Mounting a video camera to the front of a car produces an awesome traveling shot that helps raise the quality of your video production. It’s amazingly simple to do with a few handy tools. I’ll explain in this post.
Viewers are always impressed with shots that give them an unusual perspective or angle. Life as viewed from the hood of a car is unusual enough to peek viewer interest and help your video stand out from the enormous crowd. A shot driving down the street can serve a multitude of storytelling purposes.
Surprisingly easy and inexpensive, mounting a video camera to a car can be done with a suction cup mount and a few other simple tools.
Logic dictates that you use the smallest camera possible, so cellphone cams work great. That’s an iPhone 4 in the picture with a wide angle lens attached. Many other small video cameras would work too.
Attaching a wide angles lens not only broadens the perspective of your shot, it also helps the shot appear steady and in focus at all times. Wide angle lenses, by their very nature, have virtually infinite focus and are the simplest way to make camera shake virtually disappear.
The video below is an example of using the shot you get from mounting a camera onto the hood of a car.
The video is part of a highly successful series of videos produced by a guy named Stephen Garner for the Real Estate Marketing niche, which, if you have not noticed, is HUGE!
Cell phones are some of the most common video cameras around these days, which makes me laugh. I joke that these are awesome video cameras that also happen to make phone calls! Cellphone video making is enormously popular. If you get the right accessories, you can really enhance the finished quality of your cell phone videos.
I’d like to acknowledge VPT friend and Real Estate Appraiser Bill Cobb for help with this post. The still image at the top was taken by Bill. He says the video files from his iPhone easily transfer to his iPad for editing. Here is a second picture he sent me of the suction cup mounted onto the windshield.
Whether you wish to shoot moving video clips taken from the hood of your car for real estate videos or for monster movies, getting such an awesome shot has never been easier.
Thanks for reading Video Production Tips! As always, I hope these posts help you create better videos!
Lorraine Grula
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
- Name two reasons why might a video maker want to get a moving shot.
- Why is it a good idea to use a wide angle lens for a moving shot?
- True or False? Moving shots are so difficult to get that only a big budget film can handle it. (Definitely FALSE. This is easy to do with a few simple tools.)
Hi Lorraine, I’m honored by your article mention. I’m king of a tech geek and really enjoy shooting video with these type devices. I’m also a beta tester for Mark Passerby at HDHat and every now and them HDHat will send me a product to test. This mount, the iHat4, is Mark’s invention and I simply added the suction cup mount after I saw Stephen Garner’s setup for his gopro on hood. Stephen recommended I add voice narration to my tours so I’m doing that now, just need to add a noise cancelling lav mic to the mix. Lorraine, thanks so much for your Blog, your helpful tips and your presence in this industry! Your blog is full of great tips and I recommend those that want to improve spend much time on your site! Bill Cobb, Appraiser Baton Rouge
Hi Bill.
How kind and gracious of you Bill! Thanks a million for such a nice comment. I am humbled by your praise, I certainly hope my little blog is as good as you say and helps people learn video! Thanks for showing me how you were using this cool trick! Little cameras are so fun for these things. You can mount them anywhere which certainly increases the ability to get cool and unusual shots.
One little suggestion I have is to sometimes point the camera toward one side of the road or the other, and avoid having so much of the shot taken up by concrete. Maybe that was indeed done and I just didn’t see it.
You do such a marvelous job learning new things and expanding your Real Estate Appraisal services by branching out into things like video. I am always impressed by that! Thanks for your help and keep making videos!
Lorraine
This is great information! I’m not that tech savvy per say; so this information will definitely come in handy for me! Thanks for sharing!
Hi Caryl Anne, Thanks so much for your comment. I am always gratified to know my blog helps someone. Honestly, I am not that tech savvy either, so please don’t let that discourage you from learning to make video. If I can do it you can too. 🙂
Lorraine