MoVi for Epic

[Peter Moretti]

I am not trying to replace Steadicam with it (I own one of those as well).

It's very true that it's not able to takeout footsteps. But I am not using it for that. I shoot commercials, and each shot is only a second or two on screen, and often in slow motion.

It is very, very good for that. It makes it fast to get an awful lot of setups in, that would otherwise take a lot of time.

On a small tracking vehicle held by a good dolly grip it is very special. (Unlike so much of what I see online, I think it is best operated by a dolly grip, and I control the joystick… think of it like a crane or a dolly… you need a good grip).

Hope that helps, early days, and still learning… but I can really see the potential.

Thanks very much. Yes that does make things clearer.

 

[Wendell Adkins]

Andreas,

Does the Portahead use GPS to augment position? Do you have any video with the Portahead from a helicopter in banked turns? How much time do you have using a Movi?

 

[Andreas Kielb]

Andreas,

Does the Portahead use GPS to augment position? Do you have any video with the Portahead from a helicopter in banked turns? How much time do you have using a Movi?

I only tried the Movi for a few minutes on a trade show and was very impressed. It's a nice piece of equipment and I also like their videos. I was more reffering to the alexmos boards and that their stabilization quality strongly depends on how well they are tuned. Of course they can also point straight down if the setup is correct. If yours gets weird pointing down maybe D is set too high.

The PID tuning of the Movi is not accessible for users in their software and is already set up very well. That's probably the biggest plus for it. I don't have anything negative to say about the performance of the Movi but Alexmos makes good progress too. Check out the videos of the new firmware:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnFmN96uxYY

Besteady already posted the same features two weeks ago but in the meantime they found it's way into the public release (firmware 2.4) http://instagram.com/p/juH7ZxECZp/#

www.portahead.de

 

[Wendell Adkins]

I am going to try out the new BGC firmware today...it looks promising. The Movi seems to have far less drift than my other rig. I attribute this to the GPS.

As more clones come along and advance, the differences between them and the Movi will become more subtle. I didn't want to spend $15K for the Movi if the same performance could be had for less. But I also don't have time to be someone's field beta-tester.

A $600 lens and a $20K cine prime both do basically the same job and the differences are subtle. But it the right hands, those subtle differences become HUGE!

 

[Will Keir]

Thanks Med D.

This is an old trick but just in case you don't know it, use the following to search in google:

movi review site:reduser.net

This will give you much faster and generally more usable results than an actual forum search.

I think this is the review referred to although I have not looked at it myself:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?104090-First-hand-with-the-Movi-on-the-short-quot-The-Arborlight-quot

 

[Will Keir]

Interesting, looking forward to the posts, thanks.

Hey Will, My buddy just told me he has sort of invented an awesome way to use the movi independantly with an EZ rig and a motorless brushless gimbal, I haven't seen it yet he is shooting in Tuscon right now but when he gets back I will definatly check it out and foreword pictures.

 

[Karim_Nassar]

I've used it with both the mark 2 and the epic fully rigged.

Mark 2, super easy and light, could shoot a lot without getting tired.
Quick and dirty mark 2 first hands: https://vimeo.com/85725971

Then I tried a full setup with the epic, monitor, follow focus, wireless video transmitter. (battery was on belt)
Indeed very taxing on the body.
I've heard a lot about the easy rig for long shoots as well.

I'll get back to this thread to contribute once I have more experience with the setup.

For info the following compact primes have the same weight and size:

Set 1, lenses at 2lbs:

CP.2 18 mm/T3.6
CP.2 25 mm/T2.9
CP.2 25 mm/T2.1
CP.2 50 mm/T2.1
CP.2 85 mm/T2.1

Set 2, lenses at 2.2 lbs:

CP.2 21 mm/T2.9
CP.2 28 mm/T2.1
CP.2 35 mm/T2.1

So you can swap them once the movi is configured without having to recalibrate.

What would be nice is that people that have efficiently used the movi with the epic share pictures of their rig

 

[Viet Mac]

The MōVI is an amazing piece of equipment, once you get the hang of putting it together and dialing in all the settings it saves so much time on shoots.
Here is a quick little video we made the first day we tested out the MōVi : www.vimeo.com/85211883

Also, a little blog post about one of our shoots if you are interested in reading about: http://machouseproductions.com/movi-used-to-shoot-new-espn-nba-countdown-opening/

 

[Robert Ruffo New]

Paul and Ruff,

Can you guys expand more on the value of the Movi? I've tested one out and it's true that it stabilizes Z-axis rotation. But it doesn't do anything for Y-axis movement, i.e. up and down. And that's the hardest smooth out of one's gait.

Once I realized that, I saw the value of the Movi's technology in a heli rig (which is its origins) but I failed to understand how it is any kind of a replacement for a steadicam. Of course, I could be missing something.

Love to hear your thoughts. Thanks!

You're not missing anything. Steadicam has it's place (a large place, useful in just about any fiction prod) Movi has its place too (more speciialty - not for every shoot) Best to have both at hand, but picking one I would go Steadicam every time.

 

[Wendell Adkins]

It's pretty awesome to get some handheld Movi shots and 10 miutes later have the Movi flying across the sky.

 

[Wendell Adkins]

I updated my Alexmos gimbal to the latest firmware 2.4. 8 hours of tuning later I can say it has made several significant improvements. Does it work as well as my Movi? It does not.