How To: POV Drink Cam

My friends got married recently and i thought i wanted to document the party fun in a way more fun than just photographing it or videoing it.

I recently got a small action cam for my DJI phantom and wanted to use this somehow.

Strapping the camera to a bottle of booze and having the guests passing the bottle around and taking a drink, thus filming the wedding party in an unusual way.

This Instructable contains people over the legal drinking age drinking alcohol. so if you are offended by people drinking please dont read. If you are not of drinking age do not do this yourselves, you can substitute the bottle for something like a soft drink.

Also make sure when passing the drink around the people drinking are of legal age in your country/area and are not driving. Dont drink and drive !

A small action camera (such as gopro, mine is a gopro fake)

Water proof housing or case for camera.

Camera mounting equipment.

Mount strap. (you could use a glue pad, i didnt as i knew i would need to change the bottle through out the evening.)

A bottle of drink , with a bottle the correct size for your mounting strap.

Some sort of editing software. (some action cameras have apps that will allow you to edit the footage.) i used final cut express and Quick time Pro. (quick time to separate the individual people drinking and final cut to join them and add overlays and audio.

Since I was going to be using my POV drink at a friends wedding i chose an alcoholic drink. (please be aware of the age of the people you will be giving and stick to the drinking laws of where you are)

There were a few decisions i had to make when choosing what drink to get.

-1 i chose a drink that is relatively palatable (as to not put people off the idea of taking a drink before they even taste the drink)

-a this ruled out a lot of whiskeys, straight vodkas and other shooter drinks (jagermeister)

-b a soft drink was ruled out as we wanted to drink and be merry :)

-2 The bottle had to be a tall bottle as to keep the drinker in focus. (the top of the bottle needs to be a bit past the closest focus point)

-3 The bottle needed to be the correct diameter so that my camera mount strap could go round and hold the bottle in place.

I found a bottle that fit all those points. The bottle of booze i chose was Smirnoff Ice, which is a vodka lemon aid pre-mix drink that young people drink in the clubs (well they did when i was a young person drinking in the clubs.)

When i was working out how to attach the camera to the bottle i had a couple of options.

The first option was the clip frame for the camera which slides onto the camera and has a tripod mount screw. There is then a Gopro style mount that screws into the bottom of the clip frame, which inturn goes into the strap mount.

The second option was the waterproof case which attaches to the strap mount.

I went with the waterproof case as it protects the camera and there is less options for the camera to move. The clip frame is good at holding the camera but the screw mount at the bottom meant that the camera could twist and i didnt want the camera turning and ruining shots or even falling off.

Once i had chosen the setup I strapped the camera to the bottle at the base of the bottle. It is important to make sure the bottle is long enough that the drinker is further away than the closest focus point of the camera. I positioned the camera so it would frame the drinker and the top of the bottle and the top of the label, i thought this looked best and gave the viewer some reference when the camera is moving around fast.

Once you have the camera all mounted and you are at the party, and its time to drink, turn the camera on and get drinking and passing.

On the front of the camera i attached a label telling the drinker where to look (not because i thin they are stupid, but i knew a lot of them are going to be drunk.)

On the top of the camera I made a little note to tell people how to use the camera, in case i was not near the camera when someone wanted to use it.

When passing the bottle around i would start the video rolling and then offer it up to people, sometimes explaining what was going on if people looked confused, but once people saw others doing it they got the hang of what was happening (although a couple of people did try and down the whole bottle)

Once the bottle had done its round of one group i stopped the video (to ease editing and to save on battery and recording time.)

We went through two bottles of Smirnoff ice (i think we could have done more, but i didn't buy more)

Using the editing software, i used Quick time to split all the drinking footage into the individual people, i did this to cut down on the length of the final video due to the amount of time people were passing the bottle or carrying the bottle or just talking about what it was.

Once I had cut the individual people and numbered them all so it would be easy to put them in the video in the order they were taken.

Using Final cut express i placed all the video clips in the correct order.

I placed a small slate at the start of the video with a little title, and some overlays on key parts like the groom and the bride. I also placed some overlays at times where something funny happened.

Once the video was finished to my liking i uploaded it to YouTube as i used a copyrighted song as the sound track for the video and Facebook doesnt like that sort of thing! youtube on the other hand does as long as i dont try and make money from it.

I shared the Youtube video on facebook and tagged the people i knew and asked them to tag people i dont know. this way everybody can enjoy the video.