Hello everybody, my name is Bo Hoosh and I'm speaking to you on behalf of Synetics and
we're going to spend the day working with the Synetics CineSquid, a flexible camera mount
that can go onto a window, a car, any smooth surface through the facility of these super
strong, hang on a second, suction cup mounts, they grip and keep dripping.
The CineSquid is available in two different sizes.
This is the full size CineSquid, it attaches to the Joby Gorillapod focus tripod and it
holds a camera of up to about 5 pounds.
This is the even more portable MiniSquid, which interfaces with the Joby Gorillapod SLR
Zoom and as you can see it's great for a GoPro or a phone or any smaller camera.
Attaching the CineSquid is really easy, all you do is grab a hold of your Gorillapod and
then just fit this end right over the Gorillapod's leg and make sure it's in there and just
tighten this knob and that'll clamp around the leg of the Gorillapod and you're ready
to go.
The most important thing you can do to make sure you get a good seal is to clean and dry
the area you're going to stick to.
This isn't a lick them and stick them dart gun, you need the surface to be clean and
dry.
All of the MiniSquids have a button in the center of each suction cup, so just line the
suction cup up where you want it to go and then press this button.
That'll push the air out of the suction cup and then pull on this lever and that creates
your vacuum and it's strong but you should test it, don't just go up and down, go side
to side to make sure that that thing's not going anywhere.
There are a lot of different strategies out there for getting a nice stable mount with
the CineSquid and a curved surface like my car is actually a place where this mount really
shines.
Check this out.
You can actually use these flexible legs to hug the profile of the car and not only
does that cut down on wind resistance but bringing this center point down touching the car is
an additional point of contact which means extra stability for your camera.
With the CineSquid you've got a camera mounting system that is versatile and flexible and
portable too, this easily fits in a backpack or a camera bag and look, you take off the
suction cup and you're back to cool, grabby, flexy tripod mode.
And don't forget if you've got a synthetic skate plate, well these suction cups are part
of the CineSquid Connect family.
You can attach these suction cups directly to the skate plate and get a really low profile
camera mount.
Okay, enough prep, it's time to take the CineSquid on the road.
Okay, we're going to start with something easy, we'll just do a street view shot.
So I've got the CineSquid on the front right corner of the car and the camera's pointed
at a slight angle so that when we take right turns it's going to look pretty exciting.
And we get a cool street level view of the neighborhood while we tour around.
If you're interested in hardware, we're shooting with a Canon T4i with a Rokinon ultrawide
angle lens.
And on the front of that is a Fotodiox Pro WonderPana, which is a filter system for ultrawide
angle lenses and I've just got the UV on to keep the lens protected, which as you can
imagine when you're driving a car and there's a lens on the outside, that's kind of important.
Now let's use the CineSquid to aim straight ahead and using our non-linear editing software,
we can warp through even the worst of crappy Chicago rush hour traffic.
Okay, we've seen where we're going, now let's see where we've been.
We're going to do a kind of an unusual thing here, the camera's on the back of the car
and it's hanging upside down, that's so we can get the lens as close as possible to the
surface of the road.
And we're using an ultrawide angle lens again and that way we can get just lots of street
and a rushing pass the lens and get a lot of really kinetic energy in the shot.
It's as cool as a dolly shot, except your dolly can go 50 miles an hour and has air conditioning.
If you really want to take control of time and space in your next video project, time
lapse is an awesome way to do that.
You can use any camera with an intervalometer, I use the GoPro 3 because the intervalometer
is built right in.
With the CineSquid I was able to mount that camera right outside the car and get multi-megapixel
photos of my travels.
Then you just run them together in your non-linear editing software and you get a cool look that
you can't get any other way.
Okay so what we're doing now is the typical driving a car shot and if you've ever tried
to do this yourself by just bringing a camera into a car, you know that there's not a space
inside a car.
So unless you use a wide-angle lens, you're not going to fit everybody in and a wide-angle
lens makes everybody look kind of distended and sick and yucky.
Okay so if you do it Hollywood style, well they've got these long flatbed trailer sort
of things, they'll put a car on the trailer and then drive it around the actor just mimes
driving and they can have a light rig and you know a whole crew just stop making this
shot look great but it's a little expensive.
Now you can also do it entirely in post and lots of TV shows and movies do that as well.
They'll have a phony car with no windshield, it's in a studio so it's really controlled
and then in post-production they will put some kind of reflection, some kind of fake glass
in.
Very time intensive and look they're trying to reproduce real life well and nothing looks
more real than real which is what this is.
So I've got the CineSquid adhered to the hood of my car just shooting through the windshield
and well I'm driving and trying to be very careful.
Remember filmmakers, fans at 10 and 2 even when you're making a movie.
Then you've got the question of sound, well I could have a wireless setup which would
mean having a receiver hanging off the camera outside my car, not going to happen.
We could also run a cable from a microphone out to the camera but then my audio levels
are out there so that doesn't help me very much either and I'm a one-man crew today
so what I decided to do is go double system.
So the camera is out there filming and in here I'm recording sound on a Zoom H1 which
is a teeny tiny little recorder, it's almost like recording dialogue on a candy bar and
I just use a set of clapsticks to come up with a marker at the head of the shot, that's
my sync point and I'll just sync it up in bango, I've got synchronized sound.
Okay we're pretty much at the end of my day with the CineSquid and in this video you've
seen just how easy it is to rig up the CineSquid for a lot of different setups.
Run a dramatic shot like this which takes a long time to rig in Hollywood, you can be
set up and ready to go in like a couple minutes, you've seen it, it's here, it's live, it's
happening.
So thanks to you for watching and go out and enjoy your CineSquid.
