This weekend I was hired by a dancer/filmmaker friend of mine to camera operate on his music video (he was both the talent and the director). I was tasked with using his gimbal rig to film him dancing, something I’d never done before. I’d like to use this reflection to comment on the experience and how I feel about using a gimbal over the glidecam setup I am used to.
I found the gimbal took a bit of getting used to, the way it moved felt unnatural, as it would stay perfectly still until I reached a certain point (at which it would make an abrupt adjustment to my shot). We were using it on it’s “Pan Follow” mode, which meant that it would lock all axes of rotation except the pan, and the panning it allowed would be follow my movements smoothly.
The first shot of our shooting day (0:14-0:33) was the most challenging. I later found out this was intentional, as the director thought it’d be a good way for me to learn, I disagree and would’ve rather worked my way up to the most difficult shot. While the shot was only 20 seconds long, it was highly choreographed and involved quite a lot of unexpected vertical movement (although you wouldn’t suspect it when watching the video). It probably took 20 attempts to get it right over, either due to my unfamiliarity with the gimbal technology, or someone walking through the background of our shot in high-vis. Before I was told that “we had the hardest shot out of the way” I was quite stressed, as I definitely felt like I was in over my head and incapable of the job I’d been hired to do. Luckily for me the director was very forgiving and never got upset with me.
The rest of our gimbal shots were either very simple, or totally improvised. I think what I found most challenging about this, was the fact I had no control over the tilt while filming. It really frustrated me that the only way I could give him more or less headroom was by moving the gimbal up and down, this is something I’m not used to, and caused a lot of failed takes. Maybe this is something that can big fixed by using a bigger gimbal and hiring an AC to remotely control the tilt.
When using a glidecam, I find it a lot easier to make minute adjustments to your framing while working. However, I’ve also found the glidecam produces a “less stable” result, likely due to the fact my camera is quite light (causing some problems with inertia). The gimbal footage definitely feels robotic, and I’m not really a fan of that look. It’s definitely a quick and easy solution when it comes to getting stable DSLR/other-small-camera footage, but I would much rather put effort into getting nice steadicam/glidecam footage if I had a budget that would allow that.
Another thing I noticed when watching the final product, is the result of the whip pan transitioning out of our previously discussed gimbal shot. The cut clearly doesn’t work well, when helping out with the VFX editing I was trying to figure out why that was, and it didn’t become obvious until I watched the final cut. The problem is the shot transitions from handheld to a tripod setup, it seems obvious now. This is definitely something that I will keep in mind on future shoots, and is just one of those things you don’t know until you’ve made the mistake.
Overall I’m impressed with how much we could do in one weekend as a two person crew.The director did the edit in only a few days, we shot it on the 15th and 16th of May and the video has already been released.
I really enjoyed collaborating with him, and it sounds like I’ll be helping out on another music video shoot this coming weekend! I felt like my suggestions really added to the video, and it was nice having a working relationship where we could build off of each others ideas. How exciting.
Oh and P.S: the artist is a comedian who is known for this 2009 viral video in which he plays My Heart Will Go On very, very, very poorly on the recorder. Pretty sure I watched this at least once as a kid, so I guess that’s cool.