Need a better way to engineer this.

[Timothy Harry]

I have taken a job with a small church that has a very loud band. They built a camera platform some time ago for special events liek the one I am filming, and use it on occasion. Long story short, I need to use this platform to get a view over the crowd, but the bass from the instruments shakes the platform badly. When the tripod is placed on the concrete floor, it is fine. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to gain 2.5 feet of tripod height cheap, and by saturday night? I had thought about going to get PVC pipe and use it as an extender, but im not sure it will be sturdy enough. Im on a manfrotto 745B with a 501 head. HVX200 is the camera. Any and all help is appreciated!

[Tim Le]

Wow, you don't have much time. I don't know if any of this will work but here are some ideas:

- Ditch the platform and get an 8 foot ladder. Screw pieces of plywood to the bottom of the ladder and sandbag these down to the concrete floor. Mount your head to another piece of plywood and clamp this to the top of the ladder. You'll have to manually level the plywood. If you have a hi-hat and a bowl adapter for the 501 then mount the hi-hat to the plywood. The ladder may or may not still vibrate from the bass but will get you the height you need.

- Treat the platform somehow to absorb or deflect the energy from the bass sound waves. I'm no sound design expert but maybe this could involve acoustic foam or something like that. Google "bass trap" or "bass attenuation" for more ideas.

- Rent a really tall tripod.

[Patrick Pike]

Here's my quick cheap (and not so good) idea.

Get a pole of suitable height and a 5 gallon bucket. Mix cement, in bucket - insert pole. Clamp camera (or tripod if necessary) to top of pole.

Make sure the pole is safely secured with rope so that nothing will fall on anyone!

[Bill Busby]

Rent a JIB :)

Bill

[Timothy Harry]

Originally Posted by Patrick Pike

Here's my quick cheap (and not so good) idea.

Get a pole of suitable height and a 5 gallon bucket. Mix cement, in bucket - insert pole. Clamp camera (or tripod if necessary) to top of pole.

Make sure the pole is safely secured with rope so that nothing will fall on anyone!

Woonder if this would work along those lines. (I am in west texas, the closest place to rent anything is dallas and I have a full time job....) The tripod will extend the legs at a 90 degree angle.....could I use 5 gallon buckets filled with concretewith a steel poll inside of it. use an elbow and another short piece of pipe to stick the tripod leg into, this would allow me to straddle the platform and still use it as a base to stand on, as well as keep my moniters for the other 2 cameras. Paint the buckets and it might just look OK. My only question would be if something like this could work.

[Harold Schreiber]

Hi Tim,

How's about using sand bags (up to 6 75#er's) to put on the curent platform to dampen the vibes ?? Then use some leg weights (say 20# worth) and put them at the apex of the legs.

This should help, but, you'll really need to test out any method you plan to use prior to the shoot, to see if it will work.

Harold

[Peter Ralph]

what I have done with a bogen is replace the lower legs with some longer pieces of aluminum tubing. Mine took a standard size (3/4"?) so it was very easy to do.

[Steve Leverich]

I would be very cautious adding that much weight to a platform SOMEONE ELSE built :=) but maybe a combination of a couple of sand bags AFTER supporting the platform with something like this

http://www.ellisok.com/ellisok/produ...FQUpYAodaRLDAQ

or if you're handy with a welder you can make one out of 3/4" allthread and pipe, nuts and washers... Steve

[Mark Holland]

Maybe turn the platform over and reinforce (cross-brace?) it with 2x4's? In other words, make it stiffer? Then put it on carpet scraps to dampen vibrations coming thru the floor?

Sorry, not many ideas today on this one.

Good luck!

Be sure to tell us what you did, and how it turned out.

Mark

[Timothy Harry]

will do. I have taken everyones suggestions in mind and will be probably working with a big combination of them.

[Kevin Calumpit]

Yeah i say weigh down the already existing platform

[Timothy Harry]

Like many other people on the forum I have another job than video. during my normal day I work for a company who makes tactical gear for the military. Needless to say we have some pretty cool products, one of them being foam. I just managed to wrangle a piece of foam used in the seats of the space shuttle to absorb vibration and shock from takeoff and landing. Think of memory foam that once weight is put on it, becomes very firm and absorbs 80% of all shockwaves that come at it. I am going to put the tripod legs on top of this foam as well as reinforcing and weighting the base down. this way if there is any shaking.....well it probably wont shake me. I will post a status update next week sometime.

[Dale Guthormsen]

Just got to this forum tonight.


funny you mention foam. Instead of a tripod dolly we made three wheels welded to 3 inches of pipe. placed foam inside and slide the tripod legs into the pipes, surrounded the leg with foam. you can move the tripod rather easily without excess vibrations!! thrick is finding good enough wheels!!
foam also comes in various densities and you just need to select the one that fits what you needs are!!!

[Timothy Harry]

well, all the suggestions here helped a ton. We flipped over the platform on Saturday and discovered the base was made of particle board house sheeting. which although good for putting on the side of your new house does not work for standing on at all. We got creative with 2X6's and braced the fire out of it and it dampened the vibration a ton.

Then we flipped the platform back over and I put a 4X4 sheet of plywood, and layered acoustic ceiling tiles on top of it. 1 more piece of plywood and covered it with carpet. I then put 2 sandbags on either side of the platform to hold my moniters. I tried the camera without the foam to see if the support and weight helped, and it did, but I did not get the desired effect until I put the foam under the tripod legs. If this foam wasn't 300 dollars per square foot I could be rich selling small blocks of it, but for now I think i will just stick to my video.

[Tim Le]

Thanks for the follow up, Tim. It's good when people come back and report on how it went so that we all know what worked and what didn't. I'm glad we were able to help. Isn't this a great forum? =)