The Forgotten Filmmaking Tool?

Do you really need a camera slider? I asked myself this question when Zeapon reached out to see if I wanted to try one of their axis sliders and perhaps you're wondering the same thing. So let's find out. I recently shot a music video slash live session for a singer songwriter named Hesselmann and I'll leave a link to the full music video down below once it comes out on his channel. But I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to test if a slider is actually a filmmaking tool worth having. So in this video we'll take a look at the shots I got using the slider. I'll share with you how I set up these shots and also talk a little bit about the Zeapon slider itself. And by the end I'll give you my verdict whether or not I think a camera slider is worth it. The slider I was using for this video is the Zeapon Axis 100 Pro. It's a 100 centimeter carbon fiber motorized slider and this pro version comes with an additional head that allows you to do pan and tilt movements. And I'll talk more about some of its features throughout the video but let's start by having a look at the first shot. I wanted a nice establishing shot for this video and like the idea of a slow dolly in as he walks into frame. This is a very easy movement to set up. The camera is simply moving from the back of the slider to the front in a steady motion. And I guess the only tricky thing here was pulling focus because I was shooting this on DZO cine lenses. So I had to adjust focus manually as the camera dollies in and I'm really happy with how this shot turned out. It's simple but it works great. A slider is also the perfect tool for these types of shots because it allows you to get a perfectly smooth forward motion. There's no way that you would be able to do this with let's say a gimbal. A few things to note here. I made sure to have these chairs in the front as foreground elements. They not only help to frame things up a bit more but having something in the foreground actually accentuates that slow movement of the camera. Another common slider movement is the side to side. Here it's also really important to have something in the foreground in order to sell the effect that the camera is moving. As you can see here without foreground it becomes harder to tell that the camera is even moving at all. The cool thing about these motorized sliders is that you have the ability to set your start and end position and then just have the motors do all the work. On the Zepon you can do all your settings on the slider itself. It has this small LCD screen and all of the dials you need to control it. Everything except for the tilt head. You can't control that with this. But really the best way to control this slider is by using the app. The app works really well and makes it very straightforward to set your camera movements, set your A and B points, speed and all of that. The next camera movement is probably my favorite to do on a slider and that is the parallax. It's basically a side to side movement combined with a pan in the opposite direction that the camera is sliding towards. That creates a nice looking shot where the background and the foreground are moving while the subject stays in the same spot in the frame. This is another great example where a slider will get really nice and smooth parallax shots and where with something like a gimbal it would be much more difficult to keep your subject in exactly the same spot in the frame. Unlike with most of these slider shots, foreground is super important. If we just compare these two shots, which are the exact same parallax movement, but one with the microphone in the foreground and the other one with nothing in the foreground, you can tell that having that mic in the foreground just brings out that parallax motion way more. Now, as you can see here for some shots, I had the Zeapon slider set up on two light stands, which works great and it's definitely the most stable, but it is a bit less flexible for setting up different shots. So for a few other shots, I decided to set up the slider on my tripod. The Zeapon axis slider comes with these support arms that actually make it possible to set it up on a single tripod. And that allows you to get it in some pretty interesting angles fairly easily. Now, a fair warning, it does really depend on how stable your tripod is. And in some cases you might not be able to travel the entire distance of this 100 centimeter slider. And that's simply because of the weight shifting as the camera travels to the far ends of the rail. The support arms definitely help. And so do things like spreading out your tripod legs far enough and using something like a sandbag to weigh it down. It also has these small feet that flip out. So you can of course set it up on any other flat surface in case you don't have a tripod or stands. This setup on the tripod, however, came in really handy for setting up the next shot, which was an up-down tilt movement. Here, the camera is going up and down the slider while tilting to keep the frame consistent. It's a nice motion to give a different perspective. And again, a shot that would be complicated to get with any other tool, at least at the same level of smoothness. Now, one issue I did run into here with the Zeapon slider and more specifically with the tilt head was that at a certain level, the tilt motor would max out and it would get stuck. Now I have to say that I was working with a pretty heavy setup with the DZO Cat-A-Zoom lenses, a Hollyland wireless video transmitter, and the Tilta wireless focus pooler all mounted onto the camera. So you might not run into this issue with a lighter setup, but yeah, I wasn't able to get a few tilting shots that I had in mind because of this. And that was a bit of a letdown. Again, maybe I also just pushed the weight limitations too far. All right. The last shot is very similar to that first one. It's the same dolly movement at exactly the same position. So with the seats in the foreground, but this time we're dollying out as the song and the video comes to an end. That means the camera is moving from the front of the slider to the back in a steady motion. So the song ends with the same frame as it started with, only this time we're leaving the scene instead of entering it. We also shot the dolly in and the dolly out. So the intro and the outro of the song as our first shot, so that we didn't need to move the camera and we'd have the exact same frame. So should you, as a filmmaker, get a slider? Well, it's complicated, I guess. I think the biggest counterpart of the slider is the gimbal. For most of us, that would be the tool we think of when talking about camera movement. But there's no doubt about it. There are some camera movements you can do with a slider that you simply cannot pull off with a gimbal. Especially if you want very smooth, steady and precise movements. It really is the best tool for the job. A slider works great when shooting things that don't have a lot of motion. Like for example, this singer songwriter performance. Also things like real estate videos, interviews, and if you've ever watched a Daniel Schiffer video, product videos. But that being said, using a slider takes a lot more time to get the shots. It's fairly time consuming to set up each shot, dial in the slider movements, the pan, the tilt, all of that. Now, once you have everything dialed in, you usually only need one take because a motorized slider, like for example, the Zeapon, will nail it in the first take, unlike most human operators. A second con is that you are somewhat limited to your camera movements. So in certain cases where you need more flexibility, a slider might not be the best choice. But in other cases, if you need that professional commercial looking precision, I would say there is no better tool than the slider. And if you are in the market for a slider, I would actually recommend this one from Zeapon. It definitely has a few quirks like I've mentioned in the video, but overall, the pros outweighed the cons. And compared to some other brands, it's equally capable for less money. It functions with NPF style batteries. It's made out of carbon fiber, and it's very easy to set up and use. I've used other sliders that cost a lot more and are just a total pain to use. If you are interested in purchasing the Zeapon slider, I'll leave a few links down in the video description. And let me know in the comments what your thoughts or experiences are with using camera sliders. Are they a yes or a no? All right, that's it for this one. Thanks a lot for watching and I'll see you in the next one. Bye.