Tips for Practicing Cinema Wheels?

K

karl_w

New member
I have a set of Freefly Movi Wheels as my poor man's Arrihead.

Does anyone have any recommendations on the best way to practice and overarching concepts and tips of using them? I have three but I see the Arri gimbal equivalent has just two wheels. I'm thinking with Coronatimes, that using a laser pointer is a good way to practice each day?

Thank you!
 
A laser pointer is particularly useful. Spelling your name out is a common one, but I think the most important thing to practise is simply the moves you think you'll likely have to do with them.

Diagonals are a bit of an art form, so put plenty of time into that. But also fast and precise start-stops (which you plan out by the exact number of turns). Feathering out the ends of your moves is also a big deal.

Basically the more you can do, the better.

And always thinking back to the ways you operate a fluid head (because that's where your muscle memory most-likely lies) - what movements or responses to movement are innate to you? Figure those out, and practice executing similar responses with the wheels.
 
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I’ve never really understood the laser pointer.

While it might teach you which direction to go, it isn’t based around composition.

I bought a geared head to practice my wheels and taught myself by strapping a cheap handycam to it.

My housemate had a fish tank and I would zoom in and follow the fish around the tank. I’d track them as they changed direction, trade to other fish. Always trying to keep a nice frame composed, and maintaining that composition. Setting up outside I’d try and follow people in the park, cars moving towards me.

Always real things and “framed”.

JB
 
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I agree, writing your name is more of a parlor trick. If you need muscle memory practice then just try ding figure eights for awhile. But following people out the window or fish in a tank is as good a method as any.
 
I'd probably adapt the encoders onto a pan/tilt head so that it was the same as using a tripod with a pan bar. Pan/tilt the head the same way you want the camera to go and it would be mostly just like you were operating the camera on that head.

This might make me a Luddite, but I'm fine with that.
 
I'll disagree with John and Mitch on the laser pointer, but that's probably because that was how I learned back in the day. Many hours spent tracing different shapes just to get the mechanical aspect down. Figure eights were a fine exercise to learn how to round off moves and reverse directions smoothly, but I found that there was a predictability in the repetitiousness of that one that sort of lulled one into a stupor after a while! Tracing the laser around a randomized path honed the precision and helped train the motor skill of truly separating the jobs of each hand. Really the goal is to have it all become second nature so that you can focus 100% on composition after that (and at that point, obviously it is best to use a camera and follow a subject around).

It's something like practicing scales on an instrument. It's possible to circumvent that and be a good player, but it helps lay good groundwork. And especially given the current times, having a human subject to follow isn't possible or safe for everybody right now.
 
I used to draw a racing track on the wall and use a laser pointer to race. I would always try to improve my time and change tracks and I'm getting used to it
 
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