Making floating video recordings?

[oxygen]

Hello.
I' m looking for a way to make floating camera recordings, to get the effect of a ghost floating in space.
I want to get fluid movements with odd camera POV.
Any tips from experienced ppl, on how to do this?
Low budget, offcourse!
Cheers!

[vjpixylight]

a RC boat with a wireless webcam affixed to it would be cool to capture footage
on a lake or stream..

:fish:

[deepvisual]

Hi Olga..!!!

rent a waterproof housing and shoot it underwater in your local pool...
shouldn't be too difficult to charm your way to an hours splash around before opening....


otherwise use a dolly and put the camera and the ghost on the dolly so they move together.. then the ghost can move without making any movement.

hope things are groovy in neptunes country..

G

[oxygen]

Hi pixy, sorry but I am not really get ur point..??.(my english ..).

anyhow..
I didnt mean to make UW footage!!
I want to film in an actual building, with big empty spaces..
Filling those xx-squaremeters with water wont be very handy.
I was more thinking in the direction of using helium-balloons or something to create weightless film techniques???
(I Was hoping that some ppl did experiments with that.)

hey Gary! I am fine, thanx.
Shame I cant join the VJ gathering (other thread).
Oh, and please tell me where can I rent the ghost?;-)

[sleepytom]

steadicam is how "proper" films do this kind of dynamic movement. my flatmate is a steadicam operator so i know how not cheap this option is!

however you could try posting on steadicamforum.com and see if anyone lives near your location and would be willing to come and do a days filming for a cut price (often even experianced operators will work for expenses only, if they have no other work it keeps them in practice)

if you need shots above 2.5 meters from the ground then a polecam / jib / crane is an option or you can get into helicam type stuff or blimp cam. (all expensive if done properly but obvious ways to recreate things on a budget with scafolding towers and lots of helium ballons)

you can also try messing about with rope and pulleys - if you can get attachment points in the ceiling then you can create some good dynamic shots with this technique.

[oxygen]

cheers for more suggestions here.
I will do more research on this one.

Joeproper your idea sounds good, but might be not so easy to make?

Also, I have to be quick, recordings will begin next week.
Anyhoo, if I find good & affordable solution, I will post it here..!!

[vjpixylight]

my mental image saw this as floating(on water) which is not the fx you are looking for..sorry:crazy:

[wellREDman]

if you have a budget, hire Bruce and his amazing stick cam.

[deepvisual]

take a peek here.

http://www.bealecorner.com/trv900/steady/steady.html

http://www.homebuiltstabilizers.com/greyhandheld.htm



otherwise buy a small american football, put it on top of a monopod and put the camera on top of it.
this will allow you to roll the camera like a boat at sea and you can walk holding the monopod.

[devonmiles]

point ist to avoid walking, I think. maybe use the monopod idea and place the camera man in a shopping cart to be carried around slowly. shopping carts can be found at most malls for only 1 euro...:D

[oxygen]

woohay! keep them comming, keep them comming!:up:

I am thinking of trying out the balloon version.
For now the most exciting option to try-out on a n/lo-budget..

Devonmiles your idea, I was planning to do for the additional shots, yeah.
(But prolly wont create the real floating movement I was looking for here.)

Wellredman; if only I had more budget, I would have waited no longer to rent Bruce for the job!;)

The american football-on-a-monopod option sounds also interesting...
cheers again:-)

[I think, next week I'm on a balloon hunt...]

ps. Pixy, no need to apologise, it might well be a good idea for some other time:-)

[MrJustin]

Hi oxygen

You could also try out weighing the camera down with the monopod / sticks and then suspend or support it from a couple of bungee cords, perhaps from different directions? might be worth a try, and bungee cords cost next to nothing.

Good luck, :yep:

Justin

[oxygen]

you could also try out weighing the camera down with the monopod / sticks and then suspend or support it from a couple of bungee cords

Nice idea, I will keep it in mind, for if the balloon-operation fails.Thnx

[AlwaysB]

test

[AlwaysB]

Hey Oxygen,

Some ideas for you.

Sleepy had the right technical advise that the steadicam is the right proffessional tool for the job, so it's worth investigating if you can do a skill trade with an operator near you.

The trick to the bungee theory as with a staedicam is Weight, the heavier the better, for less jerky movement so weigh the camera down and DON'T mount all the bungees from the same place or it will only swing. Try mounting the camera/bungee system of a support on a wheelchair.

Something I've done in the past to fly over objects (cars) is to place a camera on a plank of wood between two people and just do a walk past/over, this would look good for your POV of walking through a table. Also if you tire off to four points of the plank or something wider you can pulley the camera up as if to do a fly away ending to your shot (or into).

The perfect thing for you would be to find a remote control enthusiast with a airship large enough to carry a micro camera with transmitter, this will enable you to float anywhere. I don't you'll be able to use a micro broadcast quality camera on a low budget but anything with more than 400 lines of resolution would be ok. A grainy image may actually help toward your ghostly pov.

Good Luck and happy haunting,

Always
B.

[rko]

if you know a little bit 3D, you can do a camera mapping, really easy, really cheap . and totally amazing

example here....> http://www.cgarchitect.com/resources/tutorials/misc/tutorial2.asp

[hookturn]

If you are into fishing or have a friend who is try getting the longest fish rod possible and attach te camera to the line and hang it from halfway down the rod. You can then attach the "ghost at the end of the rod with a welding rod or similar thin piece of metal. Obviously you would need to use a wire removal mask in an editing prog such as ae to remove the rod and wire from the pic, but it should work.
IF you tie on 2 bits of line to each corner at the rear of the camera it keeps it facing forward.
You can have complete control then of which way the camera is facing.
With the flex of the rod it gives a steady sort of feel as the rod takes all the bounce of movement before it reaches the camera.

The best rods to use are carbon fishing poles as they are quite long.

Make sense?

Try it you may just find it works. :D

[oxygen]

Cheers for some more helpfull advices here...:kiss:
Anyway, as said before,
I have allready made up my mind, and informed about the possibilities with the helium balloons.
I also received some tips from an artist, who did work with this technology. I am getting really excited about it now!..
Tomorrow I will make the first recording, using micro-cams'.
(almost weightless.)
Since I have used these cams in a previous installation, the cables for power and video are really long...which comes in handy...
Image-recordings will happen on a seperate recording-device.

If I'll succeed I'll post some more;)

[oxygen]

As promised I'll write down my experiments with the helium-balloons.

I quess first question is..did I succeed? well yes and no...;)

I used mini-cams, that didn't weight much, so I just needed 2 helium-balloons.
( I couldnt have used much more, as they wouldnt fit in my car).

Afterwards, I noticed the image-quality of my mini-cam wasn't very good. There is a huge difference with the other (3ccd) recordings.(very grainy).
Also the lenses were too wide angle, which I think is distracting to get a ''realistic image''.
Now, it can be charming to have different media-qualities in one clip, but I would think twice using these next time.
The other thing is that probably using more heavy cams, will make the recordings less shaky and create better fluid movements.

Allthough the sun was shining and weather seemed to be good, there was quite a lot of wind. (probably some turbulence from high building).
Filming outside ended up being pretty hard.
The effect of floating in the air, ended up in shaky/distorted movements. However,
if there would have been no wind, its a perfect way of making awesome videoshots in the air...

Now I used a lot of wires and all that. So be sure to take an assistent when you want to do something like this. Since my rec-device was attached on the ground it wasn't really easy to move around..

Besides a funny experience messing around with balloons, it was more or less a good try-out...
Next time, it's gonna be better prepared, with a good camera,
and better weather circumstances..

Another idea that occured is using the helium-balloons during a live show. These wide-angled cams would
fit in perfect for live shots.. (close ups DJ.. etc)

<in the picture you see a shadow of me, and at the top of image you can also see a shadow of the camera>

[sleepytom]

wow your legs have got much longer since i last saw you!

have a look at this site
http://www.hovercam.co.uk/equipment/airship.htm

[oxygen]

cheers for the link tom!

when was the last time I saw you?

[sleepytom]

avit in birmingham i think - although it was a very brief encounter as i seemed to be in charge of running around like a headless chicken answering really hard technical questions like "how can i plug my laptop into this mixer?" ! ;)

[oxygen]

I remember our short catch-up at AVIT Tom, offcourse!
Just trying to figure out how fast my legs have been growing lately..;).
Ahwell, looking forward to a next time we meet then!
(mb. another mad croatian summertour?:crazy:)

[gnomatron]

balloons won't work. you'd need hundreds of helium balloons to lift even a light camera - I once used 10 or so to lift a single lego man. The cost of that many helium balloons would be ridiculous!

edit - now i feel silly! must be very light cameras.