Tech Column

Oculus Puts a New Spin on the Crane Cam

Digital gimbal-based camera platforms are essential tools in cinematography, but did you know it’s a concept that dates back more than 2,000 years to ancient Greece with the first mechanical gimbal described by Philo of Byzantium? The most common gimbals – like those found on ships’ compasses – are three-axis gimbals. Which brings us forward thousands of years to SpaceCam’s Stabilized Imaging Technologies’ new Oculus 2.0 that goes one better with a four-axis gimbal. Unlike SpaceCam’s other systems, which are designed for aerial use to be mounted on helicopters and fixedwing aircraft, the Oculus is for a crane or vehicle mount. The four-axis design means it offers an unrestricted field of capture and the carbon fibre housing is lightweight and makes it easily maneuverable during setup and tear down. The gimbal itself weights about 50 lbs. (22.6 kgs) and will take another 20 lbs. in camera and lenses. It measures 23.5” W by 8” H and 28.5” long, with a 360-degree continuous pan, tilt and roll in all axes with a pan and tilt speed up to 260° per second. Oculus won the Best Engineering Award at Cine Gear Expo last June, and there’s talk of a 2016 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Technical Award. It’s a far cry from the rudimentary heads SpaceCam founder Ron Goodman started out with, and he couldn’t be happier. There’s also a strong Canadian back story to the Oculus, starting with Goodman who was born in Ontario, and with his first experience with a gimbal platform, the forerunner of the Wescam, which was initially created as a military tool by the Canadian subsidiary of Westinghouse and later spun off as a company called Istec Inc. Goodman went to Ryerson Institute, as it was known then, and then Humber College, studying engineering and cinematography in the 1960s before getting frustrated at the pace of the classes and finding work with William F. White. He started working as an electrician on industrial and government-sponsored shoots and found himself suddenly bumped up to camera operator. “As an electrician, I nearly electrocuted myself in a rain storm shooting at an iron mine,” he laughs. “We were working with the prototype version of the Wescam and then I got an opportunity to go to Norway to shoot there.” Over 14 years working in Scandinavia, Goodman tweaked the Wescam into a smaller unit dubbed the X mount, shooting aerial scenes for productions like Superman, Superman II, Supergirl and The Cassandra Crossing. He was also involved in the infamous eight-minute single continuous shot in the 1975 Professione: Reporter (released

as The Passenger in English) directed by Michelangelo Antonioni with Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider. By 1985 with more credits like The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, Goodman found his aerial expertise so much in demand he had to return to California. “We went back to the U.S. and started working on SpaceCam,” he said. By 1987 he came up with the concept, and two years later it was in prototype and in market by 1990. He also started working with IMAX format cameras. Unfortunately, Goodman had a major setback on the set of Far and Away in 1991 when a freak 150-foot wave crashed into the chopper he was filming in. Though he and the pilot survived, the SpaceCam unit, the only one in existence, was destroyed. “We had to rebuild and start again,” he said, and it’s clear there are some residual issues. “I tell you what I learned from that, is that you should get not just a certificate of insurance, but proof of insurance.” SpaceCam II came along two years later, and Goodman has been making incremental improvements ever since. “Oculus started as a project called Aurora, which was an aerial mount and then we were asked to make a crane mount and so we took the core of Aurora to make Oculus,” he said. While servomotors have been around for a while, it’s the advent of ever smaller digital motors with direct drives at more affordable prices that is opening up gimbal design. The trend towards large format – something Goodman has worked with in 65 mm 15-perf film cameras – is also driving demand for vibration-free platforms. “At 6K or 8K when you project, the slightest vibration will send it out of register and lose resolution,” he said. “So you have to have the camera head vibration free and that’s what we get with the direct drives and digital motors.” It hasn’t always been as smooth a ride as he’d like for the business side, and he admits SpaceCam didn’t spend as much time staying ahead of the market, allowing competitors to release products that cut into his market share. “We made the fatal mistake of resting on our laurels,” he said, noting he’s got a few more surprises in the pipeline. Further complicating things, he’s now embroiled in a lawsuit with the distributor who approached him about building Oculus. As a result, there’s limited numbers of Oculus for rent at All Axis Systems in Richmond, B.C. All Axis owner Peter Panago said a relationship with Goodman led to him getting the Oculus , and so far it’s been creating quite a buzz. “It’s been out on Star Trek and some other productions here,” he said, noting it’s renting at below $2,000 a day as an introductory rate. “There’s been a lot of excitement and a lot of talk. People are amazed by the ability and speed of this machine.”

Ian Harvey is a Toronto-based journalist who writes for a variety of publications and covers the technology sector. He welcomes feedback and eagerly solicits ideas at ian@pitbullmedia.ca

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