5 useful gear and camera tricks to get difficult shots the easy way

There are certain techniques that ubiquitous to commercials we often see on TV. But achieving some of them can be quite tricky and/or expensive to achieve. They often utilise difficult-to-master techniques or require expensive equipment like motorised camera sliders.

Well, in this video, commercial filmmaker Joris Hermans blasts through five camera and gear tricks that he uses on actual shoots. Tricks that let us get some of those shots without requiring any extra gear. Well, maybe just a little cardboard and some gaffer tape.

The five techniques are all pretty simple to achieve using the methods Joris shows in the video, and the results are pretty effective.

• 0:08 – The elevator (vertical slide)
• 0:24 – The perfect ice-drop
• 0:47 – DIY spotlight for labels without reflections
• 1:15 – The orbit pan swing
• 1:30 – Spin the bottle

Will the results look exactly the same as using more expensive or complicated techniques? Perhaps not. But will anybody notice (or care) without seeing clips done both ways side-by-side? Especially after a little post magic? Almost certainly not.

If you don’t have a ton of equipment available to you, and you don’t want to have to buy a ton of equipment to get one or two shots you might never need to shoot again afterwards, then these techniques should do you just fine.