Shooting in first person perspective?

6ix

I'm planning on shooting some footage in first person perspective -- for an idea of the style of filming, think the Smack My Bitch Up video, or the followup ad by Diageo about sensible drinking.

Just wondering what if anyone has any tips how to do this properly??

How do you position the camera so it looks as though your looking through the characters eyes as they move around.

Anyone done this or have any tips on how to make it look good, either in production or post production?

humanji

You can just hold the camera hand-held and move the camera about at eye level. But unless you have really steady hands, it'll be quite shaky.

Another option is to use a steady cam, but considering these can cost a pretty penny even just to rent, it may not be the option for you. Although there are plenty of web sites that show you how to build a steady cam rig for cheap, so that may be a better option.

Hugh_C

jomanji wrote:

You can just hold the camera hand-held and move the camera about at eye level. But unless you have really steady hands, it'll be quite shaky.

Another option is to use a steady cam, but considering these can cost a pretty penny even just to rent, it may not be the option for you. Although there are plenty of web sites that show you how to build a steady cam rig for cheap, so that may be a better option.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/steadycam/

6ix

Cheers. Its for a college project, so hiring a steadycam aint an option.

Poor Man's Steadycam looks good, but then again I'm looking more for a shakier view. Not too shaky, but at the same time, realistic with the movement of the head.

This may sound ridiculous, but attaching a camera to a helmet or something - would that work?

monkeyfudge

6ix wrote:

This may sound ridiculous, but attaching a camera to a helmet or something - would that work?

It probably would look better.

If you are walking with a camera held up to your head, then you are going to be walking in a very careful and unataural way no matter how hard you try not to.

Miguel_Sanchez

Attaching a camera to a helmet will have a few problems - first off you won't be able to see what you're filming unless you have a small LCD video monitor with you. Secondly it will mean the camera man will have to be smaller than the actor otherwise the height of the camera could be considerably different than the height of the actor's eyeline (of course this only applies if you will see an actor - if you do the whole thing in first person it doesn't matter)

I think it could be quite jerky if you've got a camera mounted on a helmet though - you'd need some system of steadying it. And if you get that you might as well just shoot it normally.

Goodshape

6ix wrote:

but then again I'm looking more for a shakier view. Not too shaky, but at the same time, realistic with the movement of the head.

Still though, a steady-cam style job is best I think. Your vision doesn't jitter and shake when you walk nearly as much as a camera does. From experience just filming a walk down the street can be fairly unwatchable most of the time if you don't have something to compensate.

Cheers for the $14 Steadycam link btw; must give that a go.

wingnut

If your are interested in shooting first person you MUST watch the Channel 4 series "Peep Show". Its very good and shot entirely from the character's POV. It switches between characters but always shot first person works well and it well exectued.

monkeyfudge

wingnut wrote:

If your are interested in shooting first person you MUST watch the Channel 4 series "Peep Show". Its very good and shot entirely from the character's POV. It switches between characters but always shot first person works well and it well exectued.

I actually got the season 2 DVD today.

The behind the scenes feature shows how they do the first person shots.

For most of the shots they just use a shoulder mounted camera, but it has two grips coming down at the front, sort of like the handlebars on a bicycle.

Then for shots that involve a character eating or cooking they have helmets with small low quality digital cameras mounted on them, the camera hangs at about nose level in the middle of the actors face. I'll try and do a few screen grabs from the DVD and post them up tomorrow... The style they use is supposed to make the job very easy for a director... but it's hard on the actors as they can't make eye contact with the other actors they're acting with as there is a camera operator in the way.

6ix

Cool, thanks.

We had to create a pilot of our idea first, so its currently being edited. Looks quite good actually, we used a combination of holding in front of the face and shoulder mounted. Got some characters slapping the camera etc to add to realism.

Would still be interested in seeing that though, if we use this concept for our major project.

Must check it out.