What is a piece of gear or skill you have told your self I need in order to make my videos look better?

for me, I think the 1st thing was wanting a camera that shot wide-screen, which my canon gl2 did not do.
and then it was i needed an HD camera. some skills were i needed to learn after effects.

now its i need to shoot my videos with something that has more shallow depth of field.

I felt like I really needed to get rid of generation loss, so
I switched to digital video... but that was back in 1998.

learning to control light and sound in difficult and ever-changing conditions!
and a Canon 5D Mark$$.

A really good camera. That's all I need.

That and a good format that looks clean. That's all I need. Just the camera and a good format.

Oh, and a tripod. And lights. Just that. That's all I need.

... and non-linear editing. Just that....

(borrowed and adapted from Steve Martin's "The Jerk").

:-)

Just following through with Dean's line of thought: a wireless lav system, with a shotgun mic and boom pole, and a dedicated sound man to set up the lav, and hold up the boom pole :)