Production Assistant: Camera Pan & Tilt

Video Transcript

"Now in this segment we are going to show you what the pan and tilt functions are in a camera. Now to properly do a pan like I was saying earlier you want to make sure your pan friction is tight but you don't want it too tight otherwise your camera movements will be jerky. The proper pan you want to be behind the camera and if you are panning right you want to move your handles to the left. Whatever direction you want to pan is actually the direction of the front of the camera. So if you want to pan right you move your handles to the left. If you want to pan left you move your handles to the right and whenever you are doing this on air or live you want to make sure they are nice smooth pans, not too fast, not too slow. If you are off camera or if you are off air and just doing it to set your shot, go ahead and whip it back and forth. Now with the tilt it is a little different. The tilting depending on the camera, some cameras aren't going to tilt as well as others. With this particular one we do have a really nice tripod so that way it does let us have the motion to tilt nice and smooth. Now just like the pan you want to make sure that your friction is not too much or too little. If it is too little your camera is going to be very sloppy and fall everywhere. If it is too much it is going to be very jerky and hard to keep a good shot. You want to have it just right so that way once again there is just a little resistance to it. Now you tilt up and down and obviously just like the pan whenever you are tilting up you push the handles down so that way the front of your camera goes up and if you are tilting down you obviously push the handles up because you want to always remember any movement is the front of the camera's movement and that is what you are doing. There has been many mistakes from that."