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"Alexa-M Specialist" ice sled rig


Patrick Kaplin

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I have a shoot coming up where the director wants to have a camera sled on ice. I'm wondering if anyone has ideas about how the base of this rig is made?

 

It appears at 3:16 on this edit.

 

I know the top portion is just aluminum bars attached to the top handle of the Alexa, and that a wedge plate is holding the camera. But I have no idea how the wedge plate is attached to the base and what the base is made out of.

 

If anyone has any ideas or suggestions I'd love to hear them.

 

Cheers!

Edited by Patrick Kaplin
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I think the stability will be based on the condition of the ice. it looks like a wedge plate mounted on an aluminium plate.

I think the smoothness will be good for either material if the surface is finished fine enough. also I would round off the leading edge of the plate on the side that sits on the ice.

 

BTW - i do not think this is going to be stable at all for high speeds.

Edited by Sanjay Sami
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I made a rig using oversized hockey pucks at the base -- we found that what mattered the most was that the ice was smooth, so it became a reoccurring question of when did we want to run the Zamboni between takes, because it took some time to re-smooth the rink. But after a couple of takes, the ice just got too rough to slide a rig over so we had to take the time to drive the Zamboni around the rink again.

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Thanks for the suggestions Sanjay and David. Rounding the edge of the aluminum sounds like a good idea. Unfortunately it'll be a docu environment, so controlling ice quality will be pretty difficult. I'll try to grab my shots within the first 15 minutes of the Zamboni passing.

 

Cheers guys.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Awesome suggestions. Being from Hawaii i havent had to do this yet. Id use blades off of used skates and fabricate a base that is height adjustable. Id also experiment with ways to smooth the ice between takes manually. Not sure the rink people would be fond of the idea of hot-ironing their ice between takes but im sure something can be figured out.

 

Skates would be more unidirectional. The unit in the clip is aluminum.

Edited by Jason Fratis
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