DIYLife.com has a great feature all about film rigs for scrappy independent filmmakers. DIY Film School consists of links to instructions on building tons of great film tools for a fraction of the price of buying things new. I have made some of these and of course they take a lot of time and the quality is a little low. But hey, you get what you paid for but just don’t expect Hollywood results from this stuff.
The list of things you can build includes:

• $14 Steadycam
• Body Brace Steadycam
• $60 Camera Jib
• Backseat View Car Mount
• Exterior Car Mount
• Bike Mount
• PVC Pipe Fig Rig
• and an Underwater Camera Housing

If you’re itching for more of this kind of stuff then check out Home Built Stabilizers for tons of homemade movie-tool goodness. So much for your free time this weekend 🙂