Car Mount for Car Chase/DIalogue while driving?

S

SPZ

Veteran
I'm looking for an affordable and good solution for some car chase and in car dialogue scenes I want to shoot in my next short. Any suggestions?

I looked at Stickypod, but they do not ship to where I am. ( They do not ship to "China". It p#sses me off because I'm in Macau, and while it technically is China, its an autonomous region with its own government and state of law. Mainland people need to pass costums, and we have our own Identity Card. We respect copyright here! :( (we are very similar to Hong-Kong in this aspect)

Its a shame ignorance of some prevent us to take advantage of a global world and community...

Anyway, enough ranting, and back to topic... Any suggestions?
 
SPZ said:
Looks good... Is it solid, Jester? Can you do some "Speed" shooting with it? (Like drifting, etc?)

Thanks for the info!
Click to expand...

Pretty solid.

Not sure what you mean by "drifting" but here's my last project I shot with it.

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=90088

Was going about 50-60mph here and there with the cam strapped to the car with no issues. Had to go almost 80 for one shot to keep up with the moving train...granted I was hanging out the window with it...brrrrr.... :D
 
Hi SPZ:

I produced a drifting video a couple of years ago www.puredrifting.com and while I did not use the same system that Jester did, I do have a couple of thoughts...

1. Drifters crash. During the year I filmed, we shot numerous crashes and saw even more crashes thhat we did not film. I would never mount a "good" camera on the car of any amateur drifter, unless you are wealthy enough to lose it and not be too broken up about it. I was lucky and did not lose any cameras to crashes but came very close.

2. Cameras mounted externally on cars being drifted will eventually become coated with road grime, oil from exhausts and from melted rubber from the tires. All good reasons to NOT use a good camcorder.

3. We used small suction cup mounts for small camcorders. These are available from lots of places, we bought ours from www.filmtools.com

4. If you need high-def, I would take a good look at the new disposable HD camera from www.aiptek.com I am building a rig for car shooting using several of these shooting 720 30P. At less than $300.00 per camera, when one of the eats it, it won't be that big of a deal.

5. I would recommend experimenting with camera angles and placement. Certain tracks and venues look better from certain car mounted angles. Don't forget car interior shots of the driver, getting a driver shifting, e-braking and using the steering wheel can be a great cutaway.

6. Watch the Best Motoring Videos if you really want to see how it's done. If I had a decent budget, this is how I would have covered drifting but without a budget, you have to improvise.

Best,

Dan
 
http://www.willyswidgets.com/

We have one of his hostess trays at school, and on my last project we shot a drag using it. I was never driving, but I know they had to do at least 80+ on some takes, but it was always in a straight line. The ball level is AMAZING! Rock solid. I've got all the parts to build my own, but no time in the near future.
 
puredrifting said:
Hi SPZ:

I produced a drifting video a couple of years ago www.puredrifting.com and while I did not use the same system that Jester did, I do have a couple of thoughts...

1. Drifters crash. During the year I filmed, we shot numerous crashes and saw even more crashes thhat we did not film. I would never mount a "good" camera on the car of any amateur drifter, unless you are wealthy enough to lose it and not be too broken up about it. I was lucky and did not lose any cameras to crashes but came very close.

2. Cameras mounted externally on cars being drifted will eventually become coated with road grime, oil from exhausts and from melted rubber from the tires. All good reasons to NOT use a good camcorder.

3. We used small suction cup mounts for small camcorders. These are available from lots of places, we bought ours from www.filmtools.com

4. If you need high-def, I would take a good look at the new disposable HD camera from www.aiptek.com I am building a rig for car shooting using several of these shooting 720 30P. At less than $300.00 per camera, when one of the eats it, it won't be that big of a deal.

5. I would recommend experimenting with camera angles and placement. Certain tracks and venues look better from certain car mounted angles. Don't forget car interior shots of the driver, getting a driver shifting, e-braking and using the steering wheel can be a great cutaway.

6. Watch the Best Motoring Videos if you really want to see how it's done. If I had a decent budget, this is how I would have covered drifting but without a budget, you have to improvise.

Best,

Dan
Click to expand...

Dan,

Thanks so much for your excelent suggestions. I'll certainly look into it. Losing my best camera in a crash is not nice, so probably will look at cheaper options, however:

My main question concerning a cheaper camera is motion rendition and inferior lens. FOr cheap, I'm only looking at entry level prosumer, and HDV seems like the best budget wise, but Heard so many horror stories with HDV that am a bit concerned.

I'm thinking on either going Canon Hv20, an Old Sony HC-1 with cineframe 25... Because of the Optics, Cmos technology and more manual control of both cameras...

Cineframe 25 is a lot better than cineframe 24. Worked with it and its ok- haven't doen heavy motion tough.

There's no new consumer AVCHD camera that does progressive, right?

I would still like to use the HVX for some Dialogue shots...

Just got a quote from Microdolly, stating 2100 USD for their Car mount gear... Very expensive, but I've been working with their Microdolly, and its one very high quality product that I trully recommend...

PS- Indeed, I will use amateur drivers/ Drifters. This is also a big concern for my gear. So I need also a suggestion for an acceptable cheaper HD camera ( 1400 Max price?) that can produce acceptable low light pictures, has basic manual controls- manual exposure/ shutter/ gain (I know HC-1 doesn't have manual gain), records acceptable 25p footage and handles motion well. Any suggestions? (I know, tough question.)

EDIT- Troutpro, that looks good for my DIalogue scenes, but not so much for some dinamic side shots or back shots from an Hatchback, for example. Good price, tough. Maybe one of those Car door Mount and a Stickypod suction type for the other shots? Still well bellow Microdolly's price...
 
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SPZ said:
Dan,

HDV seems like the best budget wise, but Heard so many horror stories with HDV that am a bit concerned.
Click to expand...

Oh goody, another person who has been led astray by the masses who have never used a GOOD HDV camera such as the canons or JVC.
 
Hi SPZ:

I would consider the Canon HV-20, it's a very impressive camera for the money. I don't think HDV is a problem as long as you transcode to ProRes422 or DVCProHD codecs. Any cameras that you are planning on mounting on the exteriors of cars should be considered disposable though. If you are lucky, you might not have problems but the sun, grime, burned rubber and jolting the cameras will receive will usually render them as useless as a regular shooting camera eventually.

I have not had any experience with shooting drifting with HDV but people do say that the HDV codec falls apart with a lot of motion. Testing is in order, I think.

Cineframe is useless for professional applications, it's motion characteristics render it unwatchable to me, even on static shots. Add that to the constant motion in drifting and you will have really ugly, stuttery motion.

Best,

Dan
 
Hi NCJE:

I shot for a full year and a half with the Z1 and we presently own the XL-H1. In my experience, the HDV codec does show some bad motion artifacts in certain conditions. Then again, it's only under certain circumstances. HDV transcoded to a better codec for editing can look very nice, I have no beef with using HDV. I have more issues with the Sony really only being useful as a 60i camera as the CF mode is horrendously bad.

And the Canon? The worst viewfinder of any video camera I have ever used, it's almost impossible to tell if you are in focus and the lens? The difference between being in focus at 50 ft and 5 ft is a turn of about 1/32" of the focus ring, it's ridiculous. I just had to use the XL-H1 to shoot panels at ComicCon and it was nightmare of a camera, I hate it. Overpriced too.

Best,

Dan
 
ncje said:
Oh goody, another person who has been led astray by the masses who have never used a GOOD HDV camera such as the canons or JVC.
Click to expand...

Well, I'm going very low end here.. I'm talking about HC-1/3/7 or HV10/20... I'm not getting a top of the line HDV camera for this! I heard all the praise for the A1, XL-H1 and the JVC 200, but those wouldn't be cameras I would mount on a car for drifting, either ( what would be the difference of mounting my HVX to mounting them, then?). Too expensive, and not worth the risk.

EDIT- Actually, concerning the Canon XL-H1, I saw a Thai movie being post produced in a top post facility, in HK (where I was touching up a TV Spot shot with the HVX). I was really, really impressed. It looked like a 35mm shot film, no Joke. Don't know what lenses where used (But the DP certainly knew his stuff, and used different lenses.), what setup, but I know it was recorded in HDV. Of course, telecine and Da Vinci 2k post certainly helped, but it was trully impressive. It was a slasher thai flick. I was trully convinced about the Canon after seeing those pictures.

However, the XL-h1 and JVC are very expensive prosumer cameras. More expensive than the HVX!
 
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Beautiful stuff, Jester.
Was that shot with the HVX-200? If so, did you use the native lens or something different?
 
Harry_E said:
Beautiful stuff, Jester.
Was that shot with the HVX-200? If so, did you use the native lens or something different?
Click to expand...

Hey man, thanks. Yeah it was all pretty much stock HVX. All the car-mounted stuff was just stock lens and cheap screw in polarizer, which was scratched to hell and back when we were done. The other stuff was stock lens with mattebox and filters. All 720p with a couple shots in 1080p for FX work.
 
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