360 around my head help

[HypeHoops]

What is the best way to show the camera going around a body or head ?

[Meade87]

to ummm wrap it around the head lol. You can build a circular dolly which is tough or what I like to do is to use a steady cam and the effect this gives is something in which I favor which at certain parts of the turns the object in focus is closer and further apart which looks nicer in my opinion or if you want to do the "Better Luck Tommorow" effect you might want a dolly because in that one the object stays the same distance from the camera. Try it out various different ways and pick what you like best. -Later

[Epsilon]

Yeah, make some sort of track in a circle that you can have the camera follow when you push it. It doesn't have to be very complex to work well.

[Meade87]

try its on wood floors that are coated works best!

[crb]

If it's an interior, make a circular track that you can connect to the ceiling with a rod like gizmo connected to the track with the camera attached to it. That way you can spin around and you won't see an dolly track in the shot if you aim down. It's almost like a homemade crane shot, but cheaper.

[windog]

wow, that sounds complicated!

[ipon70]

Get yourself a lazy suzan put the actor on that, and spin him/her and just set the camcorder on a tripod. Use a short focus length to blur the background and have someone on the lazy suzan spin it while your actor stands still.
I think that would be the easy to do.

[Ivan Speilberg]

Easier: find a long pole or pvc pipe of about 8 feets in lenght. Find it's center and hang it by there with a rope. Attach the camera (looking down) from one end of the pipe and counterweights in the other end. Hang the pole from the ceiling and place your actor below the hanging point. Now give it a spin and it will give the smooth ride of a dolly, but without having to actually build a circular track. You can also attach lighting fixtures to the pole, this will prevent them fom being seen by the camera and will also save you the work of having to illuminate everything 360 degrees.

[fi11m-m4k3r]

Ivan, wow! Thats pretty smart! Never thought of that before.

[jcdenton]

If it's for a larger scene, like a dialog with multiple people, I'd use a bicycle. Someone has to drive it in a perfect circle around the scene and the cameraman would sit on the carrier. Even floor required of course.