Homemade Equipment Concepts/Ideas

I was looking at DIY sites for dollies and such, considering building something of that sort. Then I had an idea, which I know has already been done for certain applications (fast paced fly by's), but wasn't sure if anyone was using like this. Basically I thought it would be cool to have the camera on a wire instead of a track, and having 2 weighted poles at both ends, ultimately achieving a straight dolly-like shot. (picture attatched for visual, pardon my crude drawing, ha)

If anyone knows of this already being done, let me know, because if there is an obvious pitfall to this idea, It would spare me labor trying to build.

Also, for anyone looking for lighting options, consider old dj lights. One of my lights broke down, it's an American DJ Calypso, it has three rotating 300watt bulbs and a semicircle of colored gels, and the rotating stopped working. So I removed the semicircle, and trashed the motor, installed a toggle switch on top, and made it tripod mountable (minor modification to the pre-made mounting bracket), and now it's an incredibly bright positionable set light. If you're interested, look for this light or others (broken or working) and you could make a couple decent light in very little time. It's nice because these lights are already built like tanks for mobile DJ's, usually have cooling fans, and can be found cheap (eBay).

Anyone have any other cool unique equipment? I'd love to hear about it.

i forgot to mention, the one thing I would like to do is figure out a way to diffuse the light for certain situations.

I was looking at DIY sites for dollies and such, considering building something of that sort. Then I had an idea, which I know has already been done for certain applications (fast paced fly by's), but wasn't sure if anyone was using like this. Basically I thought it would be cool to have the camera on a wire instead of a track, and having 2 weighted poles at both ends, ultimately achieving a straight dolly-like shot. (picture attatched for visual, pardon my crude drawing, ha)

If anyone knows of this already being done, let me know, because if there is an obvious pitfall to this idea, It would spare me labor trying to build.

Also, for anyone looking for lighting options, consider old dj lights. One of my lights broke down, it's an American DJ Calypso, it has three rotating 300watt bulbs and a semicircle of colored gels, and the rotating stopped working. So I removed the semicircle, and trashed the motor, installed a toggle switch on top, and made it tripod mountable (minor modification to the pre-made mounting bracket), and now it's an incredibly bright positionable set light. If you're interested, look for this light or others (broken or working) and you could make a couple decent light in very little time. It's nice because these lights are already built like tanks for mobile DJ's, usually have cooling fans, and can be found cheap (eBay).

Anyone have any other cool unique equipment? I'd love to hear about it.

The fly wire you drew out would work but you're looking at various problems that you will have to work out..

The main obvious one is cable slack and droop. The weight of the camera, especially around the middle of the span will droop the cable down, dependent on tension and distance spanned. The traveling carrier can be bucksheed out of cloth line tension wheels (the two wheel devices that keep the clothelines together). Then the traveler device, shouldn't be a huge problem. BUT the main obstacle will be to anchor the main posts. No matter how wide the base plate, the cable tension will pull the top of the posts towards each other and topple. You would need to anchor them to the floor or ground or use guy wires to keep the tension tight on the cable. Taking care of all these issues are one in all kinda problems. If you're shooting outdoors, its simple enough to do but indoors, it can be tricky. I've built one of these quite a while ago and you wouldn't believe the tension required on the travel cable to keep everything level and smooth as the camera travels down the cable. We had ours running across a small gorge. The wider the travel carrier foot print is on the cable the steadier the camera will be. But back then we set it on a sloping angle to let gravity take the camera down to the other side.. Cable attached to trees and tensioned with a "Come-Along" jack.

Well if you look at my short "Two Guys in the Woods by a River" in the share you videos thread, you'll see a cable cam thingy I made in action. I also just put together a little out take short last night for the challenge and at the end, you can see my cable cam, how it's built and me flying it.

http://www.turtletonestudio.com/films/DVC7out.html

There are many pitfalls to making one of these. I used vinyl coated cable on, a come along to tighten the cable, and some cheap pully wheels mounted to a board.

Well if you look at my short "Two Guys in the Woods by a River" in the share you videos thread, you'll see a cable cam thingy I made in action. I also just put together a little out take short last night for the challenge and at the end, you can see my cable cam, how it's built and me flying it.

http://www.turtletonestudio.com/films/DVC7out.html

There are many pitfalls to making one of these. I used vinyl coated cable on, a come along to tighten the cable, and some cheap pully wheels mounted to a board.

TT2
Thanks for the inside view on how you did that. That was very creative on your part. Did you storyboard the shoot or did you just free style. Anyway you did a good job I really enjoyed it.

Well if you look at my short "Two Guys in the Woods by a River" in the share you videos thread, you'll see a cable cam thingy I made in action. I also just put together a little out take short last night for the challenge and at the end, you can see my cable cam, how it's built and me flying it.

http://www.turtletonestudio.com/films/DVC7out.html

There are many pitfalls to making one of these. I used vinyl coated cable on, a come along to tighten the cable, and some cheap pully wheels mounted to a board.

hehe nicely done, your set up is similar to what we had used.

Thanks for the background view..

Cheers

Hi

The making of "Two Guys in the Woods by a River" was among the funniest I've seen on theese forums so far! You guys must have had real fun when you did the film. It was also very educational to see the camera operated on the wire.

I have some questions though, as the wire setup gave me some ideas:

- Do you have some kind of professional steadycam device?
- It looked as if the camcorder was upside down, did you flip in post?
- Was the wire so thin so it didn't show up on the recording or was the cam pointed away from it?

Again, very funny to see this, and also great of you to have a second camcorder (and operator) to document the making.

Regards,

/Bo

the camera was mounted on a varizoom flow pod, a steadicam thingy. the theory was to take some of the wobble and shake out. I didn't try it without the thing so I can't make a comparison on whether or not it made an difference.

The cable was about 5 or 8mm thick with a vinyl coating. The reason you can't see it is because it's in the path of a tree. it's a grey kind of colour cable and it's in line with the tree that it's strapped to, so it hides it very nicely. When you look at the making of video, it's taken from a side angle and you can clearly see the cable then, but when you shoot it with the cable in line with the trees, it just gets lost in the tree trunks. in a different setting, it might be a problem hiding the cable.

The camera is mounted upside down, I just flipped it in post.

Hmmm... you wire is possible, but you will have to figure out how to make your poles stable enough to keep the wire tight. The only way I can think to do this is with more weight, or hammering them way down into the dirt (assuming their is dirt). Sounds like a hassle.

Wire systems seem more practical when you have pre-existing strong structures to attach to. For example, trees, buildings, even cars. Maybe you can get away with an "ATV" attachement...

Hmmm... you wire is possible, but you will have to figure out how to make your poles stable enough to keep the wire tight. The only way I can think to do this is with more weight, or hammering them way down into the dirt (assuming their is dirt). Sounds like a hassle.

Wire systems seem more practical when you have pre-existing strong structures to attach to. For example, trees, buildings, even cars. Maybe you can get away with an "ATV" attachement...

If you're using two poles to support the main track wire, you will need to use at least two guy (support) wires from the top of the pole all the way down to the ground, opposite side at 90' apart from each other so that from above it would look like a Y. If you go to a camping outfitter shop you should be able to get some ground stakes or cork screws to anchor the support wires into the ground.

Just remember, if you're looking to just use weights or a wide platform, the higher your main poles are, the more weight or wider the base is going to have to be to hold fast, it's a matter of leverage. Hence why using the guy wires is the way to go.

Well yeah, but then you need something to attach the guy wires to...

Don't get me wrong, I love DIY stuff and crazy cam rigs. I am just not so sure it's the best plan for, say, a dolly shot on pavement if you're in a hurry.

In places with lots of ground variation it might be a great way to bypass laying down tracks completely... I am going to start building my own wire rig just for this. Thanks to this thread for getting me thinking about it.

A bit off topic, but I have built a tensioned-pulley camera elevator. I also have a DIY crane, but this is more useful in many cases for straight rising or dropping shots, and it can go much higher than my crane. It is basically two mateable light wooden 2x2's, fixed to a base which is then simply sandbagged, or just have a couple people stand on it. It can operate via a crank, or simply by pulling the wires. Obviously for heavier cameras this rig will become less practical. By adding another pulley to the chain, I can get super-smooth measured drops that look really cool, for example tracking down from a window. It also rotates at the base, so you can have a sort of spiral movement. Now I just need an excuse to use it in a real project ;-)

One more thing... anyone having trouble with vibration when running a simple cart dolly across pavement... just fix some carpet or something to decent sized wheels... makes a huge difference.

How far from each other will the poles be?

/Bo

yeah a pulley cable thingy is what I'm making now. pull the camera up and down like a crane. we'll see if it works.

On the cable cam rig, I also mounted an rc motor to it with a rubber wheel. It worked great, just way to fast though. I have to modify the voltage to get it to move slower. But on the first try it was moving about 20mph along the cable, a little hard to control at that speed. but it has promise.

ooh, turtletone, i like the sounds of that.

yeah a pulley cable thingy is what I'm making now. pull the camera up and down like a crane. we'll see if it works.

On the cable cam rig, I also mounted an rc motor to it with a rubber wheel. It worked great, just way to fast though. I have to modify the voltage to get it to move slower. But on the first try it was moving about 20mph along the cable, a little hard to control at that speed. but it has promise.

Wouldn't it be easier to change the gear ratio?

Not really, I've got about the smallest wheel I can find. we're talking a pretty big RC boat motor that I frankensteined. It has two speeds, fast and faster. I need something from like a car RC voltage controller that you can ramp up slowly. the first time I tried it, it burned rubber on the cable at the slowest speed. I also have to check the range of the RC. Last thing I need is a speeding camera slamming into a tree. The motor is powerful enough to drag the camera uphill, the problem is getting a nice connection on the wire so it doesn't burn rubber. trimming the speed so I can reliably hit the same speed each time is also a must, unless you are going for the effect I had with two guys. I would like to use this as a remote dolly that rides on the wire over rough terrain instead of trying to lay dolly tracks. the other problem is that i'm in NYC and there aren't many places to test things out. hahaha.

You might try a rotary or slide type light dimmer switch to adjust the speed of your motor. They control the flow of electricity pretty well. It's possible it could cut back too much on the power and give you just enough power to burn up the windings in your motor though so I'd try starting it a little fast to avoid having power flowing without the motor moving.

TT2
I am into robotics, and I think you might be able to use a cheap RC xmiter and reciever. Then you can use a servo to control the wheel speed. We convert servos to continuous rotation for robot driving of the wheel. You can get pretty heavy duty servos like the 1/4 scale type used for large sail boats they have lots of torque. Also my nephew went to Savanhna school of art and design for filmakinng and his senior project was a Laptop controling a servo operated Jib, it was sweet. If you like I can get you the video of it in action and I can get the info on what type of servos he used.

Servos are much smoother in operation and has better repeatability more so then motors