Bike B-Roll

This Labor Day weekend was perfect for getting footage for the upcoming bicycle project. I go several shots of in the local area and broke in the new rigs from this summer. The Fig Rig worked well for getting shots while cycling. The camera slider also made for some really cool establishing shots of the bike pre-modding.

All in all it was pretty successful. Hopefully I can track down some good interviews this week.

DIY Slider Mods

After some test and reconfigurations of the DIY slider, I've come up with a better working unit. The first problem that I faced was a significant metal-on-metal squeak in all of my shots due to the angle of the bearings. I redrilled the holes so that bearings now roll with one on the top of the track and one on the inside of the track, rather than the previous straddling V formation. However that didn't minimize the noise so I ended up making new track out of PVC.I upped it to 1" pipe for more rigidity and it seemed to work well. Now I've got a fully collapsible rig (that shouldn't collapse). Hopefully in the not-too-distant future, I can build a nice wheeled metal based rig. For now, this should work fine. 

DIY Camera Slider

I finally got my camera slider done. After watching many of the tutorials online, I decided to take the best aspects of the ones I watched and mash them together into one rig. The overall cost came out to about $30.

Originally, I had a small dolly made out of two skateboard trucks and scrap of board. I dropped this idea long ago because my wheels weren't aligned and it was bulky and unreliable. Then I came across Lolo Two's Big Brother camera rig which used conduit and connectors. After filing down the inner rim of the connectors as the video demonstrates, I realize that it was nearly impossible for me to attach the rest of the shuttle without increasing the friction.

I then stumbled across a video making an over head documentation camera that used bearings. The great thing about this is it doubles the contact points. One skateboard has four wheels and eight bearings, so I was able to get more stability by crossing the bearings along the pipe instead of just using the wheels to run along the top.

This rig uses the same mount assembly as the fig rig. The shuttle is made from 3/4" PVC connector and pipe, 8 skateboard bearings, and 8 5/16" carriage bolt assemblies.

I put 1/4" washers on each side of the bearing to prevent needless grime from getting in, as well as a layer of masking tape around the outside to dampen the metal-on-metal screech.

The rail system is 3/4" EMT conduit, some of the cheapest piping available. I chose it to be stronger and more rigid than PVC. It's screwed down with 3/4" conduit hangers to two scrap pieces of board.

I'm really excited to try it out. Special thanks to Katie Black for helping me acquire parts.