Making pictures on wall vibrate (practical)

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David W. Richardson

Chapelgrove Films
I'm going to be shooting a short soon, and one of the scenes requires pictures (paintings in frames) on the wall to suddenly shake. These are fairly large and heavy paintings.

The shoot is in an old historic house. We won't be able to do anything that might cause any kind of damage to walls, paint, etc.

I'd much rather figure out a practical for this, rather than trying to do it digitally in post. So I need some creative, inexpensive and effective ideas.

Any help???
 
You need some kind of sneaky picture hooks, i.e. hanging on real picture hooks but containing a mechanism which can wobble a secondary picture hook holding the picture.

If these were lightweight pictures, I'd recommend something like a clockwork windup toy. But heavy pictures could be hard to do, they'll need a much bigger force. Something made of Meccano/Erector set gears and a motor perhaps?
 
Is there any reason the paintings have to be so heavy?
You'll at least need some kind of padding on the rear.

One thought is to use a fake styrofoam frame.
Or maybe some other light material, shaped and painted to match the look.

The painting itself could just be a large paper print.
Maybe photograph the real paintings since I assume they are already in other scenes.
Then do a print out.

That should give you a really light prop to work with.
Then maybe uses bursts of air over the walls surface which should cause the frame to react/shake.
The rear of the painting may need some shape tweaking to help trap some of the forced air.

I haven't tried it. Just an idea.
 
Yeah, some fake lightweight paintings would minimise the chance of wall damage due to rubbing/scraping from wobbling painting frames, plus be much easier to wobble.

Someone with the fancy woodworking machinery for frame making could presumably make some one0ff picture frames out of balsa wood. (I'm presuming you don't have the budget or facilities for custom foam casting, which is what a big budget movie might do)
 
The cheapest and easiest would be to to just shoot the pictures up close and have people off camera shaking them.
Also you would try putting a little padding on the back and using flexible wires attached to the hooks so the painting will move side to side, then just shake the camera a little a la Star Trek.
Or you could try a number of smaller motors (like the ones used in cell phones to make it vibrate) and wire them along the back of the painting/inside the frame.
The other thing is to try to have an alternate mounting system for the paintings that hangs from the ceiling so they are free floating in front of the wall and can be shaken by either someone off screen or a motor or wire setup.
Just some random ideas.
 
I have actually done this. We used nice thick frames but made of balsa wood. In the back of the frame we placed an electric motor (9V). on the shaft of the motor we made a made a flywheel that was very unbalanced. Turn that sucker on and watch it dance!
 
phudsontx said:
I have actually done this. We used nice thick frames but made of balsa wood. In the back of the frame we placed an electric motor (9V). on the shaft of the motor we made a made a flywheel that was very unbalanced. Turn that sucker on and watch it dance!
Click to expand...

And that was at your house to scare the guests!!!:happy:
 
Thanks for all the ideas. Paul's approach seems semi-doable.

First problem with the other ideas is that the paintings are already in the house. If we have to come up with different paintings and/or frames, that's going to cost money. We can't do any kind of secondary suspension that would require attachment to walls or ceiling. I had thought of putting a cell phone behind the painting, set on vibrate -- but I'm thinking that might not give enough movement to be significant. I also thought about using one of those battery powered hand "personal" massagers. I think they use Paul's principle of the motor and off-balanced weight.

Any other creative ideas???

Thanks again guys!
 
I don't know, seeing the limitations you have maybe the best idea is to go for the fishing string idea, take one string and tape it to the right side, then take another string and tape it to the left. Now you only need two people to play with the string, one pulls then the other pulls.... just make sure that the frame won't fall....
 
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