Lessons

Lesson Info

Gear for Lateral and Vertical Movement

ladder movement kind side aside we got that all right so let's take a look at these jeff we have to hear two sliders here these air sliders the two that we have okay so we're using there's two different price points here for two different uses if you guys have tracked anything on kickstarter this is the right of camera gear this is there slider that they use which is the rhino slider this specific slider isa to rod system and it just basically works off friction plate so you literally could just slide across this way the great thing about this specific unit is it's about three hundred fifty dollars but it works an indefinite plane I can extend this roger out go from two feet out to four to six to eight what however long my rods are the downside to that is if the's ron's air nicked debt or anything like that or if they're bowed the whole system doesn't work they do make carbon fiber props to be a little lighter I think they're less than functional than the metal ones specifically becaus...

e these I just brought to seattle and some of them are a little nicked and using them on this bearing system it'll start catching those little nixon dense and you're going to see that on video as you're trying to slide across all right so there's this is an important conversation that I want to have I get asked a lot about do it yourself projects do it yourself at my first lighter I made myself with my assistant at the time we made that um the building this letter costs us about eighty five dollars and it was a bumpy and it was uneven and it was unstable and even if we had built it so that it was smooth it wouldn't have lasted that long so very early on when we were buying some gear I went ahead and I instead of do it myself I found some less expensive gear for a shoulder rig ok so you figure less expensive gear for shoulder rig is gonna do the same thing right like you know two handles and goes into your shoulder okay um it fell apart almost instantly but I don't actually think we got a chance to shoot with it because the screws and everything was literally disintegrating as I like to call it just coming apart I'd find pieces across the apartment across the studio and I'm like where is this coming from and it being like these little certain color pee I can't say the color comes and that gives it away but certain color pieces that I'd find everywhere and step on them and trip on them and it was something with paid like seven hundred fifty dollars for so and it's something that was a big kid you get ahead you know we're going to dwell on that let's follow focus so the price point that it is it should be about a three four thousand dollar break so I'm like seven hundred fifty dollars three four thousand it should do the same thing but it didn't so we're gonna advise you on the ones that we like personally I will tell you and I'm sure in the chat rooms that you can advise for this there are many sites that talk about do it yourself stuff yourself light and do it yourself sliders do yourself everything I just ended up realizing I spent more money trying to fix or buy something new so this is where being educated as a consumer's a good idea because I I ended up buying that shoulder rig and then compliments later buying one I lost money it was the same thing like buying a really inexpensive piece of glass and expensive lens just you can have that lens and then you're gonna be a happy want to get the new one so if you can save or invest in that or rent that might be a better sleep I don't have anything against you I y stuff I just think that the time invested that you create this thing it's still time investment and you're talking about if you give yourself a dollar an hour or you know a dollar an hour pay you're still paying that you know you're still taking that time to do that specific project plus maintenance a second something doesn't have got to go back to home depot I gotta go back to this to go get that specific product when somebody like you know ronald camera gear or somebody like synovate they have the parts there for you and they have department's actually repair those for you which is great because you have somebody who's accountable to do those things and that's what I like about any tool that we have here there's still r d a y alternative but you're not the person accountable if it brakes yes you'll pay out of pocket but I would rather pay out of pocket on dh send it away then have to use my gas to go to home depot to go sit there and figure out is this gonna work isn't this going to work just it's a hassle coming back for me I like my grandfather's a carpenter I grew up with him as a kid no matter what I build it somehow disintegrates I would rather buy something that works all the time no questions asked that's why we're using these so my summary would be if you enjoy making stuff for the sake of it go for it do it but if you're going to save money I don't think it will in the long run correct so I avoid that all right so anyway so he likes the rhino slider the one that I use is actually the one that we generally have one set this one's a little more uh portable yeah was later this is the one that I used it's the synovate atlas a faulty so if you go ahead and you look on this innovate say or you look I'm being a jerk wherever it may be there are a lot of sliders it's a whole bunch of different ones what changes is like the plates on the end and also the distance the length originally I thought and we rented this that I wanted the great big long slider you don't have any use for because your clips never run that long your clips or two seconds three seconds so by the time you do slow purposeful movement across the slider it's six seven eight nine ten seconds so there's there's no reason so you don't need to spend that money definitely go with the small and portable um so when your long story short we're going to demo this tomorrow to take a look at the cider so you'll see the difference between the short movements and if there's nothing in the foreground middle ground in background so it'll make a lot more sense and we actually give you an idea and demo that so and this actually functions they have a conversion kit to make it a verbal vertical slider which is great so so um by the way and all the links to these are my sites if you want to know all right how much am I looking at here on one other thing I don't know if they'll mind me saying this but I've bought most of my a lot of make you're used to that we just I'm not full time cinematographer and so if it was functioning well and I tested it out and then that was a better choice for a lot of lot of camera sorts of demo products that you guys come by which is just stuff that they have on display that they showcase that necessarily isn't used but at the same token it's really really inexpensive compared to the actual product all right let's take a look at a slider movement okay so what we wanted to show you here is that jerky movement we'll take a look what I want you to see here is you get the idea lateral movement with a slider reason we wanted to include this is can you watching the ferry beginning of this when you see it it kind of shifts you see a little bit of movement ready right here and there so that's using this correct put on a video or a photo tripod because the weight could not be supported by that center column so yeah the movement's nice and smooth except for it's something s o I love that slider you just has to be a video tripod so last time more time just a little bit shake there know what I want you to notice now is well is what he was saying about your driving and it looks like the mountains in the distance are all roughly the same right when you're driving watch this last shot the movement it's only this this far we probably only moved I would say like a foot and a half with the slider there but it looks like so much more because there's something in the foreground so it's perspective that's why when I'm using a slider let's say somebody was imposing on this couch I'm doing this lighter here there's it's not that much movement but the closer you are if you put something in the foreground a term that you might call something like this is called a reveal so you would actually maybe have something in the foreground hiding it and then it exposes the person in the background through the slide goes back to that hole like voyeurism things so we used it a lot india a boudoir video as well so that jump pit that used this is what she's mentioned putting it on young tripod so a lot of that has suits are a lot of heavy with the weight system so if you look on top of there being a fluid head on top that camera mounted everything on here the lens everything if I put it on this little tiny tripod all the way it's shifting toe one side so it literally caddy corners over as opposed to um the video tribunal will discuss in a second it's nice and stable but this is the movement it basically does when you have it on a tripod so you're getting this parking video so that's what you're seeing there is the ark and we don't know what it was really you got to try five way just rented this really like everyone recommends a slider why isn't working and that's why okay um so something else okay so a couple tips on using sliders so something that you might consider is first of all don't start wherever wherever your camera starting in the frame okay okay so let's say right here you don't want to start the composition where you actually want to have the video begin because no matter what even if you are very talented at giving this letter to move that first movement is turkey it's always jerky so you want to make sure that what you really want is maybe halfway through or a quarter of the way through so that that first initial movement isn't going to show up as jerky in your film um the other thing is that I would also recommend don't like like let your camera run for a second and then do the movement cause a lot of times if you're getting ready then you hit it and then you do the movement it just this's key here you want to keep the same consistent speed to everything that you're shooting so give yourself if you decided to invest in the slider give yourself a couple chances before you decide to go book a shoot say I'm going to video now I'm gonna make a lot of money doing this to practice it's all technique to any of you have a hair tie I knew you were surprisingly enough okay what I was gonna say it just before I forget this tip um you know how like this it's that that first movement kind of drinks it sometimes what I'll do is on the camera on the slider use a hair time yeah and today this one you won't see it as much I'll do this tomorrow what you would do is you would hook it on part of the camera and so when you pull it actually build up tension and then slowly pulls it over so if there's some reason that you couldn't fix compositionally you really kind of had to start at the beginning of the slime this actually will kind of pull tension eso girl's hair ties it's a good photo tool I have a question for the moment you have when you're using the slider if it has you know jerked do you feel it like when you're can you tell if you need to re yeah so if you uh if you look at it itself the second it goes over to end it actually bumps that there's these little bump mark markers at the end and you can later if you look at it it's still you can hear it so you can hear everything that goes in it every slider is the same way you can feel it you can see it you can see it in your cut even if you're looking in live you anything that you're looking at you can tell there's a sudden movement all right uh lateral movement fluid head so what do we have here this is this is the one you know manage that okay so another let up what's the next best thing to a slider if you for some reason you couldn't get a hold of one time parachute is there anything that comes close well there's less expensive sliders cinema it actually makes little dollies they're like little toy cars and you put your camera right on top and you can roll it across the floor do skateboards if it's a recent like you could probably do a skateboard on this floor for sure because this is this is level and this is smooth so it's a level smooth surface you could do skateboard longboards better just watch out for the grip tape on top scratches your camera he's just a poor kid uh so another lateral movement would be turning your mono pod or your tripod head in that no side to side movement so the fluid heads isn't silly in different type of fluid heads right so we talked about not using the ball head that awful video because it's really it's it's like it's not gonna work right so this is the one that comes with your model pot there's there's only one movement that this has which is that up and down tilt emotion that's all it has nothing else there's no the one with the model hot hot hot okay so this is it ah becomes directly with it as a kid then you have the ones that you can buy these air I mean they're really depending on your budget the's are about one hundred fifty dollars but you have two points of movement now you have that tilting motion right and if you look on the opposite side the bearing itself you cannot unlock it so you can rotate it if I had a stable rig where it just rotate side to side which is great so you have two actresses of movement just based off a tripod that unlocks video and a lot of capabilities for one hundred fifty bucks if you're worried about not having any type of emotion this is it I just can't tell you personally I think that using a cider looks much more professional has much more of a cinematic quality than just turning the camera side to sign but sometimes you even see that what I say turning cameras yeah um you know what I mean you're inside decide so if um if you uh we're looking at maybe you like sit comes and things like that a lot of times they'll do that like they're they're tilting over to look at somebody or sometimes in romantic comedies they'll fought like someone passes you right past you in the scene and it just kind of follows them so that is where I would say that would use lateral movement for things like that but it's not the same and for those of you sitting at home every time lindsay or I walk over the motion that the cameras have us following that specifics section that's what she's speaking about okay so that is just a flu head turning so it's different than the side to side movement have you noticed it's literally just swiveling over to the left hand side there's nothing grand about that there's a little bit of jarring and that this is actually the first video ever did so it's really not that hard you know I didn't know anything about a video to go if I keep the settings you know similar to what she's getting this is more or less what she has so if you guys have ever seen that normal tree uh photo that she has same same concept but this goes back to if I spent more time collar grading this it would look just like her photo so it's great because I could make it behind the scenes video and still get the photo that she has justin video so so not really objectionable I think it looks good but again I perverse lighter all right so let's take a look at a couple other things uh so they also make these things called gypsy right here and said it's not a jib but we have a crane you know if you guys can waver that direction but what these allow you to do is move up and down side to side and every access in between and that's what the purpose of a jib would be the baby it kind of with any type of disallowed videography the heavier it is the more smoother it isthe um sorry this mother is the smaller ones tend to be really shaky if you don't know how to use it right so the synovate has weight system the nice industries is a compact version you put it in a bag about this big and it comes out to about six feet but I've found that it's it's pretty rickety and certain sam points have music with even like an iphone and suppose hold up to like six pounds and you can kind of see the jagged motions but it's a it's a big price difference like that huge price difference six hundred seven hundred instead of like three or four thousand the way we do have that aviator jim it was a kickstarter project and typically how I'm using it is behind the scenes so you'll be able to take basically I'm sitting on the floor shooting so the cameras start off of me shooting on the floor and then zoom up for a nice view of the entire studio and so that would be maybe an interesting move for reveal maybe in a couple session so there they're out in the field you start off in the grasses and as you kind of zoom up into the side then you see the couple there it looks like high production if it's smooth good going backto what she just mentioned it's a great point I just mention it's a little rickety right she we use it for behind the scenes videos by all means it's not something I'm selling toe client it's free for everyone else it's the fastest thing that I can have more the aviator jib so what that's he's just talking about that one it's really small in carbon fiber since meant to be really portable correct for me it's you know whatever's smallest portable I could bring to see you and I have to carry from the studio wherever we're going to be that's just it's the easiest thing if it's going to be for a client I need to be its smooth and they're going to pay me an exuberant amount of money that I'll bring the bigger system I'll bring it in my truck and I'll drive it over it just looks cool and we're actually it doesn't we're actually talking about this yesterday some some people are like okay will do you need a jib shot where a crane shot toe look like high production value and I would say no not at all I mean you don't need it there are times when it will feel really interesting so the example that I just gave but for example there's a piece that you'll see later where I photographed a grandfather and his grandson sitting in on a couch and it's you know a cute piece and it's all close up to the baby and him speaking like a craner jim shop would shot would be really awkward because it's like zooming over the grandpa on scram sound like it doesn't really fit but maybe introducing a scene for example or are you just doing like I said that revealed it does look like it has high production value totally not necessary okay ah this is behind the scenes and this is on that that day we were talking about that's meeting eminem's and and so again this is june and this is what my behind the scenes so one more time you can see that movement it just kind of smooth up and down movement so that's our uh that's the aviator gyp they were using at that point yeah this is aviator jib primarily how we use it all right let's take a look at unless there's any questions right here I mean I have a big question I'm always kind of trying to get back to the big picture in my mind so I know this is the gear segments so just let me know we're saving this for later but I'm just wondering what percentage of your video should your shot should have movement are we talking fifty percent of every slip should have you've meant or what you guys think great great great question we'll see I'm going to say I don't know what he's gonna think I personally I don't think there's a percentage for anything with video editing videography photography everything is an artistic approach by no means is they're set number that you should be doing if you feel it compliments your specific style that's that's on you you really have to make that decision and that this thing that distinction I generally cut all my my videos to music so if I feel that my movements go basically select a song prior to shooting whatever I feel the chutes supposed to bay so if I select that specific song and it just feels like there's supposed to be a lot of movement then I'll do that I'll do that on set I tried tio to let's say fifty fifty percent if I don't know what I'm gonna edit to it really depends on what I would say fifty fifty depending on what you're trying to do but if we're shooting together by all means we'll split it she'll do motion or I'll do motion and she'll do kind of just static shots since we're used to one of the other yeah uh just just kind of put it in your head how I think about it if there's a maybe a video that's going to be cut to music where it is boom boom like really really chris beats ah lot of times you don't have time for camera movement in that if you're doing a lot of quick cuts so movement would almost become unnecessary wouldn't be very useful but if you have something that's more melodic or maybe building in slow motion I can help you communicate that so I think it kind of depends on what I'm going for in the end I would stay still if I don't know what the heck I'm doing like if I don't know what I'm gonna end up with fast cuts look I would say yeah we probably do fifty percent the photo that you have there that's it that's where that we both shot together and we'll show that a little later there's very little movement in it but because it's fast shots in the music that we cut it to we didn't use a lot of movement there's probably at five to ten percent movement in there that and the same thing for the one that you'll see later of the grandfather and the grandson there are two or three money slide shots in the in the whole piece so and that's that's very slow and melodic as well so yeah I was there so money what do you usually come intended there's so many moving pieces have because there is the action of what's moving if your subject's moving and then whether you're moving and I would also say if my subject is more stationary I tend to do more camera movements then if my subject is moving so for example in that one high contrast black and white fashion editorial my camera's stationary but she was moving the entire time I think it would almost seem a little hectic if I were moving too but that's why in fight scenes a lot of times they have a handheld camera motion where it's looking all over the place because they wanted to feel hectic and they want to bring up that energy so thank you is their logistics to how and win and like what the workflow is as to which piece you used so like you know like would you want to get all your sliding shots and then would you want to get to jim shots or does that change with each project depends on who's doing what project for her you know I'm not going to speak for her for me if I'm storyboarding something I count that and e already know what I need if I'm shooting behind the scenes video for lindsay and lately we've been we've been giving it to somebody else to do I pick up what I feel like carrying that morning that sounds really bad but I do I'm like what do I feel like holding to bring on set toe lug back home if I'm going to bring it back home I generally everything in the studio but if I have a shoot the next day I'm not gonna bring a bunch of equipment like I'm goingto I want as minimal as possible so I might bring a slider broken down and I might bring a fluid head or might bring just the model pod not going to truck around with like twenty thousand sliders and vertical slider and this and that the others just not feasible what I would say is when we're shooting together usually one of us is uh ana trifon and the other one has something moving so we're actually three at the same time that's us working together so what I would do is maybe I would get the static shot close up and then he would come in with shoulder rig or with a slider so it's kind of the same time if you're looking at a lot of our pieces if I move my subject at the bourgeois removed her from the bed the couch like I can't move her back so usually do similarly at the same time and all of these have been photo uh quick releases so I just switch and you know two people means two bodies two bodies means more to carry on and you can bring more stuff if you want to people but if you're by yourself and you don't have so if you live in new york city and you don't have transportation get his minimal is possible I'm not trying to break your back going home because it's one thing lugging their shooting all day and then you gotta love all that stuff back it's like why did I do this to me so yes I would say I usually have the trifon in the slider and then I just and also the tripod slider if you have a uh steady um video tripod then just don't move it like you just use it as your tripods you really just have one thing like getting the still shot and I'm getting the moving shots so I could just go back and forth so not to get too far of sorry I know you're not to get too far into that but you know people who do let's say time lapses technically that's still video so you know that's your timelapse tool you know that's all you want to use and I do that when we go to different countries like if we go like istanbul or whatever I just make a little peace they're boring but its memories from now they're cool I like him they're boring for mei I'd make him for myself okay I got a couple questions here about sliders and chibs and all that stuff and I know that that's kind of a higher end things we want spending too much time on it but uh kobe one two three four five how can you tell what the camera sees while on the gym really really good question okay so if you have like the aviator gibb the nice industries one you can get external monitors for example like this kind of system thing going to cover this is the animus ninja too and so right now what it is is it's mini hd mind t m I so I just get a longer cord and so I have it plugged into the mini hd my at the top of that jib for example and then I have the screen down here with me and so I can see it so that's what I would do for jib and crane shot and if you don't have that luxury you can set your lens than affinity and just kind of know morales will focus and just press start and just go with it until you get the nice clear shot if you don't have access to these other two and I think that's a really really great point because a lot of times on ly the really high end rigs that the really high end ones or something it's expensive is going actually let you change your focus while you're here was up there on a crane or a jib so exactly what he's saying you focused in face it's focusing in the distance you're not going to try to like jib up to focus here on out of the way you know so just knowing the limitations of not spending tens of thousands of dollars because klaus had asked where do you pre focus with using a jib so that's perfect answers that question infinity and then one final question came in from lin what is the difference from a vertical and a horizontal slider okay what may she demo right now wheat forever fixed segway okay so vertical movement let's take a look at the vertical cider so this is getting to that question just shot an advertising campaign video for harley harley in new york city and so he's taking a picture in a garage ok and he wants the guy and he wants the motorcycle and he doesn't want all the ugly garage around so to get the guy and the motorcycle it's not a horizontal shot it's a vertical but we're shooting video so it is horizontal so what he did instead was to use a vertical slider so what it'll do for the camera is you will get that vertical shot but in horizontal motion and it's kind of like shooting a vertical panel with horizontal so you turn into a vertical shot kind of the same concept I've shot those a couple times pretty fun so let's take a look and he's going to set this up now but let me show you what it looks like so that's how he's like really highlighting the vehicle in the same thing if you look closely at the motorcycle right in order to fit that all in you'd have to go really far back and you're missing the details on dh so he has here is that this is not the same one we had used the atlas f el t the one that we have their way the vertical can the one that you saw in the photo for transportation purposes way borrow one from here is more or less gravity driven because you have a weight here and then on the sides you have the tension you can adjust so what you would do is you'd adjust the tension for how quickly or how slowly the camera move up and down and you can also do the opposite direction but at that point it's you pulling versus the other way you just let go and gravity will make it nice and smooth are there any sliders that convert that go back and forth this one thinks he's just a kid you have the right to buy a kit to make it work so it's not like it's both I bet you that somebody on the chat rooms might know of one that it's all in one but this I mean this is the brand that I like so that's why I recommend again it's ah it's equipment that we actually use versus what it's like what we've invested in that way like I like the atlas stuff just give me like the cinema itself because again it's like I throw around equipment I can put it in bags we took it to istanbul with tio tio dubai we took up a bunch of places I put it in my I didn't protect its not like in a pelican case I listen on my clothes bag and you know they throw things around they threw things around it I mean it's been everywhere and it's survived like it's fine I've never had any damage the only thing is that they have to be maintenance in dubai we got sand in it so has to be clean because it's all it's oiled so you gotta make sure it's consistently oiled so just make sure that you're like with anything like photographic equipment videography equipment just make sure it's maintenance or maintained especially if you're anonymous so so this is the motion that you have you put your camera on top it still has the so if you're using a flute head you just tilted over your camera sits right on top and this is emotion that you get which is great because if you have something that's close and frame it just it just there's no there's no weight behind it so you're doing it with your hand so your speed is all of your hand and your hand movement with the other system here because it has a weight in the back you khun dragged down the way you can put weight more weight in it so it'll kind of gravity feed and work its way up I tend to do things by hand just because I'm like old school I'm not even old I'm trying to say I told you back in the eighties we used to do this I think I preferred so let gravity help me out because I'm like shaky pretty focusing on this because you have one single focal plans of my subjects here and I'm just obviously they'd be a little further if they're there I marked my point I focused let's say on their face I know more or less what I need and this has a single plane of focus this isn't a tool that you want to use it somebody's going toe from that way I mean it just doesn't make sense mark the point that you have and we'll talk about focus later mark it meant that you want focus if you're having them walk into frame frame and it's going to be like I'm going to bring the vertical slider from the bottom all way to the top and you just want that person to come into focus you have to like pre focus and that person here have them walk in here make sure that you bring this up in time for them to reach that specific point it's really technical that's what I'm saying you gotta practice with this stuff before you go out and you start shooting with it but that being said it's actually not really bad just figure out how many steps you take you to get there by the time I'm hearing that you probably have to get a couple takes you want to do it a wedding like day of wedding it's like hey walk down the aisle I'm gonna try something I don't do that so all right so that would be the vertical slider and then we talked about the fluid head so fluid had khun do the same motion so make sure this again in vertical slider watch it one more time so other thing is that specific shot you want to make sure that if you're shooting anything metal that you can't see yourself so I tracked that whole thing down several times to make sure that you can't see the camera before I actually shot it because can you imagine you saw me that's not it's not fun it's cool cameos okay uh vertical movement with the fluid head all right so this to me does not feel movie like but I can tell you why because if you look at it see I was kind of like kind of warped distorted ish um this was supposed to be a creepy fun fashion fine art video and so what I was trying to do the entire time was emphasized how massive this tree was it actually wasn't that big from the road it looks like a tangle of of roots more or less so what we did is we use a really wide angle lens and he's shooting this right here and so it makes it seem like the whole thing's warping around so yeah I probably wouldn't say it might have been the twelve to twenty four twenty four it would be like hey use it twelve twenty four except for that was the look and feel that were I think the tree the basic interest really like twenty by twenty but it looks huge because of the fact that that twelve to twenty four stands everything out so it's all perception so that would be the vertical movement with your fluid had that we've talked about and then you can also do the vertical movement with egypt the job is really just a down side to side anything that you want it to be