The Steadicam - by Josh

 When me and my partners were thinking about what we wanted to do for our music video we came up with the idea for a chase scene that we had seen in so many other house/electro music videos. However, we encountered a problem with this - we wanted our video to convey the action that a chase scene represented. We would do this by having the camera move with the actors. We found that a camera simply held in the hands would not be suitable for this sort of filming since the result showed how our hands were not steady enough for running and even walking with the camera.

 This is when we came up with the idea of creating a steadicam (image right). This is a kind of camera stabilising mount that would reduce the amount of which the vibration of our feet hitting the ground showed in the video. After doing some research into purchasing a steadicam, we found that they were far too expensive and meant for professional filming. Despite this, we did not decide to give up on the steadicam.

 After some searching on the internet we found a very interesting video which taught us how to build our very own steadicam for a relatively low cost (video below). All we needed was a tripod and a screwdriver.

 We found this video extremely useful; we were now able to create a steadicam. My partner - James - bought a tripod online to convert into a steadicam. He and my other partner - Luke - used the other above video as a guide to create the steadicam

 Unfortunately they were unable to convert the tripod into a steadicam without cutting off the stand support since the leg could not go all the way over like in the tutorial video. This then presented them with a problem: the leg was not fully connected at the top of the tripod and was able to slip off. As a short term solution James sellotaped the leg onto the tripod. This however would not be enough to support the camera. The video below is a video of the whole process.

 The next day we went to a DT room in our school to think of some ideas for what we could do to secure the leg instead of sellotape. Eventually, we came up with the idea to cut off the support for the leg and drill hole through the leg and where we would attach the leg with a screw. We started off by cutting off the support (image right) with a hacksaw.

 This is how the result looked. With the support gone we started to work on the leg so that it would be able to secure in the gap.

 Before we went any further, we decided to check if the leg would fit in the gap. When we discovered that it did not, we compressed the leg so that the head was thinner and could fit in the gap (image right) using a vice.

 We marked out where we wanted to drill through the fixing and drilled through both sides with a pillar drill (image left).

 After having done this, we drilled through the leg so it would be able to attach onto the fixing.

 This is how the two looked in place once they had both been drilled (image left).

 Now both of the pieces had been drilled, we had to secure them in place with a screw (image right).





 Now we had finally secured the leg in place, we had one last thing to do. The head for holding the camera was a bit loose and could actually be pulled off, so we needed to come up with a way to secure it on there. We did consider screwing the head in place but we found that there was not enough space on the head for a screw to fit through. Thus, we decided to attempt to glue the head in place with a hot glue gun. After it had setted, we found that the head was safely secured in place. It was now time to test our steadicam.

 We did 2 videos to compare the difference between filming without the steadicam and filming with the steadicam. The video below contains both of the videos as well as comparison.

 You will notice that the camera shakes a lot due to the vibration of the cameraman's feet hitting the floor and the camera shakes around a lot due to unsteady hands without the steadicam. It is clear from this video that the camera is a lot steadier compared to the without the steadicam. The vibration of the feet hitting the floor is absorbed by the steadicam and unsteady hands barely affect the filming. We could also film things much easier as you can see in the video; we would not be able to film the feet at such a low angle if we were holding the camera with our hands, the steadicam therefore allowed a wider range of camera shots.

 The following pictures are our end result steadicam.