For those of you who don’t already know, I shoot at least half of my content solo. That means getting myself in and out of the bondage, but also setting up multiple cameras to capture multiple, simultaneous camera angles. I shoot with 2-4 cameras. More often than not, at least one camera doesn’t get what I wanted. I generally prefocus the cameras, and of course I have to frame the shot using mostly my imagination because I can’t be tied up in the shot until all of the cameras are setup and rolling.
This weekend, I revisited an old idea to retrofit a linear actuator on my jib and figure out how to preprogram it to move the camera to get body pans and closeups at various levels. In the past, I’d gotten stuck on how to programmatically determine the position of the jib arm. I could find no way to affix a potentiometer that would measure the angle of the arm, and timing the up/down motion seemed too imprecise. I finally thought of a reliable way to determine the vertical position of the camera, so I set about attaching the actuator and wiring the actuator controls to an Arduino. I hooked up an old joystick that I could use to move the actuator arm and program the desired stops into the Arduino memory.
I needed to have designated stops because the actuator makes too much noise to just let it pan up and down. I programmed the system to move from stop to stop and pause for 40 seconds to get some video without motor noise from the actuator. For the most part, the experiment was a success, but I really need to start from scratch, building a jib arm that is designed for multi-axis computer control. I could go on for paragraphs about the features I’d like to build into my automated camera operator, but let’s have a look at an edited video from today’s test shot.
I prefocused the camera for this video test and I didn’t quite get it right. If I had used the camera’s autofocus, it may have decided to focus on the background half way through and I would have had an unusable clip. Although this was a quick test, it was still a lot of work, setting up equipment, chaining myself to a post, and trying not to gag on the really strict gag while struggling and waiting for the camera to run through it’s cycles. I didn’t do a great job editing it, but I think it came out alright, considering that I was using only one camera and there was no camera operator. If I had done this for a real clip, there would be at least one other camera to get a wider shot, and possibly a nice side shot. I hope you enjoy the free video.
I think my next challenge will be to fix the noise problem. I really like the shots where the camera is slowly panning over the body.