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I am currently in China where I was hired by the City of Dalian to make a promotional short film. The challenge is to make it look expensive with a tight budget. Thanks to a lot of new gears. Hollywood fits in your luggage nowadays. Here is how...

First of all we bought a Skater ! It is a cheap efficient alternative to a track/dolly system. Overall, you can use it not only on a floor, but also a table even a car. This is a simple marvelous piece of metal that will give you impressive shots with a minimal setting. It does exist for every budget. I am down for the three wheel heavy duty one. it is stiff and precise. And it is much cheaper in China !

The second piece of equipment that is a "must have" today is the slider. I opted for the Beijing Wieldy one. It is better than most cheap sliders that are made with a simple piece of aluminum. This one has four independent wheels that makes your slide smooth and precise. This easily replace small tracks and it is perfect for objects or establishing shots.

Las but not least, make steady cam takes without a steadicam thanks to After Effects CS 5.5 incredible Warp Stabilizer. It does not only solve the rolling shutter issues from your DSLR but ultimately makes your shots look like if you had a 15000$ equipment. vibrations issues solved. And creativity unleashed.

Last tip... leave the tripod at Home and buy a shoulder rig. Tripods are heavy and make you waste time every time you move them. Time is valuable on small unit productions. The final result will be available soon. Stay tuned...

I will never stop blessing the new FCPXML protocol. It is a powerful tool that allows exchange between FinalCut Pro X and any modern software. Last hot product : Send To.(V1.1.1) The name might not be a seller, but it does what many of us expected : Export edited shots to After Effects. Until now, editors had to process the whole edit or send it to Compressor for rendering... ( WTF ?). "Send to" allows users to choose inside your XML shotlist and create an After Effects Project in a single drag. This Protocol has two main upsides. You can re-use the same FCPXML file for many other softwares like  X2Pro or DaVinci Resolve. And most of all, Send to uses your original media as source file. For 7.99 € this can be considered as a no brainer Mac App Store

If you are as I am both a Finalcut Pro and After Effects user and you are switching between them all the time, you tend to forget keyboard shortcuts ( Are we getting old ? ). KB covers solve the issue by selling silicone covers for your keyboard. It's a very efficient way to customize your device without having an expensive and useless keyboard switch. The only issue is you cannot find French AZERTY keyboard. Let's hope this will be fixed in the near future.