Video Transcript
Camera Rigs for Virtual Production
Greg Corson · 3,282 views 6 Feb 2023 #unrealengine #camera #virtualproduction · Duration 6:58 · youtu.be/ToOYaXbmjQs
In short, use a cage and monitor mount to mount your tracker, way more stable and less likely to get knocked out of alignment while shooting! Lots of options for this, I get got my rig parts from https://smallrig.com/ but there are a lot of other companies too, google camera rig or camera cage to find them. 00:00 Intro, how to rig your camera 00:13 My rig 00:44 Basic Shoe Mount, nope! 01:10 Ball Heads, still not great 01:48 Magic arms, way too flexible 02:23 Monitor mount, GREAT solution! 03:32 Tour of the rig I use 05:00 Alternative to full cage, just a top handle 05:15 Full cages recommended for future expansion of your rig 06:40 In closing Lens Calibration, Project Setup and other tips •
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there's a lot of different ways to rig your camera for virtual production I'm Greg Corsten and today I'm going to show you a few ways I've found that make it a little easier more accurate and can't even avoid damage to your camera this is my standard camera setup you can see it's a Sony a7r it also has a metal camera cage a metal top handle a metal monitor mount and on top of that is my Bliss tracker now this works equally well for Vive trackers and pretty much any other type of camera tracker you need to mount unreal's nodal Point calibrator does make it easier to put the track here anywhere you like but if you mount it correctly you can save yourself reshoots and accidental errors the first thing a lot of people think of
using is a simple shoe Mount that attaches to the shoe on the top of your camera These are nice they're very rigid the problem is that no matter how much you tighten them they're well made enough that they can still turn which is bad if you accidentally bump the tracker or if you bump a cable that's connected to it so not such a good approach the other thing a lot of people use is a ball head this also fits on the shoe of your camera but again no matter how much you tighten it the threads are so smooth that the tracker can still rotate that's not good the other problem is that when you release it even though you can put the tracker in whatever position you want
it's really hard when you tighten it back up again to get it to be exactly straight or exactly in the position you want you really can't make small adjustments to it because every time you unlock it it unlocks at least three axes all at once a lot of people also try using one of these it's called a friction arm or a magic arm depending on who you ask the nice thing about it is it's got actually three different joints a ball joint on each end and a hinge in the center and they all unlock by turning that big red knob and that's the problem with this they all unlock at the same time so it makes it very difficult once you've unlocked it to ever get it exactly in the position that you want
it also has the same problem as the first two options that the tracker can easily rotate on the very well made screw on the end this is my new favorite device for mounting trackers it's usually called a monitor mount it's used to mount an auxiliary monitor to the hot shoe on top of your camera the nice thing about this is that it has a separate pan and tilt axis on it and they're controlled by some set screws so that you can make the mount very rigid and hard to move also it has a rubber pad and a screw and once it's screwed down tightly there's no way for the tracker to rotate on the end of the screw as you can see so accidentally bumping the tracker or
one of its cables won't knock everything out of alignment also you can adjust this in the X and the y or pan and tilt independently and the two axises are very tight so they're not going to move by accident all this makes it very easy to fine tune the position of your tracker to whatever you want and it avoids annoying things like having your tracker or cable get bumped and needing to do a complete recalibration to make it work again here's a good look at my current camera setup you can see on the top I have my retracter Bliss and it has a cable coming out of it to take the tracking data back to my computer there's also a cable for video and
another cable to keep the camera charged so I don't have to worry about batteries let's take a look at the side view you can see my camera is in a metal cage which has a lot of screw holes that are really handy for mounting accessories like lights microphones and trackers without overloading the one hot shoe you have on your camera I've got a metal top handle attached to the top of the cage which is Handy for carrying the camera and mounting accessories like the tracker that's on here here on the side of the cage I've got a cable clamp that holds all my cables and acts as a strain relief so they won't get yanked on and pull off the camera as I turn this you can see the nice thing about that handle is that it mounts my tracker directly above the center line of the lens which helps a lot and here
you can see the main reason I use that cable clamp almost all cameras of this kind use a micro HDMI plug these things are very fragile pull out easily and can even be damaged so that strain relief clamp prevents that from happening overall using a cage like this and these parts gives you a nice solid mount for your tracker that's not going to move by accident everything is very easy to adjust it stays put and it can be assembled and disassembled easily if you don't want to go the full cage route you can get a top handle like this one that connects to the shoe on top of your camera it's not quite as rugged as a full cage but it'll get the job done I still recommend people get a cage though it's
such a great platform for accessories like handles for handheld shooting batteries to extend the run time of your camera if you're shooting handheld microphones monitors wireless mic receivers and all sorts of other stuff you can get something very elaborate without having to worry about collapsing your camera under the weight of it all you can start out with a basic cage kit for under a hundred dollars and then add this other stuff on as you need it so you don't have to make a big investment all at once but if you want you can end up with a real Beast of a camera system that you can shoot from your shoulder this is a lot like my advice to get a good tripod for your camera don't go out and spend a lot of money on an expensive camera and lens and then trust it all to
a 20 cheap tripod it's just not a good idea all the parts I've shown you are from a company called small Reagan China they make very good stuff I have no complaints you can order directly from their website in China and it takes a little bit longer but the parts are cheaper that way or you can buy them from Amazon if you're in a hurry there are plenty of other companies that make cages and accessories just like this just look up camera cage or camera rig on Google and you'll find them I just happen to use small rig because it was the one I started using and I liked it I hope you found this information useful please like comment and subscribe if you did it really helps the channel out and I'll try to answer your questions in the
comments as quickly as I can in the meantime I hope you're having fun learning virtual production that's all for now I'll see you next time
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