Rappelling a Gimbal from a Ceiling

Joshua Milligan

Joshua Milligan

Well-known member
Hey guys, I'm shooting a music video next weekend and the final shot we plan to get is of a couple laying in bed with some dramatic lighting. We are wanting to rappel slowly my MōVI M5 from the ceiling toward the couple while slowly spinning it with a remote, kind of like the final shot in Breaking Bad, just reversed.

During pre-production we mounted a strong hook into a stud in the ceiling and hung a pulley from the hook, slipping a rope through the pulley followed by tying the rope to the top handle of the MōVI. Everything looked great when we tried the shot except that the rope would begin to spin on its own. This was something I didn't even think about when coming up with this idea, so now I don't know what to do. While I want the camera to spin during the shot while lowering it toward the bed, I want to be the one spinning it using a remote, not it spinning on its own because of the rope.

My client is really hooked on getting this shot, so I'm trying to find another way to do it. I was curious to see if you guys could help me figure out how to rappel my gimbal from the ceiling without it spinning on its own. I'm open to any ideas with the exception of using a jib as the room doesn't have enough space for one. Please let me know if you have any thoughts on this!
 
jib and movi

technicall the jib will arc.. so you would need a dolly push in as you tilt the jib - or a very long jib.

Ill have a think how I would do it for a pure boom down..
 
I reckon your original idea is a good one, you just need two ropes (and hence two pulleys) separated by a metre or so, and a beam attached to the top of the Movi. That way, as long as you release both ropes evenly, you can assure the Movi doesn’t rotate on its own...
 
As a producer, your shot, if you are not employing professional grips to rig it and even if you are, is scaring the hell out of me. Shot sounds cool and creative but safety?
What protects your talent if your rigging slips, breaks or malfunctions? What's the plan B that saves talent from a camera and gimbal coming down on them and smashing
their faces? Fully rated, proessionaly built scaffold with speed rail with safety chains? What are your safety chains rated at for weight and shock load? As I hope you know,
the kinetic energy from the falling rig would increase the effective weight and g-force of the downward falling rig by many times.

Not trying to be the downer but this rig and shot sounds dangerous. If it is dangerous, what are you doing to protect your talent and yourself from getting dragged into
court should your rigging/idea fail and you injure your talent?
 
Very good point re: safety, and one that should be taken seriously. I would say it should be fairly easily achieved however by attaching chains or strong rope from the rig to independent frame or ceiling mountings that are rated to take the impact shock of the main pulley/rope system failing.

Alternatively, using crash test dummies in place of talent would also be a safe solution!

J
 
As has been said before, you need a second pulley and rope (with some distance wrt the first one) and a security cable that's short enough to prevent the whole thing from hitting anybody
 
Big vertical slider and a boom arm of some sort to position it over the bed. Then use the hook in the ceiling for a safety.

Something like this with another pair of wheels on the outside might work. https://www.amazon.com/Beam-Trolley-track-Conveyor-monorail/dp/B01LY31IFN/

It would suppress the torque from the spin better with two rails. Probably need rubber wheels to make it quiet, so some work would need to be done. A large gas spring to help counter the weight would also be worth building. Unfortunately, to get the kind of throw you may need will not be easy, the longest I see on Mcmaster Carr has a stroke of only 16 inches and a minimum collapsed length of about 18 inches. https://www.mcmaster.com/gas-springs To get big throws you will need to find a way to put multiple springs together for a long extension and small "compaction" value for a multistage spring. A conventional coiled extension spring running along the back with a cable and pulley at the top (like a garage door spring) might be an option, though not likely to be quiet. Maybe a big counter balance weight with cables and pulley would be a good choice too.
 
puredrifting said:
As a producer, your shot, if you are not employing professional grips to rig it and even if you are, is scaring the hell out of me. Shot sounds cool and creative but safety?
Click to expand...

+1

This shot needs a total rethink, & if it’s so important then it should be professionally crewed, & rigged.
 
Bern Caughey said:
+1

This shot needs a total rethink, & if it’s so important then it should be professionally crewed, & rigged.
Click to expand...

Funny, as a camera op, I just had to take the scaffolding safety class with the Union, that's what jumped out at me about this shot description. Sounds risky. I agree 100%, I would never attempt this shot with talent underneath the rig without professional grips rigging it.
This is one case where the DIY, low budget approach would be ill advised, no different than having your cousin Joe Bob on set for that shootout scene because, "He's a gun guy" versus having a properly licensed, insured professional armorer. Any time you're
putting talent or crew at risk, you HAVE to spend the money and hire the right pros to supervise and execute it and even then it's still risky. To do otherwise is simply irresponsible.
 
Well, I went with my original idea of using a pulley system and was able to prevent the handles of the gimbal from spinning on their own by tying fishing line to them and having two grips hold the lines tight while the gimbal was being lowered. It worked great and the shot turned out better than I could have possibly imagined. It lowered nice and smooth while I spun the gimbal with a remote creating a really gorgeous shot.

As for safety, we knew it wasn't coming off and we had the rope to where it wasn't going to slip far enough to possibly hurt anybody. You may not like my method, but for the budget we had to work with and the time we had to pull this off, a little imagination and some outside thinking made this shot entirely possible.

I want to encourage people to not feel like you have to always rent or bring in big equipment and expensive crews to get high quality shots in a safe manner. You just have to be willing to think outside the box and if you have a little bit of a carpentry background like I do, then all the better. Ideas like this are what drew me to filmmaking. Getting to be creative and find ways to use what you have to create great content, that's what so many people love about video production.

Gimbal-1.jpg
 
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I sure can. I'll need a little bit though. I don't want to overstep my bounds with my client by posting anything before he publishes the video. I'll gladly post the clip afterward though!
 
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