Stabilization on a horse?
 

We're shooting a documentary film about four characters playing the sport of buzkashi in Tajikistan. Because the individuals and their interactions are important to the film we would like to get really be shooting up close to the players on the field. But because the fields are huge (pastures, essentially) fixed camera locations are only good if they come by that way, which is only occasionally. We're using HD helmet cams for which the results are interesting but so far mixed, so are wondering whether we can put a prosumer camera on a horse and get better results. Any suggestions for stabilization systems used for shooting in such circumstances? Preview of the film is here: www.oxusap.com

Najeeb

The only thing I've seen that's effective for that kind of work is the systems like they used in Mongol. Which is basically a Humvee, or Nissan Patrol, or Land Cruisuer/Land Rover, with a stabilized arm on it. This same setup was used in the horse battle in the Tom Cruise movie The Last Samurai, and the Tobey Maguire movie, Seabiscuit.

I think the motion of a real horse playing buzkashi (is that the head of a goat game?) would overwhelm just about any camera stabilizing system unless it had a gyro or something.

Best of luck with your movie...

It sounds like Tiffen needs to come up with a new Steadicam vest design. I wonder how long it would take to train the horse to operate it. ;)

Nope...it's the body of a calf game.

Buzkashi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I've done a lot of shooting from horseback. Using a handicam a decent rider can get great footage. The horses movement is fairly fluid (hopefully).

A stabilizer would require the balance of an expert horseman - a professional for sure.

Though calves are sometimes used, typically buzkashi employs a goat (buz=goat; kashi=pull). There's one version in which there are two teams playing four aside, and then there's the Tajik/Afghan version where there's 200-300 horses on the field and every man for himself (usually). From a distance it looks like a lot of horses running back and forth, but with our helmet cam we were amazed to see just how intense it gets in the scrum. Maybe that's why in Central Asia they said to some visiting hockey player: "Hockey? That's for kindergarten".

Thanks for your suggestions. We'll do our best experimenting over the coming games to get it right by the big tournament coming up.

Najeeb,

If you're interested, I'd be VERY interested in looking at some video from the helmet cams to see what I could do with it in post.

Thanks Perone, I'd like to follow up with you on that off-line. I can't send you any clips from Tajikistan as the bandwidth is inadequate for such files, but will get in touch with you again when I'm back in Canada at the end of the month. We'll be returning to Tajikistan in early March for the big tournaments so it would be good to see if something can be figured out by then. Cheers.

Understood. Just send me a private email, and we can go from there.