Howdy, It's Will Mahoney here and I want to talk to you about a great (hopefully) shoulder harness that I made with the help of a co-worker.  I work for Stylin' Trucks, a truck accessory retailer in Cleveland, Ohio.  I do copywriting (product descriptions and articles, like this) and videography.

Blog updated on 10/30/08 with new footage. I shot a CoverCraft SeatSaver install video when the vendor came in to Stylin' Trucks to train some sales reps. Scroll down for the video.

Day by day I try to work on my technique and get better.  I feel confident in my editing software(Adobe Premier), my camera operating technique, and my eye for detail.  I've built up a few skills along the way and I think that I do ok.  But one area in which I'm severely lacking is Handheld.  I'm horrible. 

Now, if someone is doing a product installation on a truck and the product is (or can be) easy to install - sometimes I don't want to have the camera on a tripod.  In some occasions I'll have to keep moving the tripod and reframing and cutting everytime there is a new step.  

But what if I want all of the steps to flow together in one smooth take?  I've got to take the camera off of the tripod and follow the action with the camera.  Unfortunately this is a heavy camera and I can't seem to keep it still enough for good handheld.  (Yes, I've tried the bit where I leave the tripod dangling from the bottom as a stabilizer.  It worked on my little camera, but holding up the A1 and it's tripod in front of me is a chore and It still doesn't look stable enough.)

So I started researching different mounting solutions online.  The best, and least expensive design I saw was something called a VSB1.  Here is the url, and I'm neither endorsing, nor knocking their product.  All of the reviews that I've come across have been generally positive.  http://www.studio1productions.com/vsb1.htm

I like the design of the VSB1.  It is simple and looks like it might work.  But, I don't have $200. So I asked my co-worker, Steve, if we could build our own.  Then we raided the warehouse, looking for parts.  Here's what we found and what we put together.

I'll try to take some video with it today and post the results - we'll see if the footage looks ok and if I need to tweak anything, but I think the design is sound. 

The parts: 1/2 of a bow from a tonneau cover, a mounting bracket for a set of side step bars, an electrical box, a big dead battery from a UPS, a couple of little brackets and two high-performance seat belt shoulder pads.

Here is the actual bar that sits on my shoulder, along with the seatbelt pad for a cushion.  The bar is super light weight and is a cross-bow from a tonneau cover.  I don't ever remember actually measuring it before cutting, but it's about 30 inches long.  The bottom right shows where the counterweight will attach (over my shoulder.)

This is the rear of the support bar.  I found some random brackets in the warehouse and they sandwich the bar nicely.  I also took a tightening knob off of one of the old office chairs here and that is the knob you see.  I think it is cleaner  and better looking than a simple bolt (which would work just fine.)  Plus, with the knob, I can quickly and easily assemble or dissamble the unit w/o tools. The bolt hanging off the bottom is where the counterweight mounts.

This is what my buddy Steve found for me to use as a counterweight.  It's some old electrical box.  I'll cover it with black duct tape for short term and probably end up painting it a flat, or textured black for long-term.  Right now I'll just put a weight in there to act as a counterweight.  For the future, I can store extra battery packs and whatnot in there for longer recording time or large lights.  I'm not sure what else I can use it for, but it's damn handy.

Here's a peek inside the box.  For weight I just have an old dead battery from a computer backup power supply and a few random pieces of foam to hold it steady.  The box with battery is about 6.5lbs.

Here is the mount that holds the camera.  In reality it is a mounting bracket for a set of those tubular step boards you see on trucks.  The far end (with the duct tape, soon to be replaced with a thin layer of foam rubber or cork) is where the camera actually mounts.  This big knob in the foreground is from another office chair and is where the shoulder bar attaches.  Below that we see an arm sticking down that I have no immediate use for.  For now I'll probably cover it with another seat belt pad.  In the future it can hold lights, receivers, microphones or whatever.

This is the tripod mount for my inexpensive Matthews M25 tripod.  The tripod was recommended by my camera retailer as an inexpensive tripod with a pretty good head.  Mind, I am just starting with video and have never owned a "professional" tripod, but so far I really like this one.  It is stable and I like the smooth movement of the head.  Anywho, I replaced the 1/2" mounting screw  (Size 1/4-20 in hardware terms) with a 3/4" inch.  I'm actually going to sandwich the big bracket in-between the tripod plate and camera.  That way I can have the cam mounted on the shoulder harness and quickly get it on the tripod.

Here we see the underside of the A1.  I have the tripod bracket mounted and it is sandwiching the shoulder harness bracket.

 
Here is the counterweight attached to the back-end of the shoulder harness bar.  I have it mounted off to the right because the camera will be mounted to the left of the bar (to bring it in front of my handsome face).  I read reviews online about other shoulder mounts that let the camera lean to the left because it is off-center.  So I put the weight off-center to help balance things.  It's not perfect, but it does seem to work really well.

Here is the fully assembled shoulder mount.  You can see the camera mount attached to the front, the weight in the back (pushed out to the right of the bar) and the shoulder pad in the middle.

Here is the shoulder mount with the camera attached.

Here is another view.  You'll notice that the mount for the camera isn't at a right angle to the shoulder bar.  (Notice how the lower bar points off to the right instead of right at us.) I have to actually mount it slightly crooked to bring the camera in closer to the center-line and minimize the slight left-lean that this system has.

Here's the finished design, up on my shoulder and in use.  With the shoulder pad sitting on my shoulder I can actually slide the camera (the whole unit, actually) slightly forward or backward to balance it.  Now I'm going to find something to go shoot.  We'll see what comes out of it.

Initial test footage with my home-made Canon XH-A1 shoulder mount:
(updated footage below...)

My most recent video shot with the home-made Canon XH-A1 shoulder mount: