Blog Archive

Shooting Small Devices for Tradeshows - May 26, 2009 1:44PM - By: Chad Halvorson

We produce a lot of video presentations for medical device companies which sometimes requires us to deal with very small products. The current trend for tradeshow presentations is to use a large LCD monitor that is rotated 90 degrees—giving the video presentation an electronic poster feel.

For one client, we've been shooting their products on a solid black background in HD 1080p. The goal is to showcase the product through video similar to how the product is represented in the printed brochure literature.

To accomplish this we rig the device on a turntable. The turntable has variable speeds so we can control how the device ebbs and flows visually. Most products, such as pacemakers, are stationary and can simply be secured to a small wire while rotating, however, some products have unique movements and function—this requires some unique rigging.

Certain products need to rotate on the turntable as they move through their range of motion. For this I'll use some fishing line material to assist in the movement expected from the product. Other times no assistance is needed and we can simply put the product in action using it's native mechanism—usually a handle or dial. The shooting process is the same, but it can sometimes take longer to get the right shot when there are moving parts involved.

Another challenge we're often faced with is getting the device to fill the video frame enough to highlight the detail and design of the product. A pacemaker lead for example is very slender and small at its tip. Showing something this tiny requires a combination of camera and post production planning.

For most small products we can flip the video camera on it's side so we can shoot the product as full frame as possible. In post we find that we can scale the footage up to 120% without a significant degradation in clarity—another option we've considered is using the RED ONE camera to capture a 4K image and then scale it down as needed to 1080p.

Overall it's a fun process and the end results are visually very satisfying.