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(film running through projector)
- Hey folks, welcome to The Frugal Filmmaker,
the place where you know you're broke
before you start making your film.
Today I wanna talk about hand held shooting,
which sometimes you have to do.
There are good ways and bad ways to do it.
I recommend you do it with what's known
as a two-handed stabilizer rig.
This idea was probably developed by Sam Raimi
and the Cohen Brothers when they slapped
a camera on a two-by-four and had a guy
on each end running around with it.
This was further developed by director Mike Figgis
who made the Fig Rig, which was a steering wheel
with a camera in the middle.
Now, that cost three hundred bucks,
which is way too much but the idea is totally sound.
I recommend you build one out of PVC pipe
for less than five.
Now, here's the basic rig, or the original rig
which gives you three things,
two places to put your hands, two feet so you
can set it on the ground, and a place
you can mount your camera.
And, here I am using that rig, or a derivative of it
on the web series The Gap, which I'm one of the DPs for.
And, this rig allows you to do all kinds of hand-held
tracking shots and even replaces a tripod sometimes
when you need a quick set up.
Now, the thing that I didn't like about this rig
after using it quite a while was the fact
that you have to take your hands off of the rig
in order to adjust the camera.
It's nice to be able to have your hands close,
especially on modern camcorders, which have a lot
of their controls right on the viewfinder,
like this one does.
But, by taking one of your hands off you can
unsteady the whole thing and put all the stress on one arm,
which I didn't like.
So, I wanted a way to bring your hands closer together.
So, I revamped the rig to look like this.
This gives you a handle on top, a handle on the back,
and two handles that are really close to the camera.
This gives you the ability to adjust anything
on that view screen control or LCD control
or a little joy stick like this one, or a touch screen
you can easily control with your thumb
while holding onto a rig with the rest of your hand.
This is a lot more convenient and let's the shots
stay steadier.
And then, of course, all different kinds of shots
are possible with this.
It's a floating camera basically.
And, by having your arms at a more 90 degree angle
or being it able to move up and down
on a more vertical plane you allow yourself
much greater flexibility than a shoulder rig.
And, here's your parts list.
Note that all of this stuff, or almost all of it
is half inch PVC, either pipe of fittings.
Here, we have four lengths of six inches.
Here we have four lengths of four inches.
Here, we have a shorter length of 3 3/4 inches
and one really short length of an inch and a half.
We have five T-joints, we have four elbow joints,
we have a plug.
And then, for your spring assembly here
we have a spring, we have a quarter inch bolt
that's two and a half inches long and can be turned
with a flat head screw driver.
And then, you have two quarter inch nuts.
(cash register rings)
Here's the tools you'll be using on this.
You have a drill, you have a flat head screw driver.
You've got a tape measure, or ruler to measure your PVC.
Got a way t cut it with PVC ratcheting cutters,
four dollars on Harper Freight Tools,
don't use a hacksaw, this is way better.
And, you have a 7/16 or 1/4 inch socket.
Okay, now really, the only prep work for this project
is gonna be creating the spring loaded screw
that holds your camera to the stabilizer.
And, that's the parts right here.
What we're gonna do is you're gonna drill a hole
in both the plug and the PVC T.
A quarter inch hole, and notice how perfect
it is this time, 'cause I'm using a Dremel WorkStation
instead of just free hand, so it comes out pretty straight.
But, what you're going to do is take your quarter inch
bolt and put it through this hole in the T,
then you're gonna drop your spring on top of it like this.
And then, you're gonna drop one of your nuts on top of that.
Just turn it by hand.
And, since your fingers are probably
not gonna be very narrow, instead of using
needle-nose pliers to try and turn this
I'm gonna use a ratchet head here,
a socket head
to just do the same thing.
It works really well.
You're gonna hit the spring and you're gonna get
some tension, it's gonna stop.
You're gonna feel it.
You'll notice how perfect that is
and just drop the second nut on top on that
which will lock the first one.
You don't have to create a lot of tension
on the spring here, you're just creating enough
so that it doesn't unscrew itself.
There you go.
You've got a nice, straight bolt there
that is going to
be spring loaded.
Now, put a cap on top of this,
it's actually your plug so that your camera
has somewhere to sit and gives it a little
stage on which to plant itself on.
We're just gonna put this in here
and press down.
There you go.
And, you have your spring loaded screw
that will hold your camera in quite nicely.
Now, you're gonna build the rest of your rig
around this little stage platform screw thing,
which you can use for any number of rigs.
Put your insert in one end, a little short piece
and put one of your T-joints on the end of that.
Then, take your 3 3/4 piece and put it in the other end
of your little stage screw platform there.
Then, take a couple of four inch pieces
and put them on opposite ends of the T-joint.
And then, you're gonna take a couple of more T-joints
and put them on the ends of the four inch pieces
like so.
Then, take an elbow joint and put it in
the very back end of that 3 3/4 inch
piece of PVC pipe.
Then, you're gonna add your hand holds,
which are your six inch pieces
in all the open spots that are facing up,
two in front and one in the back.
Grab some more elbows, and if you squeeze
the rig like this for some reason
and add the elbows on top of all the open pieces of pipe,
after you find them, I obviously couldn't find them.
So now you're gonna have three elbows
that are all facing one another, more or less.
Take another six inch piece and put it in the back,
that's your top handle.
Put another T-joint at the end of that,
and then your other two four inch pieces
in like so.
And, there's your basic rig.
To attach your camera all you have to do
is put it on it's side, hold the camera on top of the screw.
Since it's spring loaded it's not going to go anywhere.
And then, get your flat-headed screwdriver
and start turning.
The screw will stay in the same place
and your camera will collapse right on top
of the little platform that you created.
And, in a matter of seconds it's attached
and it's not going anywhere.
Now, if you're feeling spendy you pimp out
your rig a little bit more than this
by adding bicycle handle grips
onto each six inch piece, like so.
Also covered the whole thing in hockey tape
and then added a cross piece here
and here, which will open three accessory ports.
The one on top I'm gonna put our shock mount in.
And then, right underneath that I'm gonna add
a video light, which I have created with
a Harbor Freight Tools flashlight
that I put inside of a hinged T-joint,
added a half-inch adapter to the bottom of that,
then put a half-inch piece of PVC pipe under that
as an insert.
And, I can insert the whole thing into the rig
and I have a video light.
Nice thing about this is I can turn it
on and off with my right thumb.
I never have to take my hands off of the rig.
Now, this bottom accessory port we're gonna
talk about in the near future.
I've got a special application for that.
(cash register rings)
Now here I took the camera into the great outdoors
and I've got it set up with a wide-angle lens
and Canon XH-A1 lens hood.
And, this rig basically allowed me to do
nice wides where I could push in, pull out.
Here's a tracking shot, where I'm walking backwards.
The nice thing about this rig is I could actually
walk forwards and turn the thing behind me
by grabbing the back handle and one of the side handles.
Couldn't do that with the previous version.
It also allows for some nice static shots
where you couldn't take a tripod
like this one.
Now later I had to go on a raft, so I added pontoons
to the whole rig by zip-tieing milk jugs
to the whole contraption, in case it fell overboard
it would float, ideally.
I never had to test it, fortunately.
These shots allowed me, or this set up allowed me
to get some nice panning shots from shore
like this one.
And then later, I would actually be on the raft
like so for a POV, several POVs
where I'm hanging over the front.
You can see the milk jug poking into left-side
of the frame 'cause I haven't cropped it yet.
Or, I'd actually be on the raft shooting the characters,
again notice the milk jug.
Now, this is one of my favorite shots
with this type of a rig.
This is low-angle circular tracking shot.
I challenge anybody to this kind of a shot
with another kind of a rig.
You can't do this with a steady cam,
it's too low.
And, a dolly would take forever to set up, a tracked dolly.
So, I'm glad I didn't have to do that.
On a final note I would just like to add
that this rig is perfect for cameras that offer no
optical image stabilization like these small
pistol grip cameras, or a point and shoot
that happens to shoot video.
The rig offers all the stabilization you'll need.
And, that's your PVC stabilizer rig.
It's easy to use, easy to build, doesn't cost that much
and the shots look great.
If you like this project please come thefrugalfilmmaker.com
for more or you can find us on Instructables,
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thefrugalfilmmaker@gmail.com.
See ya.
(film running in a projector)