Credit: George Willis csc, sasc
…Cams: Part 2
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tick a camera on pretty well anything and you have some sort of “cam.” It can be as simple as attaching a rope to the top handle of a camera for a “Ropecam,” “Swingcam” or a “Danglecam.” You pick the name. At the other end of the spectrum are custom rigs with price tags into five
20 • Canadian Cinematographer - January 2015
figures. No matter the cost or sophistication, rigs exist to provide those extra special shots we crave as cinematographers. What follows are three cams that I designed and built for those one-of-akind shots. I might add that these rigs were built before digitization and the ultimate cam, the GoPro, was invented.
By GEORGE WILLIS csc, sasc
I love wood, PVC (polyvinyl chloride) and aluminum! They’re my favourite materials for building rigs. Being easy to use and machine, plus the option of immediate modifications, made them my construction choice for the “Woodcam.” With the camera almost always a couple of inches off the ground, the shot was to take off at a trot across a street, mount a sidewalk, jump a 2-foot hedge, cut across a lawn with the sprinkler going, as a ball gets kicked from under the lens, down a small rockery, over a child’s wagon, through a garage, out a back door, climb four steps into a house, with a sharp 90-degree right turn into a kitchen, across a floor and up to the refrigerator freezer door at 5 feet. All in one take please! My first thought was to call one of those super-fit Steadicam guys who can make the camera “float like a butterfly.” But I had confined spaces and tricky turns to deal with, and this was definitely not Rocky with Garrett Brown running up the front steps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art with loads of room to maneuver. Nix the Steadicam. I then figured that with the shoot a week away, I could learn to run and breathe over a long sustained period of time while holding about 30lbs in my right hand or I could pass the job onto an up-and-coming marathonrunning camera operator built like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Both these ideas of course were more comical than they were ever practical. My solution was a bit of trial and error. I started by cutting two pieces of ¾” medium density fiber board and connected them with four threaded rods. I now had a basic “cage” in which to mount the camera, a bare bones ARRI III with a 200-foot magazine. Someone suggested that I use a 400-foot mag to get more takes per roll, and he wasn’t
