Lessons

Lesson Info

Camera Rigs

First thing I want to say is way have a fairly limited amount of gear to show everyone today because lindsay and did such an incredible job last time around on creative life that there's no point in just replicating what he did. So what I think we've done is just to bring a few newer devices or a few things that captions and didn't have time to demonstrate last time, so I'm going and over to steve, who can take his true basically, this this red rock set up this is, uh this is basically a red rocks shoulder rig mounted on a tripod and like he saw in vincent's like he had kind of the same one, but this is one of the ones that they shot on with, like house for the first time, and it just it's a pretty versatile rig, like, usually we have liken anton bauer battery on it, but like this way, kind of like through this one together, it's, not the exact configuration, so we couldn't get the and tom bower and be mobile with it. We use the martial monitor so we can get the peking and the false co...

lor and all that stuff is it will it show through on this one? I didn't think big I didn't think involves keller will, I think, that's just within that monitor alone. Really way going go into that in detail when we when we do the lighting of the sense you know, for exposure, setting intern and so forth it's just basically, you know, obviously it's designed to sort of go on and off a tripod very quickly you get from handheld mode into tripod moved pretty fast and as you can see, the needs to be quite a lot of accessorizing to make the cameras easy to use this follow vogue is on the side, which is, you know, connects to the lens so that you can put your marks on the red dropped very shortly and coming out with a about a focus that has stopped is on it because on dh as you probably all know a lot of the the lenses they're driven by magnets, they have ultrasonic motors driven by magnets, so if you were like, make all your marks on your follow focus and you push it past that it's going to spend infinitely so all your marks are pretty much worthless. So basically what red rock did is they came out with hard stops so they'll lock in between so we're supposed to have one of us yeah it's being quite a russian way had tio actually one person we didn't introduce jason here jason, I'm going introduce jason the trouble to come up to seattle by trains and listen jason, who had damage geared to bring up on them. So, you know, thanks to jason, we've got a list of hear it. It was an absolute nightmare getting it all here, but, uh, you know, uh, that's, the person that's responsible and jason is one of our key team members back in l a option he actually has to leave in twenty minutes to get home in august. This, um, there's on job here is a martial monitor on this isn't your new one. Is it this one? This is one of the slightly older ones, but later on, we will go into early. You may remember I was talking about how our focus pull it, how focus pullers fast assistant cameraman managed focus when we were shooting on such shallow depth of field and how they dealt with it and this was one of the key ingredients of that marshal monitor. I am used them extensively before evaluating exposure because they have a device called false keller on dh again. Once we get into ally jing and start to show you exposure based on a set that weakened tonight way will get into that in detail but their basic me two or three things that are wonderful about these monitors and they're actually not terribly expensive, so it's a very to be it's, an essential part of the kid but again you know going back to what we were talking about before is within seconds if you're not careful you can just been thousands and thousands of dollars on accessories and the question you have to ask yourself is should you rent it should you buy it what kind of film you making you need it you know? So I'm just betting upon the level off filmmaking you're trying to achieve sometimes you need some of this stuff maybe you just need some of them for a day maybe some of it you carry permanently just depends depends on your budget depends what you're trying to achieve I mean there's there's alternatives to this I mean this is an fbi one they had to have it out so they could do the director's feed but I mean they make a five inch that's like five hundred bucks this one's like seventeen hundred you know and like everybody in the world makes shoulder rig's now I mean like there's like machine shops that are just doing it like out of the garage you know and as well as like the sliders all these air really nice but I mean like if you can't afford it you can't afford it but it shouldn't stop you from making a film school I'm going to make an absolute rule of myself at this point and try and demonstrate the use of the the glide cam which I think is an incredibly a valuable piece of equipment you let me just do a little but it was moved down here I think this I used to be a steadicam operator believe it or not although you probably won't believe it when she sees the results but there are people that are them if I was to say that there was a single piece of equipment that was the most valuable in the five b or the d slr market I would say it would be this because if you learn how to use this and it doesn't take too long believe it or not to become relatively confident with this you khun do beautiful tracking shots you khun new little gym shots you could do all kinds of things I'm no khun to switch it on star recording on I'm going to do a little just bear in mind I haven't done this for a long time I have people that do this for me gay that shouldn't do because otherwise it will be more embarrassing than that way to go through the whole thing like when the former filming like you actually get to feel it and track it and like you know if anybody needs help like we can kind of go through the whole thing with you yeah it's um this whole something to get that card oh yeah let's take the card actually you can get that ready you know some people specialize in doing this, and we're going to show you a clip in a minute. And from a guy that we discovered in this is a kind of fairy tale. A guy called vinny minton that one of our writers on house discovered on on the mu on them. He's is a phenomena. He's. Some used to be a very sort of high up rollerbladers, and he he suddenly decided that he was going to start shooting films with escape borders and things like that. In the end, I started using his role rollerblades and combined with a glide cam like this. And I want to these course for ninety nine. Yeah, I gotta go. Yes, we're good for what it is. I mean, is it just unbelievable and what a guy like many does with it, you will be completely blown away. And I think anybody can learn this to the point where you can actually do nice little tracking shots and not have, you know, it's. A nasty bump. B you know, things you could do little ramiele sheikhoun. You know, it takes an awful lot of movement out of even handheld shots against quite tiring after a while because you basically all the wage in this case in my left hand, I'm incredibly useful too, so you gotta be temple with your focus to like you got to set it from like three feet because it's all manual and then any time you move your focus you have to re balance that like cards everything makes a difference and balancing these things just because I mean it's all talk counter, right? And so are we going to show russia the video clip a guess it's well, I think the demos whoever said that first and then then that will really embarrass me because you'll see him should be done you see, I'm I'm pretty rusty, but once they get going when she gave you khun do nice little moves and things like that and uh it's just practice I haven't uh use the steady camera glides camp for an awfully long time, but even though it's shaking like it still would have that lurch like it took out all the alerts and like the jitter that you would have got I mean even it's a fluid motion now, right? You know it takes away old things like your footsteps and things like that and I promise you that when we do our workshops we have after three days people that have never even ceiling light can before doing shots ten times better than that and every one of them that's what they buy right when they walk out the door it's just it's the coolest too warm and it just looks like it's just the most attractive like anybody that takes the workshop so should we show video clip you see how he maintains his articles incredibly well and you know, this is really tough stuff is gearing up these rams down these rounds but this is the kind of level of expertise that some people will get to another never will but he's doing incredible pans keeping his verity goes and you knew putting incredible dynamic movement into basically very simple shots these sorts of shots until the five d seventy came along this would have been an impossible shot to ever see it would never have been possible what would you use her davis shot you couldn't do it with the steadicam it's too heavy too dangerous and you fall over so you know not any of these tools stunning to be uh you know, really amazing but they're also doing things that would never before achievable so it's you know, that's what I love about it I mean, when you when you see stuff that two years or three years it was not possible I think that's when it gets really exciting that with five hundred dollars glad cam yeah yeah well yeah yeah I mean you'll be amazed like your feet producing stuff like this just even a week of handling it so I mean of course you got to be a professional elevator like many but I'm not a killer a lot of this sort of stuff it's all shot on the line can be shoots weddings and he lives up in the mayor here in it's also something like cam rather than you know bring it try put any congest get in there very quickly move around you know it makes everything speedy another wedding you can't say hey, could you mind coming down the aisle again? Um you know I mean this is a lovely dolly shot just like that just walking same with this one and you can get that good it's just practice um yeah can we ask a couple of questions but, um question was from dennis b you had earlier you had said what does gail mean when he said keeps his verticals o it's just that when you when you pan on these there's a tendency to two to do that and so that's an indication we're going steady camel glad at like line cam operator is that when you when you ban you know your bad tickles vertical you know you're not doing that they want a pendulum it's like a little pendulum it's justcause although it's waited at the bottom so it kind of always wants to drag and it all you'll start to drift off another question from marcin could you please tell how you do the focus pulling with this kind of steady cam rig doesn't the camera shake when you start touching? It certainly does it you don't do any focus falling on you basically use a sixteen to thirty five on dh you khun set it on its hyper vocal distance, which means that you basically rack your I s o up there as much as you can so that, you know, in a sixteen to thirty five of the stuff I shot was on the thirty five or so that was a bit mean minute if I'd shot today on a twenty, it would have looked a lot to do them, but I chose the hardest end of the lens, but you know, you just you couldn't send a cz long as you've got a niece and dire, so setting going there than, you know, all that stuff that many shot he just he just shoots it so that from four feet to infinity is in focus and it's got, you know, it doesn't matter that you know, he's not going for shallow depth of field because that's not what that tool is for, you know, it's fades for dynamic movement and, you know, excitement and speed and until you wanted to really wide angle, so the fact that he's got extra debt the field is actually an advantage because more things written focus in that case there's all sorts of steadicam demos if you want to see something really crazy look up best steadicam shot in the world on youtube and it's like the craziest thing there's two of them ones like a conclusive team that goes up like a whole building last for like ten minutes the other ones like like a rock concert from the guys on a segway and the focus puller is running after him behind him and then he jumps over the segway runs on the stage like it's actually amazing I mean so yeah three sixty and you doesn't three sixty around and it's just like so if you want to see what a real steady can't get to yet but you can't put the five beyond on the crazy steady camps like this is pretty much the best one for it like if anybody were to have money and to get the pilot you have to await him different because they're made to hold big cameras like with the arms and stuff like that you have to compensate and add a lot more weight because of the springs so the other thing is that there is a four thousand a glide camphor thousand which would enable you to put lye wait radio controlled focus motors on to it lance when you start getting into big bucks like bartek motors or preston's and things like that but that's when but again if you really need it you can rent it you know it doesn't have to be you don't have to purchase it but you can actually you know should get remote focusing applications on onto the glide cam I hear you but it's just it's like heavy a version of this longer there is longer on this thesixty d that rodney charges like so much it's kind of ideal for this camera because then you can if you want to do high shot up here you can rotate the, uh little lcd or we could even flip it upside down and do a shot tracking across the ground you can do doggie cam yeah let's roll roll it right away over like that track right along the ground and then with the flip out you find you can actually see what you're doing lots of lots of possibilities with this and I think it's a great tool already do it's definitely the most fun yeah, yeah you know you if you want to do a tracking shot just sort of pulling a couple in conversation down a path in a park or something like that it's and it's just great you can sit in a wheelchair you khun be on a little cart you khun you know on there's a million possibilities with this and there was something else was going to mention, but this is coming to me in the second but incredibly versatile oh yeah, that was it again and this is what I love about sort of the eighty dslr network of tools and devices that you can as I mentioned several times already do things that you could never possibly achieve on conventional film cameras or steadicam just say, for example, you wanted to do a scene with a guy that's just robbed a bank in manhattan in the middle of the day in the sidewalks and completely filled with people you wanted to pull the guy out of the bank and then chase him down through crowded people you would be much safer doing it with this than you would with a steady cam where if you crash into somebody, you really could hurt them because you run into them with eighty pounds worth of cast iron basically arm coming out here I don't think I'm not, you know, and somebody would get ready, huh? So because of this, if you see something is going to go wrong it's very easy to turn your body in the worst of all happening she'll run your shoulder into somebody so you can achieve shots on this that could not be done and that's the thing that again can we make trip is nothing that I love about the hd dslr situation doing shots that were previously never possible on dh that's got nothing to do with the fact that it's cheap and you can just get great stuff. One of the benefits, though, is this is so small and user friendly like I mean, I don't know if you guys have seen real steady cams, but they're not that easy to ballots and someone has to put it on you like it just doesn't just happen, you know, they bolted on you, so in this one, you just kind of twisted I mean, after the initial balance here, just when you put it on the thing and you're done here, you you, you know, you're limited to sort of fairly wide lenses. If you went on an eighty five million eighty five millimeter or something, you'd be dead immediately on this, it would come into, you know, a sixteen to thirty five perfect lens for this this kind of device scary within eighty five one instead of him all right don't yeah, yeah. That's just a little too close. Gay? No. Um, what else should we go to your lighter? Don't do that one. This is this innovator. Yeah, this is this is actually going to be one of the prizes so silly made him donated this really lovely little slider, which is you know, beautifully made on dh no it's it's really smooth and looks like he got, like, a little dampener yet like a little bit kind of like drags, you have little drag control right here and I don't does it come with this little men from? Go ahead, I don't know what again yeah, yeah, oh, through the hole in time, so so you're saying it's all you don't have to, but I mean, of course you could put another head on it if you wanted to like a fluid head and they kind of like track around, but, uh slice line is the sliders are incredibly valuable because we also call them on over keepers because you know, when you you break into a scene and you've got two actors tore hit into each other, no matter what they do before there's always a moment where to actors either sit down or stand up and they talk to each other without moving all that much. But what tends to happen is that just do this kind of thing and it's really lovely jee cannibal ways have depth and three dimensionality and shot so it's, always lovely to have a piece of the foreground nectar, you know, a little piece of him, even if it's a bit of a fuss because then you relating between the two of them and it means the eye lines kind of very close and so you know, if the actor here is just a little bit of a move you khun compensate by just sliding to the left to hold him a tiny bit sudden so forth all you could turn it the other way and do a little slow my bank to reveal somebody that you didn't realize was in the room so I like times I think I know you mean explain sure. Um, I lines a basically all to do with screen direction when when you set up a scene I mean, just for example, from this camera's point of view, if he looks at you you looking to your left to me and I'm looking to my right to you that there's basically a line between the two of us and that's hirai line basically on dh they had this thing called crossing the line and again it's a film convention that you know, all rules are made to be broken. But unless there's a reason for it, why break it? Because if you just shoot without thinking about it, you can have I mean, for example, a shot of me talking to a shot of steven and it looks really weird because even though you know, because you could achieve that very easily but shooting me here and then shooting stephen there we'd both be looking that way and it looks really weird on there's something kind of peculiar about him so we once you once you set up a master shot in the room where people are related to each other there's left two rights and right to left you need to think about where the camera should go so you don't confuse the audience in terms of who's looking where in its or force apart and so that's called crossing the line when you jumped to the other side of the line and if you want to cross the line it's fine to do it but it's is it a very often a smart idea to do it is a camera move so the audience understands that you've moved to the other side of the line and it is you kind of convention and some people don't give a damn about it them you know especially in the music video you know people are wearing different clothes one second another player so the next minute they're looking somewhere else in the next minute they different people just interesting conventional film making you know it's one of the kind of established kind of conventions you know my lines and you know and also you know how close you are on the island is important whether you see two eyes or one I generally intends to be more intense when you more tied on the eye line little is all the other factors that well we're going into this over the next few days about how you know the effect of lenses like getting right into somebody's face with the wider lens or being further back in being objective and you know, those sorts of techniques and filmmaking that him kind of important and you know, I think it's very important to know what the rules are before you break them you know, there's a lot of people that just going new things and they they don't realize that I mean even people like big cash so that you could say was kind of, you know, rather abstract I mean he started is a conventional paintings that you could quite justifiably say that he was I mean you the rules before he broke them you know, he his style evolved into what it wass without him just suddenly starting with a serious of squiggles which a lot of people would you know like my mother would say was a load of rubbish and she knew that uh you know what I'm saying it's um I think it's good to know what the conventions are in the rule was up before you proceed to rip them into pieces, you know? Because then you're aware of what you're doing, you know, next thing you know that that's the slide up and he's coming in there I wasn't thence you can have five what ones you can have six foot one she can have one is them heavier than this one's at a light and you know one of the things we teach in our workshop and on a sponsor's kind of let us get away with it because they understand that some people have absolutely no money whatsoever so at some point you know you can actually you know, get skateboard we also build your own sorts of things and we we have a whole bunch of ways that we like things with lights from home depot and I mean, you know, we have a wonderful response and called called silly mill issue gives us light and he probably will be now fuming and kicking is his computer and things like that time you know, the reality is that some people just don't have the money to on rent conventional film equipment and so you have to make some of it yourself and it's amazing what you can do if you don't have much money on you know but all filmmaking comes in degrees it depends on your budget you know, because most homemade stuff will take you twice as long to do it yeah that's for sure enough that time it'll blow up for you burn your house down you know but nevertheless the options there and it can be very, very useful we m other any slider questions delmar media group had asked can you ask abel if there's a good resource for the equations for setting up the steadicam with various lenses that's I mean the only equation that idea always once the and once the director actually deported at eighty five or longer the steady cam operational starts gelling that's the only vomit or it I know it's steady cam is are we talking I hope he's doing that said yemen not glide can yeah e I mean it starts to get very, very drinking on long lenses you know so I would say in general or something like a sixty five millimeter you know is about as long as you kind of want to go because it gets very, very difficult after them not not only in terms ofthe camera stability but also in terms of because it's a floating device makes it rather difficult but the focus puller too nail the marks because everything is moving and that that makes for drinking focus pulling in terms of the glide cama mean I on the sixteen two thousand five is probably a cz faras you wanted tio and then it's used for action in high speed chasing and stuff like you showroom benny meant in israel and the if anyone's getting married by the way I'd suggest him because she's really great leaves a sweetheart of a guy kill kenneth would like to know if the slider fits on a tripod oh yeah absolutely it fits on I'm not sure if that one is it's bad it's banned there they're all designed to either go on try points on the very long ones can be held by either to try pods or I'm gonna put it won in the tri part of the other or a ceased and or light stand or you know across apple boxes or there's a million ways to set him up and can't get right on the ground you couldn't do nice things with the moment just literally if you want to do a little a little gym shot just put it a virtually against the wall and just put pressure on the camera run the camera up the wall so you do a little gym shot you know you could be right on the corner of all we'll say here in just a little jib shot and so they can be used in a variety of ways they can be inverted you know you'd have to re emerge it imposed or rigged the camera the other way so that you can literally slide right across the carpet or the ground it just screws you could just put these plates yeah yeah absolutely so very very useful usual device and I mean we we use these these when purely in rented just for the five d system or the hd dslr system they were invented for which are the time when I knew that a slider is the most valuable tool of all is when you're doing a western believe it or not because on when you trying to shoot one cowboy across another cowboy and they're both on horses horses do this all the time and putting them back on their marks is very easy because there's a big pile of poo that you placed it over so on dh but that it's easy it's it's like keeping the over is really, really difficult because horses shuffle around an awful lot and in that case you probably need a five or six foot slider so you can adjust for that kind of movement you know, even if it's a guy on the ground and somebody on a horse no, just that we want to hold a piece on them and they they basically come from that but obviously those air for motion picture cameras and they're much more heavily built. The good thing about all of this stuff is like that slider this this rig it all goes in a bank bank on an aeroplane you don't have to fill up, you know, huge flight boxes with stuff so you khun go off and take quite a lot of stuff with you too enabled you, you know, I thought I could fit one backpack like top plate comes off this comes off like the handle these pretty flesh both the weighted opponents that both of those both come off both the screws come out I mean, if you had one of the bigger like manfredo bipac sir tamar ackerson like that you'd be good run that's incredible one more quick um god glider slider question from tom's zeus key what is the most you useful length and that's a really good question I would say about four feet probably in terms of the balance between portability team on dh you know wait and all of that stuff I mean but even even that's good for you know if a name to city in the carriages shuffling around a bit that would work perfectly well but I mean for me personally I think three to four feet is probably the most commonly used slider that you tend to use this this device students do this one a few factor caves yeah, yeah this is basically makes your camera like bomb proof like what e mean it can't you can't like hit any of the connections like if you were to pass the camera over like all these these twists like immediately and you're like ok, all our exposures cheese but this kind of just cases it in so I mean you gotta yeah like an awkward agree upon it so when you transferred over nothing really happens and then it takes all of the power and that goes out to an external battery through a limo connection and those air basically bulletproof so and they got additional like triggers and all sorts of stuff on the back of it so it's pretty also also designed to take him that box bars that you can put matt boxes on yeah three rails yeah follow focus motors you can add any accessories len shades what's nice about it is that you you take the battery cover played off which is very easy visit kind of sort of tongue thing that goes up inside the battery compartment them that makes all the connections inside the camera that then goes through an external on the batteries right up in this little clip right and then you compare everything off one bantry instead of being you know so susceptible to how quickly the batteries will die on the in the internal bantry and this is when it just starts getting really heavy I mean we have one sit up there with the like I said the area and the area follow focus and it just starts to get really heavy so it's pretty much these air like on ly production tools so how how much I just think as I saw this if it only had a glowing plate out help they gives the cooling issue for you guys cooling but he overheating is here again I don't think I've ever seen one overheat yeah I'm not had a problem telling my seventy year so tell you you over here seventy oh yeah, it overheats along really? Let me use that shoe teen should have very sorry this double two processors I don't know that is that is that shooting I mean is that interiors and next areas or well, the overheat uh, light comes on especially on long takes the other day we're shooting in direct sunlight, right? And that seems to affect it if we're in a room with a bunch of old style terms lights, it becomes the biggest I've never seen that with the seventies is still under warranty. Yeah, I'm pretty I've heard other people have the same issues yeah, maybe maybe just send it in because I literally have never seen him like we have done some stuff with, like score like that's like ball racing in this hole in the middle of the desert and it's like one hundred fifteen like where he's from so and we've never I mean five minute takes just so you might want to like send that one in just a you have in all the time on harrison the entire season six finale we never had an overheating problem once way shot tons and tons of stuff waited the sentinels right when we were leaving and that was just back to back to back twelve minute takes the whole way of all the way open, so I just I mean it's a pretty self explanatory kids you know you just have all your memo but that you know after you have all the limo connections and you need all the adapters and most most of things that carry this connection are pretty like industry standard and then it's just getting really expensive so it joel again dependent upon the level of production you're working on other other devices just quickly because I know we sort of said you ought to go to lunch and mon approaches you can see are really very, very valuable for these cameras because especially the lenses like seventy two, two hundred it's a and you know, image stabilizer on you've got effectively with the money withem unimportant you've effectively got a steady cam in your hands you could new beautiful shots and that one is probably the most valuable model part yeah that one of those much better than the only other thing and it's got a little baby fluid head on it that thing's awesome that work with right he's not a member of that way cheap we go thiss one day come from living in a car you could get this thiss was only about eighty bucks and you know because we were working more with lower budget filmmakers we didn't to have a lower budget equipment right hence the courts and now when we did the season nominally I mentioned that we had one guy that um on there was basically just set free on his own to just go and get beautiful photography and he was only breathed a couple of times to get certain things but termine uh he was a, um a nation guy with an irish name called chris murphy he was very small on dh so he wouldn't get into reflection or anything like that he wore black on dh so he immediately became known this ninja cam and he and hey just pop up all over the place he done you know, when when for example you know, we might have a and b camera here doing during your sets up like that because these cameras there so compact he could just sneak in here and just get a little close up on a two hundred and just and then just be gone before you even knew it and just he did his own focus he he wasn't with all of this stuff of course be cable is running from this back to video village and and, you know, be a marshal monitor on here running back to media village because as you know, if you put an external monitor on here, then you lose your your image on the back of the camera so you have to loop it loop out back to media village he was given freedom of rain to just do his own focus and pence ninja cam but he just got beautiful stuff and you would not believe that statistically, even though I'm not sure about the actual length content in terms of cat content, eighteen percent of the shots in the season finale was shot by him and without a brief and it just went to show how successful it wass to give a good camera operator freedom to express themselves and just just run in with a project you give them especially somebody talented so it was incredibly successful thing it just it beautiful shots and it was all right in there and he could just sneak and he could wonder off there was, you know, he was just by himself community by himself and all the all you can hear the backpack would spare batteries and cards so that he didn't have to keep going somewhere and he had a easily accessible marshall monitor and every learning and I just got unplugged the marshal monitor in and have a look for us keller to make sure he was spot on exposure wise on dh then on top of that we talked to at the moment for we talked about the injury cam on this device is really very useful it's called them yes it's made by city ruin they called me the efforts elektronik you find them beautiful big quality much better than what comes off the back of the camera and with with an arm you khun basically rig it anywhere so that when you for example if you're shooting on a camera like this and if it had a shoulder pad you can get the weight of the camera back there and with an israeli arm or reflect see you khun position that little of you find anywhere you want so that you you kind of build your own kind off um you know you're your own kind of video camera where you'd be surprised if you have the camera in front of you for a long time the strain and stress on your arms all inevitably make you shake the more you can get the weight on your your bank on your shoulder better and that's the way of doing it because then you can use that it cuts agile the ambient light so you have a much better idea of what your focus is on dh that also has false color and into orson one thing we didn't mention was everyone knows about the the magnification you khun jump in on the magnification check your focus and jump out again that's also does that as well we're going to go through out like the menu settings and the false color on the peking more in depth like after we're kind of just going like a brief overview but then so I think we we are there is being fairly brief because as we mentioned a mention he did an hour and a half on this. When, when he did his last trip up to creative lives, so just seemed fatty, pointless, repeating everything, he said. And, uh, uh, okay, um, I think I think we've done it.