The Studio Set-up

One of the great things about the project I've been working on is that it's prompted action to get a little home studio set-up. I've been putting this off for far too long. The stage-box was made by yours truly with the help of le fathare; the table it sits on was a nice find from my old grade school. The mint rolling cart was a yard-sale acquisition; the castors were cast-offs from my dad's old favourite deskchair. Bought a Canon Rebel T2i (mmm Boxing Day) and the next step was finding a good way to mount the camera in such a way as to allow shot panning.

 I started off using materials that were more or less on hand. Looked up tutorials on do-it-yourself camera rigs and decided to try out the train track method - this had worked well for the train film I helped Kaj Pindal with, so I rallied up my keyboard stand, a plank of old shelving wood from home, Brio train track castoffs from my sister, zip ties, and tape measure. (A special shout-out of thanks to Fraser Goulding who lent time and tool access for cutting down stage and track board).

a most useful bobby-pin

 Which was all well and good until I realized I'd been subconsciously planning all of this around only three of the film's shots - the camera had to be at differing heights (and in one or two cases, different angles) for the rest of the film. Train Track Method wasn't going to cut it. So I picked up the phone...