In this great educational tutorial, you will learn how to build and assemble your camera rig for professional videography. Moreover, you’ll understand the logic and role of every screw. Although it may look like overkill, a well-built rig can facilitate your work, grants you many advantages, and as a bonus, can make you look much more professional (and cool). Let’s talk a bit about the art of camera rigging.
Handheld position. Picture: Mark Singer
When shooting videos professionally, the camera and lens may not be sufficient. Most of the time, you’ll have to add more devices like handles, video transmitters, monitors/recorders, filters, and so on. Of course, every tool has its own role. Nevertheless, it’ll make your camera look more competent and cool, which is not less important in our profession. Moreover, the added value of a well-built camera is its weight. Since you add more devices and the rig is further assembled, then the total weight of the apparatus is elevated, which constitutes a huge advantage in Run N’ Gun shooting situation. A heavy rig can contribute to camera steadiness when shooting handheld. That’s an essential factor since we’re dealing mainly with mirrorless cameras that are light and small.
On a stabilized gimbal. Picture: Mark Singer
Before start planning your rig, you should answer those questions: Would you want your rig to be able to be attached to a slider or a stabilized gimbal? Should your rig be compatible to follow focusing operation? Do you need a video transmitter? What kind of lens will you use? Will it need to be supported? All those factors need to be taken into account in order to build the best rig for the job, that will serve you well in your filmmaking mission.
Rig it out! Picture: Mark Singer
The cage is the best place to start with. Specific cages are built for specific camera models. The cage wraps the camera, extending physical connection so other devices can be attached, like baseplates, cable clamps, rails, handle, lens support, recorder, and more. The side and top handle should be attached by specific mounts, with specific screws. Furthermore, design your rig with a decent cable management approach, so the cables will not interfere with shooting.
The cage: All starts here
After carefully planning the cage apparatus, and verify that all handles, rods, and mounts are well attached, then more devices can join the party. A list of essential devices can include monitor/recorder, video transmitter, follow focus devices, microphones and etc. But remember that you have to take into a calculation that those devices also need more cables and power sources since they all feed each other. At that point, your rig will start to look impressive, but a bit complicated. However, even at that point, a well-built rig should look slick and attractive, with all cables concentrated nicely and firmly.
The rig should be secured, without moving parts, solid, and easily adapted to various shooting styles (slider, stabilized gimbal, drone, ENG, and handheld). If you managed to achieve all that, then your rig was well assembled and is ready for shooting. To explore ‘live rigging’ in action, watch the video below, created by Mark Singer, that demonstrates all those key points on rigging his Sony A7S III,in a very educating and enlightening way.
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What do you think about the ‘Art of camera rigging’? Would you prefer precise rigging like in the video above, or a ‘dirty’ improvisation that allows you just to get your shot? Comment below.
Product List
Here’re the products mentioned in the article, and the links to purchase them from authorized dealers.
Sony Alpha a7S III Mirrorless Digital Camera (Body Only)
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
