The G-man Fig Rig

September 9, 2007

I saw this wonderful movie tool the other day and thought, "That is cool, I wonder how much it costs?" After some research I found the product and it's call the Fig Rig developed by Mike Figgis to help support the newer smaller format DV Cameras. It costs about $500! Wow...

If you own a compact DV camera you know there is a lot shake when you "palm" it to shoot video. Even with the optical image stabilization software from the DV camera, it can still be shaky. You may remember that I had tried to compensate that shaky camera movement by building DYI two Steadicams and this looked like it could work as well. Basically it turns your entire body into a steadicam. Your arms are the shock absorbers and this helps steady the small DV camera. Plus it would augment my arsenal of movie tools such as my G-man jib, Steadicam #1 and Steadicam #2.

I searched the internet and found various websites describing how to make your own "Fig Rig" at a mere fraction of the cost. But there were a lot of places on the web that modified the design using PVC - so I did some research and built my own. Yes, it's PVC but it holds up pretty well and lets face it - I'm an amateur videographer so it works for me.

I will post some footage on how it works on this page but just from some of the test results I've done - it does a pretty good job.

You can click on the picture below to see the process - it wasn't that hard. And as I always say, "I didn't design this - I just looked it up on the internet and found the plans to build it."

G-man