Low budget car rig

[Maxbrand]

Hello! It's me again, last time I made a lighting breakdown and it was really cool to hear your thoughts and to get a discussion going. 

This time it's a much shorter post about gripping for low budget film. I made a short post about creating a car rig to mount the camera on a car hood with minimal setup and cost.

Hopefully it's helpful for somebody, or at least you can draw some inspiration from this to do something similar!

Here's the blog post, feel free to ask any questions!

 

[IronFilm]

My YouTube channel also has a bunch of videos with car rigs featured:

 

 

 

 

[zerocool22]

On 8/28/2018 at 1:20 PM, Maxbrand said:

Hello! It's me again, last time I made a lighting breakdown and it was really cool to hear your thoughts and to get a discussion going. 

This time it's a much shorter post about gripping for low budget film. I made a short post about creating a car rig to mount the camera on a car hood with minimal setup and cost.

Hopefully it's helpful for somebody, or at least you can draw some inspiration from this to do something similar!

Here's the blog post, feel free to ask any questions!

 

Wow impressed by how good the shots without the gimbal look. They look better then the overly smooth gimbal which gave it a boring look. 
Allthough I am scared to ruining the paint of my cars, I am intrigued in buying a small car rig. Now you can a pretty good camera like the pocket 4K for a cheap price, I dare to actually use one

[tupp]

Nice rig!
 

Definitely loose the gimbal on a simple hood mount.

 

Also, you really should safety your rig with a motorcycle strap or ratchet strap.  For your small setup, you probably need only one strap going across the hood, hooking into opposite wheel wells.  Here is an example of a larger rig with straps:

 

3 hours ago, zerocool22 said:

I am scared to ruining the paint of my cars

In the above car rig images, note the padding where the buckles/hooks make contact with the car body.  I would also add soft "groovetyne" fabric scraps at any point at which the the strap webbing contacts the car's body.

 

For a small camera hood rig, I usually avoid suction cups and instead use a simple pancake (1/8 apple box with baby plate) with groovetyne or neoprene underneath:

There are plenty of inexpensive tilting heads with 1/4"-20 camera threads that fit on the baby pin.  This pancake rig is usually secured with two straps and possibly a sandbag (if there is wobble).

 

One more thing about shooting in a car in which an actor is actually driving -- avoid busy streets!  The actor is constantly trying to be the character, which can significantly distract him/her from noticing other cars, pedestrians and road hazards.  Having a "spotter" car ahead of the picture car can provide extra safety and can govern the speed (slow speeds often look faster in the footage, so there is usually no need to "press the pedal to the metal").

 

 

 

[Maxbrand]

4 hours ago, tupp said:

Nice rig!

 

Great answer! Very interesting to read aboutyour experiences. Thank you for sharing!

[IronFilm]

Core tip for sound: is if you at all can, then wind up the windows!