Day 4: A $3500 Camera Suction Cupped to a Trans Am!

Today's film story is about the car chase scene from Sundog, my 3rd feature film. Sundog premiered in 2016 and is my biggest production to date. I raised $5600 to make the film and with that money I bought a Black Magic Cinema Camera. With everything I needed to rig it, it cost me around $3500. I knew I wanted to do a car chase for the film, but didn't know how I was going to mount $3500 worth of gear to a vintage Trans Am Firebird in almost mint condition without damaging it. Everyone said GoPro, but I said no! I want the entire film to be shot on the Black Magic Cinema Camera. So time to get creative.

Suction cups! I screw a piece of wood to 2 suction cups and put a screw through the piece of wood to attach to a tripod head and boom! A tie down strap from wheel well to wheel well held the suction cups in place. We got pretty fast with this mount and never had any issues at all. I ran a long SDI cable from the camera into the passenger side window and into the back seat of the Trans Am where I was laying so I could watch the camera. This was just the first mount I built.

The next mount we built was a side mount. It was a fairly simple build. Pretty much two pieces of wood held together by a clamp. The top piece of wood rapped around into the door of the car and bottom piece of wood on the outside of the car held the 2 pieces together while supporting the camera. The camera could also be controlled by pulling the chord attached to the camera while driving. The only downside was the rig stuck out a good 3 or 4 feet off of the car so we had to be careful on the streets.

The final mount was a custom mount built specifically for the camera car (my Chevy Prizm) This mount allowed the camera to be inches off of the ground getting some awesome shots. We got up to speeds over 70 MPH with this rig and I am extremely proud of the craftsmanship that went into this piece of equipment. Alex and I spent a lot of time figuring this thing out and getting it perfect so I could trust my camera on it.

I have always been able to be creative when I couldn't afford something. This is what I love about low budget film making. You have little to no money, but you want to pull of ambitious stuff, so you have to be creative. I built these 3 car mounts with scrap wood and some tie down straps for a trailer. In the end they ended up holding a $3500 camera and getting some amazing shots.

What I learned: Money will never hold me back. If I can't afford it, I will make it or figure out an alternative way that will work just as well.

Shots below from the camera mounts we built.