Shoulder rigging a light weight camera for a petite woman DP

[Vital Butinar]

Hi Guys!

So in a couple of months I'm getting ready to potentially shoot my first feature film called Pure Vortex.

Unfortunately we were unable to get any financing (that old catch 22) so we're trying to shoot the thing without a budget and sheer willpower. Hope we're successful.

But that's not what I need help with, the DP is my wife a very petite woman (about 110 lbs) and she also operates her own camera and most of the time she prefers doing handheld shots.
Until now we've always used a cheap plastic shoulder rig (one of those that go over the shoulder and rest on the rib cage) since our small DSLR days and then migrated to the Blackmagic Pocket 4K. When needed we've always used kind of small form cameras like the Pocket 4K, 6K, Komodo, Alexa Mini, etc. (except for the 4K or 6K, they were always on sticks, dollies or other stuff)
She also prefers to pull her own focus. 

Last week we tried a new shoulder rig while shooting a music video and she almost died because the camera was too front heavy now with matte boxes, follow focus, monitors, batteries, transmitters, etc. 

She said that she prefers the older shoulder rig since she can transition from shoulder to fully handheld very quickly. We also tries an easyrig multiple times and she's also not ok with it, since she says it restricts her movement too much and that she's not able to follow the action freely enough. 

The problem is there's no way to mount the new setup on the old shoulder rig without making it really front heavy. I tried mounting a bunch of stuff on the back, extending the rods and mounting the transmitter, battery and even a counter weight. But it just made the whole thing really heavy and unstable. 

Unfortunately we're locked into using the Pocket 4K since this is the only camera that we have access to that we own. 

Anyone have any ideas on how to mount this camera on her shoulder and not make it too front heavy, while at the same time not making it too heavy anyway?

Previously the accessories on the Pocket 4K had been really light weight and more or less useless.
Also the addition of better lenses and monitors, bigger batteries just made it heavier. 

She's been trying to work out and get her strength up but the music video shoot had shown us that it wouldn't help anyway. 

Thanks for the help and best wishes to everyone.

 

Edited May 8 by Vital Butinar
Forgot something.

[Albion Hockney]

you need an external monitor and to set the camera back on the shoulder. there are lots of systems with a base plate to do this. in short the camera body itself should be on the shoulder.

the other solution is easy rig

Edited May 8 by Albion Hockney

[Brian Drysdale]

You need a rig that allows you to have the camera on the shoulder, with a viewfinder at the front and a battery at the back, so that you can balance the weight of the lens.

There are companies that make such a rig, e.g. Wooden camera. There are also external viewfinders available from various manufacturers.

 

[Vital Butinar]

2 minutes ago, Albion Hockney said:

you need an external monitor and to set the camera back on the shoulder. there are lots of systems with a base plate to do this. in short the camera body itself should be on the shoulder.

the other solution is easy rig

Thanks Albion.

Well we tried the easyrig and she said it restricted her too much and she couldn't move the way that she wanted to. 
We did use it a couple of times and the shots were ok but she kept contorting into really weird positions to maneuver the camera into position.

We're planning on shooting most of the film handheld due to time restrains. 

Ok, so I'll try to mount the camera as far back as possible onto the shoulder, like the ENG style Sony cameras and then extend the monitor in front of her. 

The only concern is the follow focus wheel being really back. Maybe we'll have to mount an electronic follow focus or use a focus puller. But I'd like to avoid that since she's very well versed in pulling her own focus and I'm afraid that having a focus puller might slow us down. Also we don't have a dedicated focus puller in the team so someone would have to do it and the learning curve might slow us down. 

Thanks, I'll try rigging something up tomorrow and see how it goes.
Can't believe I didn't think of mounting the camera that way.

[Vital Butinar]

4 minutes ago, Brian Drysdale said:

You need a rig that allows you to have the camera on the shoulder, with a viewfinder at the front and a battery at the back, so that you can balance the weight of the lens.

There are companies that make such a rig, e.g. Wooden camera. There are also external viewfinders available from various manufacturers.

 

Thanks Brian. 
 

I'll definitely check out the wooden camera stuff and try mounting the camera as far back on the should as possible. 

Unfortunately I don't think it will be possible to buy much new gear,  but we might get lucky with the local rental company. They've been really kind to us before and maybe they'll be willing to work with us on this project. Otherwise we're forced to make due with what we've got. 

Thanks again. 

[Albion Hockney]

yea the problem with cameras that small is the lens won't sit far enough out.... I would run the package on an external brick battery which would help with power needs for the external monitor and even out the weight.

just look around online—lots of references for this

 

here's an exmaple

 

[Vital Butinar]

Yeah. That's exactly what I did. I tried to put the battery on the back on a plate. But I used a NPF battery because it integrates better with all the other equipment. The original batteries are really bad as far as how long they last. But also usable in some cases, we did use them for years. 

I'll also try to connect the monitor with a cable to the battery plate, that should work and try to put the camera as far back as I can.

I'd really like her to enable her to be able to do the same shots that she's always tried to do, because I love the way they look. At the same time I've also grown accustom to having a monitor in my hand to see what's happening in the shot, so there's a bunch of stuff that's been added on the camera.

You're right that these small cameras are really short and it will rest really far back. I hope she'll be able to focus.

A couple of years ago I spent a weekend using one of those Sony ENG shoulder cameras and to my amazement it was really ergonomic. 

Thanks.

[Brian Drysdale]

People operated the Sony ENG cameras for hours.

You can still buy 2/3" cameras, but they've gone out of fashion, except for shooting news and multi camera broadcast work on sport, live events and video studio productions. 

[Vital Butinar]

9 hours ago, Brian Drysdale said:

People operated the Sony ENG cameras for hours.

You can still buy 2/3" cameras, but they've gone out of fashion, except for shooting news and multi camera broadcast work on sport, live events and video studio productions. 

Yeah, I've never used the ENG cameras before and the image was terrible compared to anything now days even used for music videos. But I did love the ergonomics, I loved the battery life and how quickly it switched on. Also the damn thing is a tank, I could put it down anywhere, light rain didn't bother it and it looked pretty much bullet proof. Yes modern small factor cinema cameras are great for rigging, but the user friendliness is much much lower with them than with the old ENG ones. 

I'll try rigging the Pocket 4K pretty much exactly on the shoulder. Hope that Leya will be able to focus, we discussed maybe changing the follow focus to her right hand. We'll see how things go.

Like I've said, I love her shots when she has the ability to do them her way and thus it takes half of the burden off of me, because I don't have to warry about explaining to the DP what I want and she knows what kind of shots I want and what we need. That's the benefit of both of us usually also doing the edits and grades, that we know what we need. As a result we can work really efficiently, but whenever we've tried something new and different we ended up just doing what we usually did and it worked.

But I also do like seeing what's going on in front of the camera with my monitor, before we had the wireless system I used to hover behind her back and watch the camera monitor, try not to talk too laud and stand too close while directing the actors. This is much easier now. But that's life on the lower budget place of filmmaking.   

[Joerg Polzfusz]

Can’t you simply add a tripod or monopod as a support?

(Does the camera really have to be constantly moving at all? If yes in combination with a low budget: what about placing the camerawoman into a wheelchair, attaching the camera to the wheelchair and then having someone pushing her? Of course, that’s a completely no-budget plus no-clue approach from a Super8-filmer. 😜)

[Vital Butinar]

On 5/9/2025 at 5:57 PM, Joerg Polzfusz said:

Can’t you simply add a tripod or monopod as a support?

(Does the camera really have to be constantly moving at all? If yes in combination with a low budget: what about placing the camerawoman into a wheelchair, attaching the camera to the wheelchair and then having someone pushing her? Of course, that’s a completely no-budget plus no-clue approach from a Super8-filmer. 😜)

Well of course in some scenes the camera will be stationary simply because we need that later on for compositing. 

But the reason why it's handheld is simply because we are trying to make her as agile as possible to make her as fast as possible in finding the shots. The reason is since we have no budget to speak off, all of the locations we got by begging for them and there's no way they will let us use an actual airport for more than a day for free or an airplane, in fact any of the other more high production value locations. So we need to be able to shoot really fast, which means that she needs to find the shot quickly and get on with it. That's why the camera is handheld most of the time.

The good news is that I tried to mount the camera right onto her shoulder which worked great as far as weight goes, she's still only about a 100 lbs so the whole thing is still heavy but as long as we pad the shoulder mount and find a wireless or wired follow focus so that she can focus, it should be fine.

But the existing shoulder mount is not able to carry everything, so we'll be trying to find a different way to mount it.

One of the ways might be that I might design a new shoulder rig thing that goes on both sides of the back and then 3D print it. The problem is I currently don't have the time to design something, let alone 3D print it, because I'm neck deep in actor rehearsals, shortlists, schedules and making 1000 decisions a day to be able to take time and design something well.

But in either case thank you guys for suggesting mounting the camera way back. That did the trick, now I just have to figure out all the rest of the stuff.

So again many thanks and best wishes to everyone.