When I got the call for this, I pretty much said I would do the job for free. Growing up loving roller coasters this was a dream job for me. The hardest thing about this rig was that we had an extremely limited time to do it, as the production paid per hour for the coaster. Big props to Kelly Herrin for helping me nail the design during crunch time.

This is from a Chevy spec spot where the a Camaro is the "bull" fighting with a traditional matador. This rig was for a shot from the car's point of view with the front of the hood in frame. The actual rig is a very traditional hood mount raised up high enough that the camera could be mounted by it's top rail to get the lens as close to the hood as possible.

From the same Chevy spec spot, this rig was used to get the wheel as it kicked up dirt doing donuts in the bull fighting ring. This shot never made the final cut as it was done well past sundown, and it's a good thing too. I was very rushed to get the rig on and get the shot and I didn't have the time I wanted to test it out. Looking at slow mo footage from a GoPro mounted to the rig, I could see it bouncing all over the place. It was pretty solid, but need a little more bracing and strapping. Live and learn.

This was for a Funny or Die spoof of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" trailer. Pretty straight forward rig. All 5/8" thread together rail from Modern.

This rig was for a pilot, pretty straight forward suction cup and 5/8" setup.

This was a spur of the moment rig, but made very easy by a nice sturdy roof rack. Biggest problems with this rig was using the dish leveling head sandwhiched between two pieces of speedrail, the lock down lever kept hitting either the speedrail or the cheeseboro holding the cheeseplate. Shot looked great though, hopefully it will make the final cut.

This is just about the most basic hood mount you can do. It's included here just for completeness.

This one wasn't as big of a success. While the rear rig worked wonders and didn't bounce very much/if at all, the front rig was very bouncy. I put part of that down to the fact that the front of a motorcycle absorbes most of the bumps on the road, but also my pick points weren't the best. This rig was a spur of the moment idea, so I did what I could with what I had. I detached the power for the headlight so it wouldn't heat up and interfere with the suction. All in all it was definitely a learning experience.

It's hard to get a better surface to mount to than a big broad flat side of a service van. This rig was partially my equipment and partially Gustavo Petersen's.

This mount was actually completely unexpected. It was a very low budget job that I had no clue was doing a hood mount. They had the big suction cup and were going to go with that, but I threw on two extra suctions to bite the top of the camera and take some of the play out of it. It's the little things that make things work right.

It's a prety basic hood mount... I know, but it's such a pretty car!

This looks like a normal hostess tray style mount, but after getting this shot while driving, we pulled the suction cup on the windshield and the 5/8" attached to it.... and opened the door. The doors on this hot car open in the scissor style(hinging upwards from the front end). The shot was shooting the artist(music video) in the driver's seat, then camera swings up with the door, and back down and there is a beautiful lady sitting in the passenger seat.

Just a look at the inside of the car. Those are speedrail starters bolted to the drain holes in the bottom of the car.

Once again in a situation with less gear than I needed, I had to put up a 8x8 goal post without any gobo heads... no problem!

Nothing huge here, but a good use of the often touted but little used Recessed Lighting Adapter. Gaffer wanted the light as close to the wall as possible and suggested a menace arm(which seems to be the answer to all rigging problems in a gaffer's mind).

The tape might have been enough, but the tile was covered with some kitchen residue and the 5/8" spreader really helped the tubes stay up there.

This was outside at Hollywood Park Casino. It went up quickly and easily, and was rock solid all day.

Actually not the first time I've seen platypus' used to support someone's arms, that was way back on Growing Out. Either way, once it became clear that our model would be standing with her arms behind her head for longer than a few minutes, we rushed into action to relieve some of the stress.

I have to say that I can't take credit for this, I may have come up with it... but I don't remember.

This was used on a feature called, Growing Out, and this was the arm that was... "Growing Out" of the ground. The problem was, to keep the arm looking moist and healthy, it was kept coated with glycerin, which would have been fine if it weren't for the sand surrounding the arm. Sand sticks to glycerin, wiping it off irritates skin, so you have a guy underneath the stage with his arm sticking up through a hole in the stage for up to 6 hours at a time and nowhere to rest it. A beaver board, a little duvytene and voila!

On a tech scout for a Chevy spec commercial in a bull fighting ring, I came to the challenge of blacking out the entrance to the ring. Building a speedrail frame to hang the rags from was easy enough, but getting a low profile way to secure the frame to the tops of the 3" square stock steel that came up every 4 feet wasn't quite as easy. But once I saw that the steel was a standard fence post sized stock, a quick trip to Industrial Metal Supply netted me 4 caps that are normally welded to the tops of said posts. A few minutes with a drill press and a few more bolting the caps to half cheeseboros and I was all set.

After seeing the chaps using an applebox as a stand in for our canine actor, I decided to make a few improvements on a plain old applebox. Jake Cross put the finishing touches on Rusty when he placed an open walkie under him and had me bark over the walkie, scaring the crap out of the people standing close by.

This isn't really a camera rig per se, it's a rig designed to keep a flat surface level with camera while camera dutched a full 90 degrees. The effect was 3 clear bottles of paint, sitting on a white surface against a white backdrop, then the camera would start tilting making the paint start to pour out of the bottles, but appear like they had never moved because the background stayed the same. YouTube You also might notice the camera is rigged sideways on the head to do the dutching as we didn't have a dutch head.

This was for the Ke$ha music video for the song Blow. Art department had the trophy mounting board, but didn't have a way to get his head in it, or to surround it with greenscreen. A little 5/8" and some flat 5/8" flanges and we were in business. See it in action here http://youtu.be/CFWX0hWCbng?t=3m57s

Same rig, just from behind so you can see how it works.