Back in March 2017, I wrote the following after one of my shoots;
Today was an interesting day, myself and a colleague were up early to go to a motocross track to film with one of the sports up and coming riders.
A young girl, named Cristina Palmer, that's only 11 years old!
She is dominating every race she goes to in her age/engine size class and is competing with much older and experienced racers.
She's also a natural on camera and is just the right side of confident for someone her age, which made filming with her a breeze.
We arrived on time and were met by her and her dad, Stephen.
Both were a bit nervous but we soon put them at ease by explaining what it is we wanted to do and how we would go about doing it.
After that we started to get the kit for the day set up, which was;
Sony FS7
Sony a7Sii
SmallHD 502 monitor
DJI Osmo with Z axis
Ronin M Gimble
As well as the usual assortment of lights, lenses and microphones.
We started out with a basic interview setup, asking Cristina how she got into bikes and racing, what her daily routine is like to stay competitive, how she'd like to progress etc.
It went very well, with her giving us some great sound bites and like I said, proving to be very good on camera.
After that first setup we cracked out some of the toys.
The Ronin M and the Osmo.
The Ronin M is a great piece of kit, especially for this type of movement. It's billed as the lightweight gimbal, but unless you have arms like tree trunks I'd definitely recommend having someone nearby with the stand, as holding it for a long period of time can take its toll.
It can take a bit of fiddling about with to get the balance perfect for the camera you're using, there's a lot of micro adjusting involved moving it millimetres at a time, but once the balance is set it's a lot of fun to use.
We were using it with the Sony a7Sii, a nice and compact mirrorless camera that can take some excellent footage. We paired it with the SmallHD 502 monitor, as the screen on the camera doesn't have that much adjustment to it, and having the monitor on the top bar of the gimbal makes things much easier to see what you're doing.
Once it was setup and ready to go, I was strapped to the back of a quad bike driven by Stephen, and we were soon racing around a field chasing after Cristina.
Honestly, the girl only has one speed, fast!
We managed to get some excellent footage over the course of 20 minutes, but my arms were really feeling it by the end.
After lunch we moved on to a different location and broke out the DJI Osmo.
A much much smaller gimbal type system.
This one uses your phone as a monitor, as the camera itself creates a WiFi hotspot which you connect to via an app.
The Osmo on its own is a fantastic piece of equipment, but I can't recommend highly enough that if you get one, make sure you buy the Z axis stabiliser as well.
This is sold separately, but it's essential in order to get the best out of the camera, as it reduces the up and down motion of walking with it.
The same effect can be achieved without it, but it takes a lot of practice, being very soft kneed when walking and a great awareness of your surroundings, as one little bump can affect your footage.
We spent a bit of time in a wooded area with the Osmo, having Cristina display her offroad skils as we ran around with the Osmo, getting a lot of movement in the shot, trying to show rushing past the foreground etc.
All in all, this was a great shoot. We got some excellent footage of Cristina on her bike, a few interviews in different locations and a lot of excellent cutaways with the Sonfy FS7.
We left thinking that this could develop into a bigger project than what we had originally imagined it to be, which is very exciting.
I can't wait to see what we do with this next!
M