The Steadicam - Group

Whilst trying to come up with ideas for our music video, me and my partners came up with the idea of a chase scene, as it linked well with the lyrics of the song we had chosen and conformed to the style of other music videos for songs within the house/dance genre of music. We did however now have a problem on our hand. In order to film a chase scene we would need to be running with the actors to convey the sense of urgency within the video. The problem we were facing was that running with a camera resulted in unsteady footage that would end up making our video look amateurish.

This is when we started brainstorming for ideas to help us keep the camera steady when running with it. We came up with the idea of using a steadicam or a glidecam (see right) which is used to reduce the vibrations from running or walking when holding a camera. The problem was that these steadicams are intended for professional filming and  we didn't have the hundreds of pounds needed to buy one. Despite this we decided not to give up on the idea of using one and started looking into the idea of building our own one.

After searching through youtube and many other websites we ended up finding this video that showed you how to make your very own steadicam for almost no money. All that we needed was a tripod and a screwdriver.


After watching this video my partner James bought a cheap tripod from Amazon to convert into our very own steadicam. Me and James then created this video to show us constructing the steadicam.



As you can see in the video, we were not able to fully follow the guide as the tripod didn't allow us to unclip the support legs or fully rotate the leg past 90 degrees. This meant that we were forced to cut the support leg and then remove the tripod leg only to reattach it using duct tape so that it rotated the way we needed it to. Unfortunately the tape wasn't as durable as we would have liked and the day after filming the steadicam fell apart. We couldn't risk putting a camera on it if it was going to fall apart again.

The next day we went into one of the school DT rooms to see if we could think of some ideas of what we could use to secure leg instead of duct tape. There were a few ideas that we came up with but by far the best one was to remove the support bar that was on the tripod and to then drill through the leg itself. We would then drill through the main part of the tripod where we would then attach the leg with a screw.

You can see that the first step we took was to remove the support bar on the tripod with a hacksaw.

This is how it looked afterwards. With the support bar now gone we would be able to rotate the leg as far around as we needed, meaning that we would be able to get the steadicam working as smoothly as possible.

Now that we had removed the grip on the leg and the support bar on the tripod we needed to make sure that it still fitted into the slot where it was to be connected. At first it didn't so we ended up compressing the leg in a vice to make it small enough to fit.

Knowing that the leg would now fit, we started to measure and mark out the points that we were going to drill through. Here you can see the part of the grip on the tripod that we drilled through.

Here you can see the two lined up after they had been drilled. Thankfully they lined up perfectly, meaning that the motion when the leg is rotated would be smooth.

We then proceeded to fit them together using a screw.

Before we could test the device with a camera on it we needed to fix the head of the tripod, which we noticed to be loose the previous day and could easily be pulled off. Not something we want to happen with an expensive camera on it! We ended up using a hot glue gun to connect the head on, and to make sure it was as sturdy as possible, liquid cement. With the leg and the head now securely attached to the tripod we were ready to test it out.

The video below shows a comparison of walking around the DT room before and after we used the steadicam on it. As you can see there is a clear difference between the two clips. The vibrations from the footsteps in the first clip have been completely removed by the steadicam and unsteady hands or running will now barely affect the filming. The steadicam also gives us the ability to film from a variety of different angles such as feet shots, which we would have have previously been able to do.


Here you can see the final pictures of our completed steadicam:



Overall the creation of this steadicam will allow us to get a greater variety of shots for our music video and will allow us to keep up with the actors who are running without affecting the filming. It will allow us to have an almost professional final quality to our video.