that I should get if I can only afford to buy one? These are just some of the many questions I get online and today I'm gonna answer them all. First let's talk about indie filmmaking. This term usually means that the filmmakers have to be efficient and resourceful. This type of filmmaking also develops skills that can be critical when working with multi-million dollar budgets. A great example of this is the Academy Award-winning film Dallas Buyers Club Director by Jean-Marc Vallet. Now even though this film starts Matthew McConaughey, the production was limited to only 5 million. And I know that some of you are probably thinking, wow, that's a lot of money. But again, considering the complexity of the production, this story is set in the 1980s. It has many different locations including multiple countries and 60 sets. So definitely making this movie was a challenge. Now fortunately the director and his team, including the director of photography and the production designer, were up to the task. They shot the whole movie without artificial lights, tripods, dolies or even any other camera stabilizer. They used only one camera, which was the area lexas and they used one lens. Oh, actually they used two lenses, but majority of the film was still shot with just one lens, which was the 15 millimeter focal length. And the other lens was slightly wider, which they used mainly in tight interior locations. And that was 35 millimeters. This allowed the production team to keep the shoot to only 25 days, which in turn saved a lot of dollars and allowed them to hire a lot of great and known actors. Now during the filming, the only lights that were used were the actual existing lights on location or practical lights added to the sets and locations by the production design team. Other than that, the only other light source was the sun. So what I'm trying to illustrate here is that in short, the less gear you have to set up, the less time you're going to spend setting up and the more time shooting. I myself really noticed that when working on various projects as the cinematographer, because often I'm asked, you know, between the shots by the AD, how much time we need to swap the lens. And even if I say, let's say it's going to be 30 seconds, it often means that the whole production just stops. The crew usually just jumps on their phones, the cast, and starts chatting or walks away off the set to grab some snacks or something. And then once my team is actually done swapping the lens, even if it takes us less than a minute, by the time the AD gets the whole crew and cast back in their places, it takes minimum another two minutes. In total, you just spend three minutes swapping out the lens. And in a low budget shoot where, for example, you might be doing up to 60 setups per day, that adds up up to 180 minutes or three hours spent on just changing out the lenses. Or as I like to call it, three hours that could be used to get really cool extra shots. And it's the same if you have too many lights, for example, on set, and you decided to make a small change in lighting, which again adds up to hours of last time. So extra gear or lenses will give you more options, but they are great only when you have the time to actually use them. In low budget productions where time and crew sizes usually limited, you're always better off getting just what you need to get by and not more. So all of you who struggle working on those bare-bones productions take heart in knowing that you're actually developing really great skills that are going to be really important, even when you get to the top of this industry and are given big dollars to make those movies. Now the next question I'm going to answer is whether you can shoot a whole project with just one lens. And the short answer is yes. If you need to get a close-up, just move your camera closer to your subject. And if you need to get a wide shot, then with any lens, you can do that by, again, moving your camera further back. Of course, for that to work, you need to make sure to find locations that are going to allow you a lot of freedom to move as far back as you need to capture the shots that you want. So choosing the right location, but also choosing the right lens is going to make a big difference. So to answer the next question of what lens I should get, I say get what you prefer to shoot with the most. If you're not sure which lens that is, then rent the lens that you're interested in the most and then try to shoot a test scene with it just using the one lens. I always do that. Like for example, the test that you see me shooting here using the new Anamorphic lens for Micro 4 Thirds lens mount from Vazen. Once I felt confident that the focal length of this lens would allow me to get the kind of shots that I like to do, then I actually did a whole job using just one lens. And this music video is one such example. My favorite focal length for any type of lens, both Anamorphic and spherical, is around 50 mm on an APS C-Size image sensor or something like a Super 35 mm camera. Since this Vazen lens is 40 mm, but it's Anamorphic with a 1.8 squeeze ratio. It means that in the horizontal field of view, it's actually 72 mm lens. Once you factor in the crap aspect ratio, the black magic packet forky camera, its focal length on an APS C-Size camera is going to be around 50 mm. So like the many other 50 mm lenses that I love using, this Vazen lens is also a perfect middle lens that can be used for both close-up medium and wide shots. Since this music video, we're shooting, had lots of locations and we only had two days to shoot it. Having a camera that was always rigged up and ready to go meant that we could spend more time on getting the right performance and set dressing and not have to wait around for the lens changes. Same thing with lighting, we only used two powerful but small LED lights, sort of like the aperture 300D lights and we used those to fill in some of the shots or to light this performance we did at dusk. Otherwise, we just used reflectors. It was a simple and a fast way of filming. It was also a help for that we didn't have to haul around so much gears and some little locations we were filming in were in that the safest and we did not have any extra crew to really just kind of sit around and watch our camera bags. So we spend more time on having fun, you know, being creating instead of worrying about our gear to getting stolen. Speaking of safety, if you guys are going to be traveling to a new remote locations like I did, for example, for this shoot and you plan to use your little Wi-Fi at one of those shady hotels then please don't just connect right away like I did which ended up with me getting both my email and one of my bank accounts hacked. Thank God I now resolved all of my issues and I also learned a hard way to always encrypt my connection to the internet and I do that by using the VPN which stands for Virtual Private Network. I'm sure you guys have heard that a ton of times I've tried a few different services but now I'm just sticking to using NordVPN because when it comes to streaming videos they were the fastest. And using NordVPN I can switch my browsing location to any country really fast and I can get access to all the content that I want to watch. Plus like I said, NordVPN is really good at encryption so I know my information won't get stolen again. If you guys want to try them out then go to nordvpn.org slash tomantos or just click the links in the description. Also don't forget to use the coupon code tomantos and by the way all of this works on doesn't matter what they're using a phone tablet or your laptop. Anyways hope you guys enjoyed this video and let me know in the comment section below what you thought if you have any other questions and as always if you haven't already go to my website at tomantosfilms.com don't forget to subscribe to my newsletter so you notified of any future videos or posts that I do. Anyways I'll see you in the next one bye!