Victor Lin

That thread is in the business section and is predominantly a business-related thread. This one is in the Newbie section which will get more replies geared towards balancing the M-02.

Thanks. I'll get those training materials. We have this. It's still too light? http://www.amazon.com/Laing-Steadycam-Stabilizer-Steadicam-stabilizer/dp/B009YTPMX8 I just asked my videographer and she said that there is nothing dangling or out of place on the camera, including cords and straps. It just magically goes out of balance when she takes it off the stand.

Thanks for all the feedback! Yeah, I kind of figured that my business is no where near the same market as that of your's. For one, we don't spend 8 solid hours holding and moving around a vest, arm, huge camera, etc. Like I said, we get maybe 5 minutes of stabilizer footage per house, and we shoot 2 houses a day. The rest of the footage is just sliders and pans. Yes, Realtors are not willing to pay a lot. Also, Realtors will not be able to line up multiple houses a day - they have to take on houses as they come. They sell and market when the homeowner wants to sell and market, so the timing isn't up to them really. The only feasible way that I could ever think of to line up multiple realty shoots is to work for an actual brokerage with tons of different agents, and even then the agents are all independent so the managing broker would need to find a way to convince all the agents to shell out *their* money for video and also to use only you. In total we have maybe only $4000 invested in camera and stabilizer equipment. BTW, we are in the San Francisco area. My team could really use some help in learning how to balance and fly these things better. Is there anyone who can provide maybe 2-3 hours worth of supervision and mentoring for them? One of their main problems is getting the thing balanced. They balance it on the stand and by the time they put it on the arm it's no longer balanced so then they have to re-balance it on the arm and that takes time. In total, 30-45 minutes just to balance the thing in the beginning. And then I still see the up and down footsteps when they're walking. We use a Laing M-02 and a little Panasonic GH3. Normally this would be MUCH too light for such a large stabilizer, but we add lots of weight plates under the camera to mimic the mass of a bigger camera, the kind that it would normally be flying.

I'm trying to get a handle on steadicam rates for shooting videos for real estate - houses being sold, with the clients being Realtors. Currently we give them a 4 minute video, with about 2 minute's worth of total steadicam footage. The rest are just slider and panning shots. The standard charge for a shoot like this is $350+ and we take about 2.5 hours to do it. Now, I'm the owner of the business but I also fly and employ videographers. So I'm in a weird position where I want to pay people fairly, but I also have to keep costs in check so that we can continue to make sales. They fly with a simple Panasonic GH3 and a glider/vest/arm. All the equipment - slider, motor, tripods, camera, glider, vest, etc I purchased for them. And all the post processing is done by me. All they have to do is shoot and fly. And flying consist of 2 minutes of clips - walking through the front door, from large room to large room, and that's about it. BTW, I've heard rates of $2000 a week being *crappy.* So all of you guys are making at least six figures, mid six figures?