These are some of the car rigs I did as key grip on the feature film Innocence Blood. The hostess tray rig is by Modern Studio Equipment, rented from good old Wooden Nickel Lighting. Wooden Nickel also rents the Matthew’s hostess tray but I prefer Modern’s design for being quicker and easier to work with.

The suction cup and 5/8″ rigging was rented from Dwight Stone a.k.a. “GripNerd” and it’s mostly made up of stuff he got from Modern Studio Equipment. That name sound familiar? Yeah. They’re awesome.

You’ll notice that even on the heavy hostess tray rig, I’m still stabilizing the top of the camera with another point. That right there is the secret sauce of stable, low budget car rig shots. It’s not supporting any of the weight of the camera, it’s just keeping the top of the camera from pitching forward under braking, backward under accelleration, and left and right during turning. It’s also just generally helping to reduce any sort of oscillation or vibration that might otherwise end up in the final image if the top of the camera was swinging free.

If you’re shooting on DSLR you can find hotshoe to 5/8″ baby pin adapters to give you something to rig to on the top. A few companies make them. Modern Studio Equipment is one of them.

So I guess pretty much the point of this post is to say that you can find a lot of good rigging gear at Modern.