Most of my professional work is interviews backed up with what I call "live action b-roll": shots of things that are naturally happening like an office setting, a manufacturing process, or a dude tending his dahlias. I don’t really do a lot of product work, but my YouTube content often focuses on specific things like a product, or tool, that I use.

To make those shots more interesting or to help communicate a concept better I use a product turntable and in this article we'll look at the specific one I use but I want to focus more on how I use it and share some tips and techniques that will hopefully give you some insight into what this simple piece of gear can bring to your video production.

My product turntable is the ComXim MT320KL40. It’s white, a hair over 12 inches in diameter, is variable speed in both directions, and boasts a payload capacity of 44 lbs. It is definitely a consumer-grade piece of equipment. Professional product turntables made for photo and video work can easily cost 10 to 50 times what I paid for this one. There are cheaper ones out there, but this is probably as low as I’d consider going for something that I feel like will be reliable for my use. The trade offs at this price point at noise and weight. It makes noise and it’s quite lightweight. Even though it’s rated for 44lbs. I don’t know that I’d be comfortable putting that much weight on it.

The two things I was primarily looking at when I was shopping were payload and speed range. A heavier payload capacity means a stronger motor, which usually will translate into more stable operation. The speed was a personal preference. This model ranges from 24 to 68 seconds per rotation.

There’s no real mystery to using a product turntable, once you have it level and stable, you put something on it and it spins around. You turn your camera on, point it at the thing, and it rotates in the frame. But for me, that was a bit boring. So I’m going to run through a few basic tips and then show you some techniques I use to give my footage a bit more visual interest.

Product Placement

Placement of whatever you’re shooting will definitely effect the look of your footage. Depending on how your plan to edit, you may need something to rotate on it’s center axis - or as close as you can get it - so marking the center of your turntable can be helpful. For most of my shoots, I prefer having things off-center. I think it makes for a more interesting shot. With heavier objects, you may find that as they get further from the center the turntable may stutter.

When shooting, I almost always run the motor at it’s slowest speed and I shoot my footage at 60 frames per second so I can slow things down further if needed. You can always speed things in post up if you need to but you can’t slow your footage down. Well, you can, but it’ll look terrible.

Platter Considerations

Unless you’re green-screening out the base or cropping your subject, the platter is going to be in the shot. The first thing I did after waking up from watching my super boring footage was to get a round piece of glass. I got mine from a local glass shop for about $40. It’s 18” in diameter and gives me a larger base to work with. It also casts cool reflections of whatever is on the table. I can put a range of colored paper, textiles, or Rorschach test prints under it which, combined with a shallow depth of field can really add to the scale of things.

The glass makes a great template as well for cutting other auxiliary platters - onto which I usually stick some small guides to easily get them centered.

I have several modeled gray canvases that I painted years ago as backgrounds. So, I took a piece of foam core and painted the same pattern on it. Underneath the glass, I get the cool reflections, but I also a consistency from foreground to background that I think helps to highlight whatever I’m shooting.

Technique 1: Camera Movement

The first, and simplest, thing I found that helped out my turntable footage was to add camera movement. The easiest being a simple pan move. For flexibility in post, I always shoot one shot moving in the same direction as the rotation and one against it. Quick tip: if you’re trying to land on a logo or something that needs to be in sharp focus, create your shot backwards. Start focused on the logo and then reverse the clip in post. Beyond the simple pan or tilt, using a slider, especially one that allows for camera rotation during the slide, can really make for some interesting looking shots. Of course, handheld movement works too. Using a wide focal length and keeping your movements simple will help keep things smooth.

One tricky part of employing camera movement is keeping your focus where you want it. On a tripod or handheld, I’ll usually opt for manual focus, but on my small slider that’s not a viable option. If your camera has object tracking, you can try that. Touchscreen focus can work for this, or just setting the lens manually and letting the object move in and out of focus makes for an engaging shot in my opinion.

Green Screen

In general terms, I’m not a big green screen guy. One of the biggest things I go for in my work is a sense of authenticity and unless you’re on a set purpose built for green screen work or have serious special effects skills, it’s usually a struggle for me to produce something convincing. Where I do like to employ it is when I’m trying to illustrate a concept. Last year, I produced a video on the Movo VXR-10 PRO. I was comparing the PRO model to the standard VXR-10 and they have two different polar patterns. I wanted to explain the concept and illustrate the differences between the two mics. I wanted to show the microphones rotating with speaker playing a test tone into the mic. As the mic rotated, the tone would get louder and softer as the mic spun around. My solution was to use the turntable, and shoot directly down on it. I also wanted to put an audio meter graphic on the screen to show the actual level of sound getting louder and softer. My solution was to use green tape on the turntable surface and to make a panel to mask out the column on my speaker. This allowed me to center the most important element, the microphone, and show the rotation in reference to the speaker while keying out all the stuff below it. I keyed in a clean background on to which I added my audio meters or other graphic information.

If you really want to push green screen use with a turntable, check out Daniel Shiffer’s video on that subject. Really great stuff.

Compositing

Last year I used my turntable to show a progression of camera rig build outs that I did for the DIY Cage video I made for my audio recorder. This could’ve been done using green screen as well, but I feel like I saved myself a lot of time in post by sorting out the shoot beforehand. To get that shot, it was key that I be able to make changes to the camera rig without it shifting around. To do it, I mounted my Manfrotto 502AH video head to a piece of MDF and centered it over the rotation point of my turntable. I taped the turntable base down to ensure that it didn’t move and then set up my initial rig configuration. I hit record and allowed that set up to make two full rotations. I then stopped the turntable, added the next component, and recorded two more rotations. I repeated this process for all the different configurations and then cut them together, added transitions between each and speed-ramped the final footage to shave the time down and help sell the transition. I also slowly scaled the footage over the course of the final clip to give more of a sense of a single shot.

Sounds simple right? The actual set up and shooting took half a day and many, many tries to get what I needed. A quick tip on this technique, don’t touch your camera while getting all the separate shots. Either shoot everything in one clip, or use a remote to start and stop recording. You can stop the turntable of course to make changes to whatever you’re shooting, but keep your hands off the camera - it will move, or you’ll kick a tripod leg in the dark like I did… twice. It finally worked. I learned a lot and I’m pleased with the result.

And that’s my two cents on product turntables, I hope there’s been something here that’s got you thinking about creative ways to maybe add one to your video production arsenal.