A couple of weeks ago I was called for a short film being shot entirely on a Steadicam with a RED One camera. The RED One is a heavy camera, so I was prepared for a bit of tweaking during our prep, but I wasn’t expecting the amount of DIY we’d really have to do.

When I showed up the day before the shoot for a camera prep, the director of photography (DP) and I immediately dove into the rig.

We began discussing the odd baseplate combination the rental house had provided him for the Steadicam as well as how they didn’t provide the correct cabling to use the rig’s monitor (I didn’t pick up the equipment, so I didn’t know until I showed for prep).

After some discussion, the DP seemed a bit resigned to his back-up plan: shooting handheld. But after a bit of coercing from me, we decided we were going to make this rig work anyway we could.

Balancing the Camera and Its Weight

Besides our first two problems, the baseplate and the monitor, the Steadicam wasn’t balancing correctly with the RED and all its accessories on it. So getting the weight distribution right became priority number one. Because — no matter what — if a Steadicam is not balanced correctly, it’s not worth using.

The major reason the camera had trouble balancing on the Steadicam was because the baseplate given to us didn’t allow the full range of back and forth motion on the dovetail. This meant the camera was always positioned too far forward. This caused the DP, who was operating, to constantly pull back against the camera’s weight. Operating the camera like that was far from acceptable, especially with the RED’s heavy weight.

Our solution: strip off everything on the RED we don’t need.

The only reason we had a weird baseplate on the bottom anyway was to accommodate bottom rods for a follow focus. That was the first to go.

Now the camera could rock back and forth, side to side, as it should on the mount.

Next I took off the batteries from the RED which add a substantial amount of weight. We had had two Anton Bauer batteries to juice the monitor, but since that wasn’t working, we used a proprietary cable the guy at the rental house made to run the power from those batteries to the RED.

All those efforts had solved the weight issue.

More Problems for Frankenstein Steadicam

But as a result, a few more issues cropped up: where to place the follow focus and how to make two Anton Bauer batteries last an entire 12 hour day — which was especially annoying with six RED bricks waiting on standby.

Then we got even more creative.

I found a way to mount the follow focus on the top rods. Without the battery mount on the back of the camera, we were able to slide the longer top rods back further so they didn’t jut out too much in front, nor in back. Pulling focus like this was a bit weird at first, but like any job — where something is always slightly different — you get used to it fast.

I’m even more proud of the fact that we completely dismantled the RED battery mount and found a way to gaff tape it to the bottom of the Steadicam rig. Then we used the proprietary cable (D-tap) to juice the RED with its own batteries. This had a two fold effect: it gave us more power and it gave a greater counter weight to the RED’s heavy body.

Finally we had Frakenstein’ed together a workable Steadicam rig.

The DP and I simply shared a monitor, though his use of it was obviously a bigger priority than mine. In the end, we shot two full days on that rig without any major problems.

Check out these pics of our beautiful “Frankenstein” rig:

About the author:

About the author: Evan Luzi is the editor and founder of The Black and Blue as well as a freelance camera assistant.

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