From the course: Video Gear

Mounting cameras to the dashboard

From the course: Video Gear

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Mounting cameras to the dashboard

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- Now, let's try mounting a camera to the actual dashboard. One of the things on the dashboard that makes this easy are vents. You see, we've got vents right here. We've got a vent right here. This is going to make it easy to get a cool shot, and to do this I'm going to use a dashboard cell phone mount. There are all types of mounts like this out there. A lot of times, these have an articulating ball head like this here, which means if you wanted to, you could actually detach this and swap it out for one of the GoPro mounts. Lot of times the same manufacture, in this case, Arkon will have different things that can swap in. But because I'm going to use a cell phone, that's fine, but remember you could swap this out for a different mounting point. What we care about is this part here. You'll notice that there's a clip and a little articulating arm here that we can use for bracing. Let me go ahead and attach this. What I'm going to do is pinch that and attach it to the vent. Of course, we could adjust the vent a little bit. Once it's looking pretty good, bend that in. Angle it to get the shot that you want, and then tighten it off. Now, this is going to be prone to a little bit of movement. So, you want to get that in there as secure as you can. We'll take that in a little dipper. There we go. Articulate that in, and that's much more solid. So, don't be afraid to really push that in there. Now, once we got that in there, and it's pretty set, I'll take my phone, make sure that the screen and lens is clean. And, just cinch that into place. Now, running a camera phone like this is just going to eat up the battery. So, we talked in last weeks episode about having power. Just take that end. There we go. Go right into my big battery. Good. Power that on. There's my juice. Pull in the loose cord. Close that up. This is just about set to get some shots. So, let's just fire open the video camera here for a second. And, we'll switch that to the front facing camera. There we go. Position myself like I'm in the car. Not bad. It's actually a pretty good-looking shot. And, that gives me the angle. Now, remember, you can move it from here, up to here if you want. That's feeling pretty good. Let's flip over to video. That's going to punch in the field of you quiet a bit more over photo. That looks good. Let's just do a test record. All right, so what I have here is actually a front facing camera, and I can see my own self in this camera. Adjust that, and this is really good. If I was the passenger in the car. who was doing some narration, I can get this. You'll notice I can actually angle that over, and just take that a little bit forward in that frame. Now, I could actually get both me and the driver and this would be a two-shot inside of the car. It's working surprisingly well. All right, that feels pretty good, let's just go ahead and stop that camera.

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