Compact camera mounted on actor's body or gear — GoPro-style for POV or documentary footage. Delivers immediate, handheld perspective without crew in frame.
On set, the camera is attached to the body—chest, helmet, shoulder—and this fundamentally changes how you tell a scene. You don't need an additional cameraman in a tight scene, no Steadicam operator squeezing through a hallway. The body cam documents the world from a character's subjective perspective without the camera itself becoming visible. That's the core: immediate, unadorned POV.
In practice, you usually work with GoPros or similar action cameras—robust, small enough not to appear in the frame when the character steps in front of a mirror. The mounting decides: a chest harness for a more stable, breathing perspective; a helmet mount for more dynamic, head-movement-driven POV (as in found-footage horror or police documentaries). The visual impression is characteristic—wide field of view, distortion at the edges, more direct and unfiltered than classic subjective camera shots.
On set, you have to account for the lens: the wide-angle distortion creates a sense of proximity and pressure, even if the actor is relaxed. Pay attention to microphone noise from body wind and friction on the vest—external wind protection measures are worthwhile. Battery life is your enemy, especially since you can't simply cut during longer takes without breaking the POV. Running two or three cameras in parallel is standard.
In the edit: body cam sequences feel raw and authentic, especially in documentary or realism contexts. But beware—too much of it tires the eye, because the perspective is neither classically dramatized nor rhythmically cut. It works best as an accent, as a moment of immersion, not as an entire film. Found-footage horror has exhausted its potential; today, it's used specifically to "unsettle" a scene or give the viewer the feeling of being right in the middle of it—not as an observer, but as the body itself.