Making Pinky Show videos : Equipment List

We get a fair amount of e-mails from people asking what kind of equipment and software we use to make Pinky Show videos. If you're into technical stuff, here you go.

I put this page together for anyone out there with an urge to 'do it yourself'. Hopefully you won't have to start from zero as you try to figure out what kind of equipment might be useful for making videos of talking cats that barely move.

We chose some of the equipment below just because it happened to be available to us. Some of it we chose because it was the best solution for something specific we wanted to achieve. But lots of times if we don’t have the ‘right’ equipment, or we just don’t know how to do something, we’ll just change stuff around so that we can get by and move on. Whatever - neither Pinky or I are media professionals, we don’t have a production team to make what we want, and we don’t have money to pay those non-existant workers. It really is D.I.Y. At some point we just decided to spend more time on the research and writing part, instead of trying to make our videos visually exciting. Exciting like:

Anyway...

Multimedia production equipment can be expensive, so make friends with people who have experience working in film or TV production, and ask them to help you find cheaper, used equipment. Or join a public access tv organization - depending on the program you might be able to borrow the stuff you need for free. The stuff on the list below are what we’ve used to make the Pinky Show, but we don’t actually own it all. Borrowing and renting is really important - be sure to take good care of all the equipment you touch and make everythig last a long time.

Good luck! Long live underground media!

~Bunny

[ note: This list was updated by Bunny, January, 2013. ]

Equipment:
Canon HFS10 video camera
Nikon D300 digital SLR camera w/ 17-55/2.8 mm lens
Canon G10 pocket digital camera
Tiltall tripod (indestructable - this thing is older than we are!)
Bogen-Manfrotto monopod
Bogen-Manfrotto mini fluid head
tiny 5" tall Bogen tabletop tripod (very handy)
AKG C4500B microphone for recording vocals (this one lives in the recording booth)
Sennheiser MKH60 shotgun microphone for ENG
AKG D230 reporter's mic + fuzzy wrap, also for ENG work
Shure SM57 microphone for recording everything else
Rycote zepplin w/ fuzzy wrapper for the shotgun mic
Sound Devices 702 Digital Audio Recorder
Symetrix 528e preamp/gate/compressor for 'cleaning up' vocals
Telos One Digital Hybrid, for recording phone interviews
Mackie 1220 12-channel mixer w/ firewire mod
KRK Systems active monitors (Rokit 6" version)
Sony MDR-V6 headphones (1 for me, 1 for Pinky)
a bass guitar
an electric guitar
an ukulele
Peterson Tuner (gotta keep everything in tune...)
a melodica
Tech21 PSA-1 SansAmp for guitar and bass
lots of cables, blankets, and foam

Computer Hardware:
Apple MacBook Pro laptop (2010 model)
Samsung laptop (2012 model)
CalDigit 2 drive RAID (2012 model, 2TB drives)
Wacom drawing tablet & pen
Epson 2450 scanner for the occasional scanning job

Software:
Adobe Photoshop, for editing photos & drawing cats
DxO Optics and Film Pack
Adobe Lightroom, for editing photos
Apple Final Cut Pro, for editing video
Apple Garage Band, for recording & editing audio, and making music
Audacity, for changing audio pitch or length
Macromedia Flash, for animation, etc.
Intaglio and Illustrator, for making the occasional vector graphic
Ambrosia Software Snapz Pro X, for video captures
SnapNDrag, for screen captures
Apple QuickTime, for all kinds of conversion stuff
VLC player for playing back all kinds of video files
Apple TextEdit and GoogleDrive, for writing
BareBones Software TextWrangler, for coding
Adobe Acrobat, for making PDFs

The Pinky Show equipment graveyard:
Sony DCR-TRV18 miniDV camcorder
Apple G5 computer
Apple G4 computer
Hewlett-Packard desktop computer
ancient HP printer from 1992
WiebeTech external RAID

[ back to How We Make Pinky Show videos: a Report by Bunny ]

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