Search the Community

hello is there any product so far for attaching camera (up to 10lbs / 5kgs) to the actor and doing medium shot? (ideally hips connected to be able to do fully medium shot) ... i found only http://doggicam.com/which has almost no info about pricing and products... is there any other? interested in heavier variant for red epic (up to 20lbs / 10kgs) any tips recomendations?

Hi guys, I am learning now for 2.5 years and have a rather demanding client who wants to shoot a whole experimental but corporate movie in a very special perspective: he wants the camera in a POV perspective pointing down to the floor most of the time where we can see the body of the actor from his chest or stomach downwards, then eventually tilting up to a normal perspective and then going back to the POV style pointing down on the floor where we can the the actor's body again. I assume that we would have to go with a 15-20mm lens (S35 frame, Sony F55 or Epic) to get this special POV look. The director also wants very steady shots so a body mounted system with putting some cuts in the movie won't make it. Also he wants to make the movie seem to be one shot without cuts........... (we'll see about that. At the moment I will try my best to help him to get his vision on screen. That's why I am here. Maybe someone has some experiences doing these kind of shots or parts of it with a steadicam.) I will describe two scenes: Camera floats from the universe into the ceiling of a house into a bedroom where we see a guy getting up. The camera floats further to the POV perspective pointing to the ground and follows him / leads him out through the corridor into the bathroom in this perspective. Then we float into the ground of the bathroom and have a hidden cut to: Camera floating from the ceiling into a bathroom into the POV pointing to the ground perspective of another guy who turms and walks into the corridor where he meets his children and wife. Here the camera switches to the wife's POV who is leaving the appartment and steps outside on the street (everything filmed from the overhead POV perspective pointing down.....) Shots like this are going on and on. We switch actors as they meet, go into buildings and out of them through small corridors and appartments into universities and so on and on... My first suggestion was to do it on a built set in a studio and a crane with a remote head and maybe some greenscreen for the exterior ground. Here I am afraid of the unflexibility of the whole system. A crane is big and very inert. Actors are way faster and move quicker than a crane could ever react in that special perspective where the camera is directly mounted in front of his head. Another idea is to do it with a steadicam and a superpost (maybe with gyros?) from behind the actor or with a flipped image from in front of him. But the flipped image won't allow me to go back to the normal perspective in one single shoot and back. The superpost is to have more distance between the gimbal and the camera so the actor can be in between when I am behind him. But the superpost will also limit movement because of its length. The gyros were meant for more stability because of the superpost in the horizontal position. I thought of the gyros ore one gyro most of all to prevent the post from panning all around. But maybe the gyro will cause more damage than it will help. I'll have to do tests with them. I also thought of the AR but don't think that the distance between camera and gimbal will be big enough to let an actor fit in between because the whole system is much more top heavy than a standard steadicam. Maybe you can help me prepping these kind of shots with a steadicam. Best, Frank