Why spend £1,000s on dolly track, overhead suspension rails, stabilisation systems and the rigs to connect them to your video camera, when you can make it all yourself…with varying degrees of success. That’s Morgan Black in today’s IADF podcast.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

The following words come to mind when you listen to today’s podcast:
Apparatus | Appliance | Contraption | Device | Gizmo | Harness | Instrument | Invention | Mechanism | Rig | Thingamabob

Exactly how filmmaker Morgan Black describes the range of ‘rigs’ he’s invented over the years you’ll have to listen to today’s podcast to find out!

We all know the focus in a filmmaking production should be on the story, but part of the fun of filmmaking is trying to get shots like those we see in the movies, right? [Right, ed.]

Well, Morgan, who spends his time between the village of Kemnay, an oil rig in the middle of the North Sea and a fledgling production company Breached Media, is trying to do both.

That means he’s trying to save cash by making his own er…rigs.

He got the idea came from a book called Killer Camera Rigs, by Dan Selakovich (find it here on Amazon UK. Paperback £25, Kindle £21).

Hopefully that’s ‘killer’ in terms of ‘awesome’ and not, ‘a piece of metal slashed an artery and killed me’.

Take a look at the Track Systems section on the Creative Video Production websites to get an idea of how complex and costly many of these set ups can be: http://www.creativevideo.co.uk/index.php?t=category//tripods+||26+support/track+systems

And Morgan mentioned his DIY rigs during the Actors and Directors networking meeting (May) with the suggestion that people should try to make their own, but also that he would consider helping filmmakers by lending out his DIY rigs for their productions.

In today’s podcast
Morgan Black and Breached Media
Breached Media’s film project ‘Gabriel’
Killer Camera Rigs website
There are resources online for DIY rigs – try this one: Softweigh Multimedia DIY Tutorials

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About the author

Editor
My name is Sam Thom. I run the IADF website. I'm a video journalist based in London, UK. Find out more at the About page.

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