Hello, I'm David Langan. Welcome to AdoramaTV. I'm a documentary cameraman,
and I have been working all over the world for the last 25 years. These days
we have lots of camera movement through the use of cranes, dolly's and steady cams.
and now we have slides. I'd like to show you how to use this piece of
equipment to bring a bit of Hollywood to your film.
Hello again. Here's an example of three kinds of sliders available on the market today.
I'm going to start with the Pro 800 Slider. It is a reasonably priced slider
Its advantages are that it's actually very lightweight, portable
and small and compact. It's disadvantages are probably that it's actually not very stable
from above and beyond a DSLR package but for what it is, it's very useful for
table top stuff macro photography against small camera packages.
On other end of the scale we have this, which is the road with slider
This is a 3 foot slider. It goes up to 8 foot in length.
This is on the top end of the scale which is used mostly for commercials,
feature films and dramas.
It's incredibly well built and engineered- a bit like a tank actually-
very stable platform, useful for all sizes of camera packages.
It's even got little magnetic bumpers here at the end which prevents you hitting a hard stop,
just a nice, slow motion stop.
Very beautiful. The downside of this is actually that it's
very very heavy, not very portable and quite expensive.
And this is my preferred slider, which is the
Italy slider, the one I use all the time. I like this because it is versatile,
I can go up to nine feet in length using the three separate sections
that it comes with or I can have it in singles or doubles.
I can have on the ground. It is very useful to go flat on the deck
or at basically any height depending on the tripods.
I like it because it's very sturdy. I can take quite large camera packages
on this and still have the stability that I like, and it's compact down into two boxes
and relatively speaking it is quite light and portable.
In effect I can go to anywhere the world, extreme environments and bring a bit of
Hollywood magic to my films.
So here I am trying to make
a little film, just to try and show you the use and benefits of a slider.
So an otherwise boring van in a beautiful old car park
What's important about this is actually choosing
where you place the slider. I could
place the slider further back here for example
and do a reveal from the van to
the rest of the car park. The idea is to sort of show
"Don't know where we are, its a big reveal" but that would be
not very dynamic because I'm pushing the distance away from the subject.
The trick is to make the subject quite dynamic so bringing it closer
to the frame. That becomes big in the frame
and therefore you get a greater sense of the movement through the frame
because of its proximity, and then also the reveal
is a bit more of a surprise at the end. So let's try and build that and see how it looks.
I'm going to just do a quick measurement to make sure
that I'm more or less level.
It's important to try and get your slider level
on both axes. This axis, because then
that stops it wobbling and warping
as it travels down the slider because you don't want
your horizon line to shift so that's quite important to keep that as
unlevel playing field then less important but equally
in someways important is this access here. So obviously what happens is
that you will run downhill,
or run uphill and therefore making it quite difficult on yourself to operate.
This is the best bit of the indie dolly
respite the in the dalai miss them
It's the main platform. It's got beautifully smooth wheels.
Here's the shot. The idea is to completely disguise where we are.
The frame is kind of an
abstract frame and then there's a reveal at the end of the track.
Here we go.
So, in this configuration it's quite easy to move around.
I tend to pick it up from the middle and lift the whole thing
and off we go to another set up,
which is perhaps a reveal set up to show the vehicle...as a reveal.
So we're going to start in the bush over here
slide across, there's the vehicle. So as I was saying the
setting up of the slider takes a few minutes
in the beginning, but once its set up they can be moved around quite quickly
quiet easily so you can get
multiple setups, multiple shots from
more or less the same basic setup. Obviously you can change the heights,
higher and lower. You can always move the angles but
once you've invested the time in setting it up you can move around and get two, three, four shots of
any sequence using this set up, using the slider
Ok so here we go.
I'm going to do two different passes
on this frame, on the set up rather, one is a tight, one is a wide.
So here we go.
So the trick here,
is to try and find your end frame first.
So get that
so you're happy with the composition of your frame at the end.
Position your body so you're ready as it were
to be in that shot
and then slide away to hide the subject.
So in effect you're
always in in one position. You're not trying to walk
because walking is going to disturb the camera and make
a wobble on the shots so you don't want that. So try and get yourself so you
only have to do a lean across.
Find the beginning of the shot.
You know where it's going to go and
then do a nice gentle move to get to your position.
So all sliders
have the ability to go on the deck, on the floor. This one is a
good example. You can lift the whole thing up losing the tripods,
and getting a shot that literally goes on the floor.
Given that we've only got a straight track, you can't necessarily put a
curve around a square object or rectangle object in this case,
but what you can do is, if you put it at a diagonal
to the object like this, in effect what you can create is the sensation of a curve
by doing the tracking motion and
panning at the same time, gets you from here to there
and creates the sensation of a curve motion.
So here we go.
Camera in position.
So I've just given you a glimpse of how sliders can bring a bit of Hollywood to your film.
You can subscribe to AdoramaTV for more great videos, and let us know what you think
by commenting, sharing and liking this video.
You can stop by the Adorama Learning Center for more great tips and tricks.