When it comes to quick tip, it does not get any quicker than this. Instructable’s Paige Russell came up with this quick and clever short run dolly with a book for cart and corn starch for wheels or bearings.
This Remote Controlled BuggyCam Looks Like Even More Fun To Use Than A Drone
This is what you get when you put a BBC wildlife cameraman (Rob Drewett) and a buggy racer/design engineer (Andy Nancollis) together in the same workspace: a really sweet looking 4WD buggy that can pack your camera over all sorts of terrain at speeds of up to 40mph. Collectively called Motion Impossible, the two based the BuggyCam design on a race proven remote controlled vehicle, and as though that wasn’t cool enough, Drewett and Nancollis made it even better by developing their V-CON camera mount system to pair with a Freefly Movi M15 stabilizer ($11,995), which means you can use it to get professional quality photos and smooth video.
It also means it’s sturdy enough to carry professional grade photography and cinematography equipment. In fact, in the two clips below, you can see the guys using it to tote around a RED while shooting on location in a forest and also capturing some great footage of a peregrine in flight.[Read More…]
The Spielberg Face
One of the reasons Steven Spielberg is considered a sage in the art of filmmaking is because of how successful he is at keeping the audience emotionally connected to the movie. Even from simply seeing the helicopter approach Isla Nublar in Jurassic Park, we’ve got that rush of excitement; we didn’t see anything at all yet, but we knew it was coming. We knew because John Hammond’s eyes started gleaming with childlike joy as he pointed at the island and said, “There it is.”
Here’s a badly-mathed-out breakdown of a good movie: while one half of the work goes into making the magic a reality through set design, visual effects, and sound editing, another half goes into making the characters of the film believable and enjoyable. Though dinosaurs may only have been in the movie for about fifteen full minutes of its screen time, we enjoyed the movie that much more because of how believable the reactions of the characters were.
DIY Doorway Dolly Presentation
Back in the days when blogs were just starting out, there were probably two DIY centric blogs for the creative industry. Your truly ran a small site called DIYP for stills-DIY and cheesycam ran a similarly oriented video site.
If was great to see that they are back at their origins today sharing a Doorway Dolly build. The idea behind a doorway dolly is that an operator can push and pull the dolly while a tripod or a photographer is standing on it. The nice thing about it is that you can operate it without tracks and still get tracking shots. The down side is that you need a super smooth floor (like a PVC floor) to get good shots.[Read More…]
An Infinite and All adaptive (DIY) dolly system
We featured Rigwheels way back when they were only selling DIY hardware for dollies. Now they are back with some clever devices that are (again) on the intersection between pro and DIY.
The entire system is designed to be travel friendly, and fits in the back of a car.
How To Build A Linear Motorized Slider For Less Than $60
The team at ask design just release a full tutorial on building a DIY motorized slider. The design is good both for time lapses and “normal” video shooting.
They are pretty straight forward about the goods and the bads of building DIY gear. On the good side you obviously got the price, but also the fact that you can build it in less than an hour. A nice bonus is that it supports USB charging of other devices which ask uses to power a fan to stop lens condensation.
On the con side, it will be heavier than a bought unit and will not facilitate stepping action which is mandatory for low light time lapses. If you have more money that time and want a high end unit, they recommend Syrp as a turnkey solution.[Read More…]
Rigwheels Is The Mother Of All DIY Dollies
Many of the video hacks we share are about dollies and sliders. It is not surprising as both make a huge impact on production value.
Most of the wheeled sliders we featured are using aligned skating wheels for smooth movement. This makes sense as they come with bearings and provide smooth motion. The only down side here is that the smooth movement is limited to the length of smooth surface you have.
Enter RigWheels. RigWheels is somewhat of a DIY product, but also somewhat of a high-end product, mostly depending on how you use it.
[Read More…]
DIY iPhone Camera Dolly
About three weeks ago I got a mail asking me why I don’t do any video related DIY’s. This mail got me thinking that with recent photographers going video, there is actually no reason not to include video DIYs on the site. Au contraire, Photographers looking to start on video may benefit from some low $$$ video tutorial. We started with a great video DIY roundup, and now…
Here it comes, my first video DIY, an iPhone Dolly.
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