Shooting from Moving Boat - Shock-Absorbing Tripod?

[Steve Gibby]

One solution could be to shoot from a trike - a two-seat, powered hang glider. Several years ago, for an ESPN television program shot in Poipu, Kauai I shot an entire air-to-air sequence of a hang glider. I sat in the front seat, the pilot in the back, and we towed the hang glider airborne from a cradle on the runway. The camera I shot handheld with was a mid-sized 3-chip DV camcorder (about 6 lbs). After towing the hang glider aloft, he circled over the south shore of Kauai, while we circled him and shot the air-to-air sequences. After landing I then shot long lens, land based tripod shots with a full-sized camera system, of the hang glider circling. The trike was part of the segment, so I also shot the trike taking off and landing.

The large main pics on my web site home page rotate each time you access the site, or refresh the home page, one of the 18 home page main pics has is of me in the front seat of the trike, hand holding a camera, as we prepare to takeoff on that Kauai shooting.
Link: www.cut4.tv

Here's an explanation of the trike:
http://www.ultraflight.com/issues/april02/theTrike.htm

A hand held shot from the front seat of a trike can be very stable if there's not a lot of turbulence in the air. A minimum-equipped RED One, safety-strapped to your wrist, with a wide angle lens, flying close to the boat you're shooting, may do the trick. Trikes can fly up to 70 mph. The trike would fly about 15' above the water, parallel to the boat, with both going maybe 45 mph. You could speed the boat up in post if you wanted.

There just may be a few guys in eastern Utah, relatively close to Lake Powell (St. George, Moab, etc.) who own/fly two-seat trikes.

One of my recurring business media projects for several years was a contract shooting job profiling a large boat rental firm at various lakes across the western USA. Boat-to-boat shots were a regular part of the productions - as were slim budgets to get them. We got creative, and always got the shots. Some guys solve difficult shots by throwing a lot of money at them, which is fine if you have it, but when budgets are limited you can still get the shots if you really brainstorm out the solutions.

If its real glassy water, hand held boat-to-boat shots that are very smooth are very achievable by and experienced hand held shooter - without a stabilization unit of any kind. Shoot in the morning glass...

Maybe some of this will help....good luck to you Tom...

 

[planet e]

having been on lake powell half a dozen times, here's my suggestions....

1) don't shoot in the main channel, find a side canyon that is big enough to shoot in, the water will smooth out substantially. much glassier there...and shoot early, before the wind and the other boaters chop things up...the lighting is more interesting, anyway. there's a zillion side canyons to shoot from, and it doesn't cost anything, you just have to spend some time scouting the right locations. you're certainly shooting at the right time of year, because there's just not that much traffic in the winter to chop things up.

2) rent one of those big-ass houseboats for a weekend and shoot from it. they have dual engines and can move pretty fast if the water is glassy. those big busses will smooth out a ton of the bumps that this little motorboat will feel. i spent a long weekend tooling around in one of those tanks, and you don't feel much of anything, even in the main channel. surely, one of these beasts in a large side canyon should do the trick.

plus, you can take shots from a bunch of different angles, including fabulous high angles from the upper deck or side-by-side from the lower deck. you will have more options. and there's lots of places, rails, etc., to stabilize with bungees. i shot a triathlon from the back of a pick-up truck last summer, and the footage was rock-solid because we bungeed the tripod to death, which completely eliminated the vibrations at better than 30mph (we were going more like 50, to stay ahead of some of the bikers in the flats), and took a little air out of the tires to smooth things out...i imagine renting one of these titanics will have a similar effect.

3) and do you really have to drive 30 mph, or can you create the illusion of speed? you can usually make a little bit of speed look like a lot, if you're shooting in motion. actually, 2 boats going the same speed side-by-side typically detract from the illusion of speed, rather than add to it. it will actually look faster if you differentiate the speeds of the moving objects, in some cases.