Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Epic 3D on a balloon filming Grizzly bears in Kamtchatka

Arnaud Paris

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 11, 2007
Messages
465
Reaction score
0
Points
0
Age
48
Location
Paris, FRANCE
Website
www.stereocorp3d.com
Wanted to share with you guys one of the coolest projects I got to work on lately as a stereographer with the Epic cameras in 3D.

kamtchatka10.jpg

I'm not allowed to give the title name and production of this project but what I can tell you though is that we filmed almost all summer in 3D with the Epics in Kamtchatka for a feature documentary about grizzly bears in Russia in which Cameron-Pace is involved. StereoCorp3D was also involved on the 3D team and on site-3D-post with a mobile Scratch and LocaRed was providing the Epic cameras for the aerial unit.

kamtchatka03.jpg

I was stereographer on the aerial unit which was using a remote controlled balloon system to approach the bears safely. We shot most of last summer on Lake Kouril (south of Kamtchatka) where grizzly bears feast on all the salmon rushing from the Pacific to reproduce in this area.

kamtchatka05.jpg

This balloon solution has been developed by the company Soulcam in France (www.soulcam.fr) with whom I partnered over the recent years to push this amazing tool towards 3D filming. And let me tell you that with the Epics it did marvels on this project bringing some stunning proximity aerial shots of the bears that as you can imagine I'm not allowed to show here. But I have some BTS footage and a 3D shot of landscape if you read below.

kamtchatka02.jpg

The production decided to use the Soulcam balloon over drones and other aerial solutions as it was the only tool that would allow us to approach the bears quietly while keeping the team at a safe distance. The balloon's freedom of movement would then help us get the full depth of these animals in 3D as they go about their daily life.

kamtchatka01.jpg

The two Epics were on a side-by-side configuration into a gyro stabilized head. A camera operator would control this gyro head to frame the shots while a pilot was controlling the balloon that was equipped with 3 large electric propellers playing along with the wind. A third technician armed with a fishing poll was keeping the balloon connected to the ground through a 200m fishing line, giving more or less length to this wire and positioning himself to help the pilot control the balloon.

kamtchatka08.jpg

One major challenge with this balloon is that since it's filled with a lot of helium (which is expensive) we couldn't deflate it. So we had to move to the various places of interest over the lake with the balloon attached to a zodiac! Could become quite intense if the wind would suddenly turn stronger and this was a wild lake as far as wind ;)

kamtchatka07.jpg

As a stereographer I had a wireless video feed in anaglyph and a controller that would let me move the Inter Ocular (IO) distance between the two cameras dynamically during the shots to create a proper 3D effect depending on the distance to our subject and the far elements.

kamtchatka09.jpg

On this video you can see our team prepping the camera 3D head before a flight while bears are catching live salmons right behind us!


Here is a video of our team filming over a swamp by the lake at early morning and making a discovery shot over the landscape.


And here is the resulting shot that you can watch in youtube 3D (or you can select to watch it in 2D as well).


(Sorry no bears in this shot, production wouldn't let me show more)

I'll be trying to post more BTS stuff on this thread and put more details about this adventure onto our blog as well at www.stereocorp3d.com.

Also if you guys are interested I actually have most of the BTS shot in 3D as well, if you'd like I can post them in 3D, just ask!

Hope you'll enjoy it.

kamtchatka04.jpg
 
Nice
 
Crazy-brilliant. And I thought it was the BBC guys who Ruled. Thanks for posting.
Stu Aull
SX 199
Alaska
 
HOLY SH*T
 
Wow. I love that area. Have a bear story of my own from that area, but that's another story - actually posted here before. Anyway this looks like one heck of a cool project! Keep us poste, i want to see the finished product. :)
 
I guess the RedRay announcement could not come at a better time for these kind of projects! I mean when you'll watch the quality of this 5K footage in 3D, you'll really understand what a shame it would be to see it end up on a poor HD side by side resolution distribution over youtube or itunes... I just wish the production would have let us shoot this project in 48fps.
 
Ok so here is a little bonus since it's not production footage: a 2K slow motion shot of a bear captured on the spot with my personal Epic while scouting (lens is Canon 70-200mm L series lens), sorry for the focus a bit off... always tricky with photo lens, especially at 240fps ;)

 
Thanks Andrey, but to be honest there isn't so much glory on our part as we were always protected with armed guards from the reserve (some of them former spetsnaz!). Thought there has been a few times in which our team had to split up so guard wasn't always next to me, and then it was getting a bit scary when these big boys would get a bit too close to us ;)
 
The Ballon is very cool !
When I see a Quad copter, I always think that it is wasting so much energy just fighting gravity to stay in one spot !

Love the fishing rod safety tether !
 
Jason,

We have smaller camera balloons with gyro stabilized mounts for GoPro size cameras. We could easily scale up but didn't see enough demand to offset the cost of having to dump helium after each gig. It's not practical to trailer a balloon this size and shape and the current helium supply shortage has driven up the gas cost. This is likely temporary as fracking will probably ease pricing in time. The US produces 75% of the worlds helium as a byproduct of gas drilling.

Instead we have elected to build a super heavy lift SR helicam for Epic 3D aerial filming that should be ready to fly by this spring.

This bear filming is awesome BTW, kudos to everyone involved. Can't wait to see it!
 
Last edited:
Thanks for all the feedback guys, the movie is still shooting throughout 2013 (no more aerial balloon though) so it'll probably be another year before it's released.

The Soulcam balloon is actually gonna start certification in the US in the next couple of months. As most of you are aware it's quite tricky right now with UAVs strict regulations, so I'd say it wouldn't be ready to go on gigs till spring. Of course the cost of helium is to be taken into consideration but in comparison to other high end solutions it really brings some quite unique footage especially in 3D. It definitely has its good and bad points in particular as you can't fly it when the wind gets too pushy while a drone can handle a bit more I believe. But if you're able to afford to rent both of these aerial tools (like drone/heli plus the balloon) then you're up for a really cool variety of shots that will add tremendous production value to your movie.

I'll surely keep you posted about the Soulcam certification and test flights in LA (I'm moving there myself in 10 days as a stereographer with our lightweight Epic3D rig) if some of you guys wanna come to see it fly I'm sure that it could be arranged.
 
Thanks for all the feedback guys, the movie is still shooting throughout 2013 (no more aerial balloon though) so it'll probably be another year before it's released.

The Soulcam balloon is actually gonna start certification in the US in the next couple of months. As most of you are aware it's quite tricky right now with UAVs strict regulations, so I'd say it wouldn't be ready to go on gigs till spring. Of course the cost of helium is to be taken into consideration but in comparison to other high end solutions it really brings some quite unique footage especially in 3D. It definitely has its good and bad points in particular as you can't fly it when the wind gets too pushy while a drone can handle a bit more I believe. But if you're able to afford to rent both of these aerial tools (like drone/heli plus the balloon) then you're up for a really cool variety of shots that will add tremendous production value to your movie.

I'll surely keep you posted about the Soulcam certification and test flights in LA (I'm moving there myself in 10 days as a stereographer with our lightweight Epic3D rig) if some of you guys wanna come to see it fly I'm sure that it could be arranged.

Yes, please!!!! WE need you!!!
 
Back
Top