David Mullen ASC
Moderator
You have to thank my Key Grip Dave Askey for pulling off that shot. The director wanted the effect of a spirit's POV flying low across a football field up to a close-up, and my thought was to put a steadicam arm on the end of a golf cart or something, or use a really long crane arm like an Akela, like they did for "The Thin Red Line" when the camera glides across the grassy hills.
But there wasn't anything longer than a 60' Technocrane in Vancouver. I was looking into laying hundreds of feet of track for the Technocrane and having the track erased in post, but then Dave Askey suggested a cable cam rig. That was actually my original idea but I immediately dismissed it as too expensive. But Dave found out that it wasn't more expensive than the other ideas we were suggesting. So we tied a cable to a tree far behind and above the actor and strung it across the football field and tied it off to a forklift. The camera (an Arri 435) rode underslung on the cable in a sort of bicycle contraption that could move up to 30 mph and stop smoothly on a dime. We shot it in reverse though so we could start the camera right next to the face of the actor and then drive it backwards at high speed (then reversed it in post). Since the camera was now floating on a cable, I deliberately dressed props on the ground, like a bench, that the camera could (easily) fly over.
It was partly cloudy that day and some takes the sun would come out and throw a shadow of the cable on the ground, which would have been easy to paint out in post. But we decided to wait for more takes when it was overcast, just to save the post costs to paint out that cable shadow.
The shot went really well because the production paid for it to be set-up the afternoon before while we were next door shooting inside the gym. So the cablecam people had a half day to set-up and test the system. They flew a DV camera on it and would bring test runs into the set for me to check out and approve. We then went outside the next morning to shoot the scene and the cablecam shot was ready to go in a few minutes, no hassles, and it worked perfectly on every take. I'd use it again if I had some convenient trees and wanted to fly the camera over rough ground.
We used a fairly wide-angle lens too, to enhance the movement -- it was something like a 14mm.
But there wasn't anything longer than a 60' Technocrane in Vancouver. I was looking into laying hundreds of feet of track for the Technocrane and having the track erased in post, but then Dave Askey suggested a cable cam rig. That was actually my original idea but I immediately dismissed it as too expensive. But Dave found out that it wasn't more expensive than the other ideas we were suggesting. So we tied a cable to a tree far behind and above the actor and strung it across the football field and tied it off to a forklift. The camera (an Arri 435) rode underslung on the cable in a sort of bicycle contraption that could move up to 30 mph and stop smoothly on a dime. We shot it in reverse though so we could start the camera right next to the face of the actor and then drive it backwards at high speed (then reversed it in post). Since the camera was now floating on a cable, I deliberately dressed props on the ground, like a bench, that the camera could (easily) fly over.
It was partly cloudy that day and some takes the sun would come out and throw a shadow of the cable on the ground, which would have been easy to paint out in post. But we decided to wait for more takes when it was overcast, just to save the post costs to paint out that cable shadow.
The shot went really well because the production paid for it to be set-up the afternoon before while we were next door shooting inside the gym. So the cablecam people had a half day to set-up and test the system. They flew a DV camera on it and would bring test runs into the set for me to check out and approve. We then went outside the next morning to shoot the scene and the cablecam shot was ready to go in a few minutes, no hassles, and it worked perfectly on every take. I'd use it again if I had some convenient trees and wanted to fly the camera over rough ground.
We used a fairly wide-angle lens too, to enhance the movement -- it was something like a 14mm.
