Shoot Video From A Helicopter

Andrew Burke: Okay, I’m Andy Burke.
Jennifer O'Rourke: And I’m Jennifer O’Rourke. And this is our Tips and Letter segment.
Andrew Burke: Absolutely. And today we had a letter from the forum that we grabbed. Hogwire writes, Hi all, I’m new to the board here. Long time reader, first time poster.
What he’s doing, he’s doing aerial photography, from a helicopter. And he’s asking what kind of stabilization he needs. He’s using Sony FX1, and he also has an accessory, he has a wide angle lens. So, he posted this in the forum and got several responses. And I have to agree with majority of responses, say, okay, you don’t need a super technical gyroscopic head to have a steady shot, but you may want to use a camera stabilizer, steady cam, glide cam, what’s the other one, veZoom…
So, he’s going to be, he says, not too far away from the action.
Jennifer O'Rourke: Okay, so that’s pretty close.
Andrew Burke: Yeah. So he may be able to use a wide angle lens.
Jennifer O'Rourke: Yeah, it looks like he’s going to be shooting kind of low, and that’s probably the best thing to do,
Andrew Burke: Yeah.
Jennifer O'Rourke: To go as wide as you can. You don’t want to shoot tight, when I’ve shot from helicopter, when you zoom in, you really see the movement.
Andrew Burke: Yeah, and the wide angle helps even more. So if you can use it, use it. But one of the recommended pieces was the arm stabilizer, here. There’s a brace that’s made, so, you know, if you up there for two hours, you can’t stabilize this thing forever, you may have to switch hands, and it’s not as good as with that, I don’t know.
Jennifer O'Rourke: Yeah, you can get tired, the whole wrist movement can get really tired, especially if you’re kind of moving, shooting down like that, in the helicopter.
Andrew Burke: Absolutely, balance it for the tilt. I’ve shot from a helicopter a couple of times, and I’ve actually used a camera stabilizer, and it worked really well.
Jennifer O'Rourke: Is that right?
Andrew Burke: Yeah. One time on, this was not a commercial shoot, I was using a counter weighed tripod before I had stabilizer, pro stabilizer during the, I put the ankle weights at the bottom of an extended tripod at the legs compressor.
Jennifer O'Rourke: Oh, that’s a good idea.
Andrew Burke: And I just held it, I had one of the pedals up there, and I held it. and you know, I kind of held it in place like that.
Jennifer O'Rourke: Does it weigh down at all?
Andrew Burke: It works like that. No, it was pretty, ok. But if you get something with the, with the nicer, pin it there.
Jennifer O'Rourke: Yeah, that’s all pretty good. And go wide, go wide.
I once dropped a micro, microphone, out of the helicopter one time by forced area. Yeah.
Andrew Burke: But you’ve got all the nice crackling sounds from the fire.
Jennifer O'Rourke: Oh, we don’t.
Andrew Burke: Right. Right. So, great, guys, thanks for posting in the forums. Good feedback, we liked reading that, and check that out, so, keep it up, and we’ll team in and see what you guys are chatting about.
Jennifer O'Rourke: I have a show and tell tip. Some people have microphones, but aren’t quite as good as some of the microphones we would love to have, love to work with, like that podcast mike we had last week. And if you talk to close to the mike, you have a problem with popping p’s, and popping b’s, and I’m going to show you how to make one of these. Pop filter, and we have in our magazine, October 2001 we actually gave demo on how to make one of these. But very simple. I’m going to give you the yellow.
Andrew Burke: All right.
Jennifer O'Rourke: I’ll take the fuchsia. And you have a piece of pantyhose.
Andrew Burke: Okay.
Jennifer O'Rourke: Let’s do it.
Andrew Burke: I have never made one of these before. So this is the first time, not rehearsed or anything, so…
Jennifer O'Rourke: Once I was doing a, because I wanted to show you a couple of different ways you can be doing these. I got him a smaller one, I’ve got larger ones here.
You take the inner ring, this is, this is an embroidery hoop. And it unscrews, it comes off, normally you fabric over it and tight it up like that so you can do your embroidery. But, we’re going to do a pop filter. So, just put the stocking right over it.
Andrew Burke: Do you recommend embroidered pantyhose for this?
Jennifer O'Rourke: You know, I have seen them. They work really good. Back in the 80s, though, there were little stockings with little flowers and things on, it was kind of cute.
Leave a little bit of open like that, and then you’re going to thread, well, actually, we’re going to cut first.
Andrew Burke: Look at that, wow!
Jennifer O'Rourke: You’re going to cut.
Andrew Burke: You gave me the dull scissors.
Jennifer O'Rourke: I did. We’re going to cut the toe off of one end, and-
(both are laughing)
Andrew Burke: You gave me the dull scissors.
Jennifer O'Rourke: I didn’t give you dull scissors.
Andrew Burke: So, I’m not going to cut mine off.
Jennifer O'Rourke: Okay. And then, I predrilled holes, that’s obviously what the drill was for. I predrilled four holes, in here, and you thread the stocking through this, the little holes here. And you have to use tweezers sometimes to get the… Do you have any problems there, Andrew?
Andrew Burke: No, not at all.
Jennifer O'Rourke: Anyway, I’m not going to waste a lot of time putting these together, but you predrill holes, look at that, you predrill holes, you stick the stockings through the holes.
Andrew Burke: Which I have not done here, I’m doing it the wrong way.
Jennifer O'Rourke: And then you tie it off like that. Now, what, the difference between these three is, what we used down here for a base is the, something for mike stands, you just stick it down the mike stand .
Andrew Burke: So pretty common, I mean, you could go down the local music store and pick one of those right up.
Jennifer O'Rourke: Or, I’ve got a Dell, your ordinary average Dell, and you stick that through yours, and you can hold it like a popsicle stick.
Andrew Burke: See, you also drilled a hole through this, that’s hopefully the right size.
Jennifer O'Rourke: It is the right size, you fit it in and you tie it up. In my case, I got an old mirror.
Andrew Burke: That’s nice, pretty nice. I like it.
Jennifer O'Rourke: Put the mirror a part, and then I just stick the screws in the holes that I made, and here we go, it just stands up there by itself. So, that’s pretty easy deal.
Andrew Burke: I like it.
Jennifer O'Rourke: What you want to know about stockings is. You want to get the fittest one, so you want to get the cheapest stockings you can find, not the good solid ones. And you also don’t want to, the thicker they are the more expensive they are, and the thinner one is going to work a little bit better. You hold the mike, just about, the popsicle, just about an inch or so from your mouth. Like that. And you hold it in front of the mike, kind of little off angle like that. So it’s just going to go right through and you’re really going to hear different sound, you can’t with this mike here, Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers?
Tested it out, it works pretty good.  
Andrew Burke: It’s pretty cool. Obviously you can see Jennifer has a little more experience doing this than I do. But I’m keeping it, because I need one.
Jennifer O'Rourke: Anyone can use one of these. Cost about $4 at the most.
Andrew Burke: It’s cool.
Jennifer O'Rourke: Step by step instructions on how to make one of these, you can go to our October 2001 issue, and our upcoming July issue will teach you how to use one of these.
That’s it for Tips and, Letters.
Andrew Burke: Right. We’ll see you next time. Thanks for watching.