The image is a tribute to the finale of the Raiders of the Lost Ark, where the artist Michael Pancrazio painted the mattepaint where later the scene of the character that brings the ark chest to the secret warehouse was composed.

Why is equipment cataloguing important?

Over time the filmakers, but not only them, accumulate a certain amount of tools and objects to work, and often not only out of necessity, but also for personal passion, myself included.

Having a list of the tools in the Excel/Openoffice/LibreOffice table to be able to reorder products in various ways is important for many reasons:

  • Be aware of all the tools we have and what we can use
  • List of all the items we can have on a set
  • List of products to offer to the customer to raise the price of our services
  • Sort the instruments by weight in case of rapid air travel and you can’t use the hold
  • List accepted items in carry-on baggage or not.Reme
    mber that in the lists it is preferable to put the name and the acronym and not the category, otherwise I want to see you when at the airport control you say you have two shotguns, a boom, a couple of white guns for your “I’m not going to go
  • List of names and serials of all equipment for any travel and checks and declarations
  • List of names and serials of all equipment in case of unfortunate events such as theft or loss of some component
  • Last time you used the items, some of these like batteries would be useful to have a label on top where you mark each charge and discharge performed, it may seem manic but… there is a good reason, every type of battery id has a longer life if every tot time is used if for laziness or because you do not have at hand other batteries used always the same you will end up with x batteries that last less because you have used them too , and the others that you may not be able to load them because you left them two years in a drawer… given the cost of batteries, better to be careful
  • list of all the media you have : sd, cf, ssd, hdd and their real speeds (do testing), so you know how much are the giga or tera available when you will be called to manage a project, and at the same time you know if you need to use multiple rooms at the same time if you are covered as media. I know too many people who compulsively or for emergencies have bought more media than they remember, and not being ordered, scattering everywhere such media, not immediately making ordered backups, find themselves with media tera, but not knowing if and what they have they keep buying it.
  • Format and test the media so you can verify that they are in place and have no defects.

If all these reasons are not enough for you… well it’s a way like any other to pass the time 😀