Cool Slider Tricks

[Michael Carter]

Shooting a music video - the song is about paranoia, so I built a little cube of a room with 2x4 framework and foam insulation sheets. The 4th wall can be popped in and out. Shot this in my home, so I only had 8' ceilings to work with, needed an overhead rig. The Igus slider worked great for pans and also for rotating "spinning" shots.

I started by screwing a 2x4 right to the ceiling joists - only a couple tiny holes to fill, and the rig took less than 2 minutes to take down for our low shots.



I had pulleys & cord on each side; an assistant was on the far side and would "return" the slider when needed.



Clamped a monitor with a superclamp right to the set wall. I did pans by pulling the cord straight down - moved really smooth (considering those are plastic "clothes line pulleys" from the Depot). I reached over the set to rotate shots, just extended the arm of the head all the way out.



Finished shots are looking cool; I shot this with a cheap-as-hell eBay "fisheye" screw-on lens. On the T2i the crop factor gives you a really wide, exxagerated-perspective look. With motion shots it just looks cool as hell, like flying over skyscrapers. The lens is useably sharp in the center, the edges go soft with a really cool chromatic aberration/"triple-image" look - perfect for this song. And it focuses to like 2". Not bad for 40 bucks. Not something I'll use every day.

 

[Ryan Patrick O'Hara]

Does losing a finger due to a camera slider count as a 'trick'? I've almost seen that 'trick' many times.

 

[Chris Light]

post a sample vid when you can...i'm not above drilling straight into my ceiling for a cool shot.

 

[Paul Hudson]

Post your results. It sounds interesting.

 

[Michael Carter]

Does losing a finger due to a camera slider count as a 'trick'? I've almost seen that 'trick' many times.

I lost about half of a finger to a flatbed planer in my twenties - my slider just doesn't seem that "Dangerous"!

 

[Michael Carter]

Post your results. It sounds interesting.

I'll post the finished video likely in the T2i forum; the performance stuff is done, there's 2 more segments that will all be edited together; I have to build a pretty elaborate set for the third one but hoping to have all the shots done in the next two weeks or so. The song is about paranoia, so the ebay lens has been really cool - but it's making the small amount of keying pretty tough, the edges have so much chromatic abberation that it's like a triple image - really very pretty though; I'm keying a sky in for all the floor level shots we did.

But this is a really cool way to get an overhead pan, spin, slide or zoom - if you were at a location house you could use wall spreaders.