Film Freelancers Toolkit - Part 1 - Kit Maintenance
I’ve been freelancing now for quite a while on and off, making it my full time career following graduation from London Met this year. It’s had its ups and downs so far; I’ve been fortunate enough to work on some huge scale projects with exciting clients and great creative collaborators, alongside smaller no budget films, crafted out of sheer love for the cinematic medium. It’s not always going to be well paid work, and it’s not always going to keep you busy full time, but if you enjoy meeting different people all the time, in different situations, telling totally different stories, then it may just be the path for you.
For me it’s the path I’m sticking with, which leads me to this post, hopefully the first of a series, in which I offer a little bit of my experiences so far to hopefully help any readers out there on their own journey into freelancing in film. Today’s post is about keeping your kit in the best condition possible.
I’m going to let you in on a little secret I learned this week. There’s a tiny little boarded up store near Portobello road market where you can get almost any camera serviced, cleaned or repaired cheaper than any of the high street repair professionals, and far far quicker.
The London Camera Repair centre at first glance looks like it’s never open. Sometimes, it won’t be, so ring ahead (020 8968 5554), but when I went there at 3:30pm on Friday the owner had just opened up for the afternoon trade.
Reviews on google places give you a bit of a hint about what to expect:
“The shop looks like a bomb hit it. That really would cause anyone to question this guy’s professionalism. However, Sigi (he’s Austrian) repaired my Canon on the same afternoon for just 69 quid - less than half what Canon would have charged.”
To me, the shop looks like Steptoe and Son’s - a myriad of broken bits of film and photographic equipment, from splicing tables to dusty lenses, to boxes of tiny springs and aperture blades. Sigi himself will be somewhere in the back, leaning over a magnifying glass as he repairs someone’s most prized possession. If you’re a freelancer who works with their own kit as opposed to hiring, and you only have the one camera, this place needs to be bookmarked in every address book you own. I have a couple of HDSLR’s but only one 5D MK II, and when my camera’s screen popped out of place, getting stuck under the mirror near the sensor ahead of a major shoot tomorrow I was absolutely distraught. I called all of the usual suspects, including my insurance company, and everywhere I went I got a quote of £70-150 and a waiting time of up to 7 working days. Then I found Sigi. He fixed my camera and offered to order me a new screen (the one I have is fine for now, and he happily put it back in) while also cleaning the sensor and the camera body inside and out for a grand total of £38 - and all of that within about 3 hours of me taking it to the store. I picked it up friday night completely relieved, and the 5D is now in better condition than it was when I first picked it up, second hand, from a professional photographer.
Don’t just listen to me though. There are reviews to be had out there and all will tell you the same thing. Sigi is an exceptionally gifted craftsman who lives and breathes cameras of all kinds, and his service is the best priced around town. If you’re relying on your kit to bring you business/pay the rent, you must keep it maintained. Even if you don’t need anything checked it’s worth bringing it in for a sensor clean and a check-up - why wait for something to go wrong? Thus ends today’s lesson. Here’s that address:
72 Golborne Road, North Kensington, London W10 5PS
Maybe I’ll see you there.
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