- Usually keep these in my camera bag
in case a filter gets stuck on one of the lenses.
All you gotta do is wrap this around your filter.
It gives you more leverage to unscrew it
in case it gets stuck.
And you know, they pack flat,
Super easy to carry in a camera bag.
But I don't know if you guys knew this about elastic,
it's just the weirdest thing, alright.
If you put them between your fingers like this
and lock the other one behind it
so there's no way out, right,
you can't get out this way, you can't get out this way,
but right here in the middle there's a soft spot
where they just come apart.
I've just been trying to figure it out for so long
and it doesn't make any sense.
Intro.
(bouncy music)
What's up everybody?
Peter McKinnon here and welcome back to another video.
Today's a blast from the past, ladies and gentlemen.
We're talking about one of the most beneficial,
crucial, helpful filmmaking tools
that you're just gonna grab for your kit
and it's gonna go with you everywhere.
Ah, I can't even stress it enough.
I use this thing religiously for about
eight years every single day, and that is a monopod,
but it's the specific model of monopod.
I'm not being paid to say any of this.
This is just a tool that I adapted early on into my workflow
and it became invaluable to me,
allowing me to get so many incredible camera movements
without having to spend money on a gimbal,
without having to spend money on a steady cam
or a glide cam or any sliders, nothing.
Just this monopod did so many things for me.
It allowed me to get slider shots,
moving shots, shots up high, shots down low,
super nice pans and tilts, just a whole myriad of things
this monopod was able to do
and for that reason I felt the need, the desire
to make a video on it today.
And as proof, here's a couple photos
from like five, six years ago.
This is me using it on the street in my old job.
I used to have the C100 on it with a lapel mic
and I would rock that thing for days,
like all day from like 10 AM until 10 PM.
And it did everything.
There wasn't anything else I brought with me.
If I had to go on a shoot, I'd bring the camera,
the lenses, all that stuff, and my monopod.
If I didn't have my monopod I'd be like,
"Huh, can't do this".
So I'm gonna run through with you guys
five different techniques that you can do
using your monopod, should you have this one,
should you buy this exact model or something like it.
These are five camera moves that you can do
and a few examples to just, you know,
make your videos a little bit better
without having to break the bank,
because let's be honest, gear is expensive
and we don't always want to drop that coin
when we don't have to.
Let's begin.
So let's just start with the basic lean.
Holding that monopod with your camera stable
on the front with the extended arm that comes out the side
just leaning forward and leaning back
is gonna get you really nice smooth pans.
What's really great about this particular move
is revealing a subject, revealing somebody
like my friend Gabriel here leaning against this fence,
checking out some shots on the camera.
Being able to start really close
and just lean backwards to reveal more of the scene
or just a landscape, anything like that.
This move is particularly good at it.
I love doing this.
And the nice thing about this tripod
is because it has three feet,
if you want to lean even more forward,
you'll see the feet have a ball bearing at the top
and that can only go so far,
but if you continue going, little trick,
you just go past the allowed movement
of that ball bearing and the feet
kind of tip up on their tippy toes, if you will,
and you've got even more range past that.
So you could start with the feet tipped up,
pan all the way back, continue rocking back
with that ball bearing and you've got
a really nice range of motion for a really dramatic
kinda cinematic looking lean shot.
I use this all the time, it's fantastic.
Alright, second up you have the lean and tilt.
Because this monopod has the option
of getting it with a fluid head,
that fluid head is a nice pan and tilt up and down.
So when you're leaning forward and back with that camera,
you want to start with the camera pointed up high,
you're gonna tilt that camera down,
as you're leaning forward you're gonna get
a really, really nice shot.
The same thing with starting with it straight up,
pointing straight into the sky
and just leaning forward slightly
as you let that pan head just kind of
tilt itself down automatically because it's a fluid head.
A fluid head, based on the amount of pressure you have
on the adjustment knob on the side,
if you let it go, it might just go fast,
if you tighten that knob down a little bit
it goes nice and slow.
But these are kind of just beautifully smooth
camera moves that you don't need any electronics for.
You just untighten that knob and you let it go.
So when you work on that with the lean
with some kind of camera move
you can get some extremely incredible results.
Here's me just messing around shooting some trees,
straight up doing the whole lean thing.
Nothing crazy, but just to show you guys
the movement that you can get with
something just like a monopod.
Okay, next up is the inverted follow.
That's if you wanna follow someone walking down a pathway,
if you wanna follow something along the ground,
a car, something driving, a bicycle,
anything like that where you're following nice and low.
Just gonna flip the monopod completely upside down.
You can hold it by the top because it's three pronged feet
you can get your hand in there real nice
like a bird claw you can just hold the top there
and just float it along the ground
keeping an even distance between you and your subject.
You can get those nice feet shots,
like I do all the time when I'm traveling,
or like I said, following someone on a one wheel
or anything at all, an animal,
whatever requires a follow shot nice and low.
That is a great way to do it
without having to take the camera off or use anything else.
You're just inverting it completely,
you're walking heel toe so you get that
nice smooth steady cam walk, the ninja walk
which is heal first, toe.
You don't want to big step stomping around.
Just nice and easy, and then
if that's not even smooth enough for you,
you can warp stabilize that after in post.
I shoot all of these in 120 so that it
actually makes that footage for me
more stable right in camera.
So if you're shooting at a higher frame rate,
like 120, it's gonna do that for you.
So that's the inverted follow.
Very easy to do, flip it around, have at it.
Alright, next up is just extending the monopod
as far as it goes so it becomes a giant staff.
You're gonna hold that thing high in the air
so you can get shots that you wouldn't normally
be able to get without having a ladder
or being on top of a building or a zip line
or stilts or a jet pack or something like that.
But it works a lot better than you think it might,
especially if you're shooting in 120 again.
So you hold that up, you're able to just kinda
rock that back, get a crazy vantage point,
even lowering it down so it looks like
you might be using a jib.
Now some of you might say, "What the heck's a jib, Peter?".
That's a crane shot, so when you see
a starting shot out of a movie or something
where it starts low, pans up really high.
Or maybe it comes down high and that crane moves
all the way in to someone driving
to get out of their car and you're thinking,
"How is that done?".
It's usually done with a jib.
So this is like the poor man's jib
where you can just hold it up really, really high
and start to bring it down slowly
and you correct for any kind of extra camera shake in post.
Now, are these ideal techniques?
Are these the go-to at all times, no matter what?
No, these are just some of the things
I've been doing over the past maybe 10 years
here with the monopod, shooting with it
eight out of those 10 years.
So these have worked really well for me over the time.
Here's a shot of me doing this in New York back in 2012.
I was getting a closeup shot of those hanging lights
because they looked great, but they were way too high,
so I just extended that thing,
did a little sweeping slider shot
way up there and it worked out beautifully.
So it seems very simple, but it's very effective
when you have something like this
that can extend that high.
Okay, next up is the whip pan.
Now, being able to pan left and right
is very, very efficient when you can do it fast,
especially if you want to whip into another scene,
or start on this scene and whip into this scene.
But being able to do it handheld
sometimes isn't the best because the camera goes
up to high, or you're panning down,
you've kinda got this vertical angle going on
because you can't keep it perfectly straight.
Whereas, when you have it on a monopod
with that pivot ball bearing at the very base
with the feet, you're able to just whip
back and forth very seamlessly
without a lot of camera movement.
So like I said again, so if you don't have
a gimbal that does a high-speed whip pan,
something like this is a great, great, great substitute
if you don't wanna just do it hand-held.
Alright, so a little bonus tip I'm gonna throw in there
because I've used this particular model for so long
is those feet are really great,
but a good tip is to keep one of your feet on its foot
so that when you're rocking those lean moves,
it's not gonna jump up on you or move out of the way
to cause some kind of shake in your footage.
I always keep my foot on there just for safety
in case someone walks by
or might trip on it or who knows.
It just kinda anchors it on the ground a little bit more.
I like that, so it's a dumb little thing,
but just keep your foot on it.
Another really nice thing about this
that I really, really like is there's a level
built into it so if you bring that pan tilt head
back to 100%, you want to lock that off
so it's nice and straight and level,
so you know if you're doing an interview
or you're just holding that camera secure
while someone's talking,
you know that you have it locked off level.
It's always nice to have.
I know it's a little thing, but those little things
when you add them all up just make a good product.
Keep in mind also, these are just techniques
that you can adapt to any monopod.
I'm not saying buy this one.
I'm not saying this is the be all end all.
This is the one that I used for like eight years straight,
but by no means am I saying it is the definitive.
You can use any of these techniques
with anything that has a straight one leg support, right?
If you want to put your camera on a tripod
and collapse two of the legs so you only have
one leg sticking down, that would work fine, too.
This monopod just has the features
built into it like the fluid head.
You've got your hand on the body,
you've got the feet on the ground,
you've got your other hand on the handle.
That's giving you a really secure setup.
That's why I like it so much.
So I started using a monopod like this back in 2009
when I got an internship working with
a filmmaking film house kind of production house
and they had like 15 of them.
These guys took these monopods everywhere.
It was life or death.
They were never shooting without them.
They had them on the fields
while they were shooting NFL games,
for a certain contract, the Army Navy games,
they had them in wedding films and corporate shoots,
any time they would head out into the field,
these monopods were coming with them.
When I finally left that place
and I went to work for another company
that I worked for for eight years
just before I became a youtuber full-time,
I adapted that monopod and used that for eight years
of every single video shoot that we did.
So when we were on the street, when we were walking around,
it was my right-hand man.
It was my one go-to item that I depended on entirely.
The other nice thing about it is
it fit in the overhead with no problems.
I never had any problems bringing it to any counties.
So with all those benefits, including the travel
and the size, it was just the right product
to bring everywhere.
I almost left in Vancouver once.
I remember I leaned it up against the ticket counter
and I did all my passport stuff,
got my ticket, went all the way
through security and sat down.
Then I realized, "Ah!"
So I ran back through security,
ran back to the ticket counter,
it was still leaning against it.
I had to come back through, do everything again.
They were like, "Wait, weren't you just-"
I was like, "Ah, long story: monopod."
"What?"
"Just nevermind, don't even worry about it."
"What's a monopod?"
"You know a tripod, yeah, one leg."
"Well, isn't that a-"
So that's it guys, that's it for me.
I hope you enjoyed this video.
That was just kind of like a little spotlight, if you will
on a tool that helped me out a lot
over the past 10 years shooting video
both professionally, armature, fun.
It was just something that I thought I would pass on
that maybe you guys could benefit from the same thing I did.
I hope you enjoyed it.
I have links below to a couple options
if you want to check out monopods.
If not, that's totally cool, too.
I hope you have a fantastic day.
Hit that like button if you liked this video.
Smash it if that's something that you're into.
Just go ahead and just take it.
Just click that button there.
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Subscribe if you aren't already
and I will see you next week.
Peace.
(bouncy music)