Ah yes, the dreaded pendulum effect. A little esoteric to go into in detail here. Although one thing to check out right away is how long your drop time is (from horizontal to vertical)--the shorter the duration of the drop, the more the rig will want to tilt down when you push off the mark.

A quick rest position is to pull the rig in to your body as close as possible and lean back on your heels a bit, takes the weight off "those muscles" somewhat. Another is to tilt the rig back and rest the center post on your shoulder, but this is usually not possible with a single section arm (the rig won't reach).

Hey John,

Glad you're getting to use the glidecam, I've used mine a few times and share you're feeling on it I love it :-) I take it your shoot was for LadyX, I'm looking forward to seeing this, I was going to sign up for one, but couldn't definately commit the time to making sure I'd hit the deadline, maybe next time :-)

Charles, I'm a big scrubs fan and everytime I watch it annoys me that you don't get a mention on the end credits, Why is that? I would think that Steadicam/Camera operator was worthy of inclusion in the end credits. Does that not annoy you? Like I said it annoys me and it's not even me thats doing it :-)

John.

Hey John and Charles,

I've finally got something posted for you guys to see. It's the "Episode 01" link at LadyXFilms.com.

The two shots that were the trickiest for me included the one at the beginning where I spin around the guy in the red shirt (which I didn't do very well...I know, I know) and then the shot a bit later with the same guy where he suddenly stops, whips around, and comes back at me.

Pretty much all the beginning and ending shots were done with the Glidecam. The shots in the office were all mounted.

Like I said, this was quite a learning experience for me...learning that I need:

1. Much more practice with the rig (the exercise I read about where you put a cross on your monitor, then a cross on a wall, and move toward it keeping the crosses aligned sounds good.
2. To work out my shoulder and back muscles more (that six-hour day crippled me for the next couple of days)
3. To soak up all the info I can from you guys. ;)

If you get a chance to watch it, I'd appreciate you coming back here and tearing apart my Glidecam work. The better to learn by.

John L:

Congrats on finishing your segment! Looking forward to seeing it. I'm away from home and sorely missing that DSL line--the hotel is presenting me with a whopping 28K connection, so I'll download tonight.

John S.: the end credits of "Scrubs" are a minor annoyance. There is a "rotating card" that changes each week (I think it's the second to last) that has credits from a given department, so after fifteen episodes or so everyone's had a credit. Personally, it doesn't bother me that much because they go by so quickly anyway, and as far as I'm concerned the people who are watching credits are looking for someone they already know is on the show...! A little bit more of a bummer is on features, when the font used for credits is too small or weird to read properly on the video version. I think this was the case on "Crazy/Beautiful", where they had some teeny handwriting-like font that just isn't legible, even on DVD. I'm a little more protective of the feature credits....

Just got Glidecam V-8, I'm impressed :)
 

Hey guys has this post moved or been renamed. I am a new V8 owner and want to share in the knowledge and brotherhood...

LadyX Episode 1 was great!!!