They say filmmaking is all about improvising when needed. Situations come up and there’s no rule book to tell you what to do. You have to figure it out.
We wanted a shot that goes from the traffic on the top of the bridge, straight down to the ramshackle dwellings beneath the bridge.
We didn’t have a crane or a jib … or a helicopter, but we did have access to bamboo.
We asked a local under the bridge for a little help. He provided us with a rusty machete, a hammer of sorts, and two rusty nails that we straightened out. We used a long piece of bamboo laying near the canal and hacked off the end to make it flat. We pounded the two rusty nails in about three inches from the base of the pole. Then we put one of our came
ras upside down on the end of the pole and used gaffer’s tape to secure it tightly to the pole, using the nails to wrap the tape around (hard to explain, but it worked. The camera was very secure.)
Then we had a dugout go in the canal beneath the bridge while we took our pole and camera up top. Making sure we watched for traffic, we lowered the camera—upside down—(we’ll fix it in post) near the water and slowly pulled the long pole and camera up topside. After about 10 tries, we felt we had a few good takes.
Watch for that shot in the final documentary. And do me a favor: Appreciate the sweat and improv that went into it!
We wanted a shot that goes from the traffic on the top of the bridge, straight down to the ramshackle dwellings beneath the bridge.
We didn’t have a crane or a jib … or a helicopter, but we did have access to bamboo.
We asked a local under the bridge for a little help. He provided us with a rusty machete, a hammer of sorts, and two rusty nails that we straightened out. We used a long piece of bamboo laying near the canal and hacked off the end to make it flat. We pounded the two rusty nails in about three inches from the base of the pole. Then we put one of our came
ras upside down on the end of the pole and used gaffer’s tape to secure it tightly to the pole, using the nails to wrap the tape around (hard to explain, but it worked. The camera was very secure.)Then we had a dugout go in the canal beneath the bridge while we took our pole and camera up top. Making sure we watched for traffic, we lowered the camera—upside down—(we’ll fix it in post) near the water and slowly pulled the long pole and camera up topside. After about 10 tries, we felt we had a few good takes.
Watch for that shot in the final documentary. And do me a favor: Appreciate the sweat and improv that went into it!
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