Creative Rigging

Will Miller: We were working on a ‘before and after’ multimedia story about a small, remote Maasai village in Kenya as it was being connected to electricity infrastructure for the first time. The truck I am standing on is carrying all the materials to install a solar-powered microgrid, which is able to provide electricity to the entire village. We wanted to capture the entire process, from the villagers’ anticipation, to installation, to day-to-day use.

The idea was to try to get a timelapse of the truck carrying the microgrid to the village. So we improvised this flimsy rig with some rope, wood and nails.

I definitely will go to inadvisable lengths to get a creative shot or angle, and I pretty routinely climb trees or get too close to heavy machinery, etc. Here, I was trying some fancy hyperlapse (basically a timelapse with a broader range of motion) involving movement/zooming as we drove along. Needless to say, it completely failed as soon as we hit the dirt roads. Our little experiment, although quite elaborate, beared not much fruit.

Will Miller is a freelance video producer based between NYC and Nairobi with a background in run-and-gun documentary, working for myriad NGOs and media publications.