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  • 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 :)

Q About Gimbal Stabilizers in General

Les Dittert said:
Sure. And right now the best way to keep x and y somewhat smooth is the good old steaycam spring arm.
There is nothing preventing someone from making a 5 axis electronic gimbal. Adding maybe 5 inches of translate smoothing would probably do it, but the contraption would become the same bulkiness of the old device it is trying to replace, I think.
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Very true, and the whole point is portability and maneuverability so that would sort of defeat the purpose.

I have a few friends that are professional stuntmen/fighters. One just fight coordinated the new Captain America movie, actually. Their body control is superhuman. They can land a punch full force half an inch away from someone's face, and they can do it while running/spinning/jumping. You would not believe how strong and precise they are.

One of them is really excited about the movi and wants to become our operator. Hes confident after a few months he can perform rock solid moves with it, and having seen what he is physically capable of as a martial artist, I believe him.

We get our Movi in November so we'll see. But I can't imagine any move that he won't be able to pull off after a year or so with it.
 
The MōVI is the flat head to the Philips screwdriver. It does things the Philips can't do and vice versa.. What more is there to say? There will always be a job that one can not perform.
 
Brett, your paintball footage was great by the way.. I'm working on my walking to get the "stepping" out of the shot.. You did awesome..
 
Justin Marx said:
Brett, your paintball footage was great by the way.. I'm working on my walking to get the "stepping" out of the shot.. You did awesome..
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Thanks Justin, however that's not me :-) I'm the one with the password, the 4 minute one-shot music vid.
 
Music video was great, I just noticed some bumps that without audio distractions made me concentrate on them. How many ops did you have for your video?
 
Justin Marx said:
Music video was great, I just noticed some bumps that without audio distractions made me concentrate on them. How many ops did you have for your video?
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cheers Justin.

About 6 takes - I would have kept going all night but we got kicked out at 1am. It was 3 days after the thing arrived. I'm doing a write up with BTS material for RU right now about using it.
 
Very much agree...

We questioned our Steadicam purchase for some time after MoVI announcement & while initially thought easyrig would be the way to go, have since settled on mounting gimbal to steadicam not only for stability but to give the op some support for long shoots.

we should have some tests done soon & are curious to see if others are mounting gimbal directly to arm, or attaching to sled / post assembly & how each method affects resulting shots.

PCG

Björn Benckert said:
You are pretty far off here, They are definitely not the same, on the contrary they are very different. A steady cam stabilise camera position. A gimbal only control pan,tilt and roll...

Something I find really odd is that we have not seen much shots done with gimbals on steady cam arms just yet. A running camera, with no footstep wiggle and a super smooth controlled pan, tilt and stiff roll even when going from overslung to underslung etc.
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are curious to see if others are mounting gimbal directly to arm, or attaching to sled / post assembly & how each method affects resulting shots.
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That is what I intend to do. Proline is working on a gimbal stabilizer to go with the Raven. I'm curious to see what the two tools will do together.
 
A downside of the new breed stabilizers to me is that - at this moment - many of them look quite vulnerable to failure. Lots of electronics and wires everywhere. I've held a few of these stabilizers of which the battery had died or that were switched off. And when they are switched off, most of them become completely useless with the camera pointing to the floor. I can only imagine being somewhere remote, beautiful light all around and missing the shots because one of the motors failed or something. Of course the camera can cause problems too, but any failure I can rule out, I will.

That said, these things are an exciting development and we did order one. We chose one that too us seemed to also be usable without electronics should it fail. I can see how for many purposes a steadycam for this reason will remain a preferred choice too.
 
Alec Morris said:
That depends on what lens you're using. If the parallax is that extreme, then sure.

But again you're assuming that a skilled movi operator is going to be completely unable to keep it acceptably still. The operator is doing x and y translation, that is where the skill is going to be.
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I hope this will be my last post on this subject.

What I'm trying to explain to you is that a gimbal is not dampened for Y or X movement. It only controls the interest point of the camera So a gimbal carried around by an operator is not smother in position than any other carried camera, read hand held, shoulder rig or you name it. A steady cam differ in that regard, due to the fact that it's held by a dampening arm that if working properly pretty much mute all Y shakes... If you think a movi operator can learn some special skills to dampening his cameras position in space better than without the rig, well then you think wrong. As (again) all the gimbal does is stabilizing the interest point of the camera it does not help the camera position to be stable. On the conterary the rig itself probably make things worse as it's quite heavy to hold etc.

So interest point and position is two completely different things.


And also learn that paralax change is only, and by nothing else, depending on camera position. What lens is used has nothing to do with it what so ever and will never have.
 
Björn Benckert said:
I hope this will be my last post on this subject.

What I'm trying to explain to you is that a gimbal is not dampened for Y or X movement. It only controls the interest point of the camera So a gimbal carried around by an operator is not smother in position than any other carried camera, read hand held, shoulder rig or you name it. A steady cam differ in that regard, due to the fact that it's held by a dampening arm that if working properly pretty much mute all Y shakes... If you think a movi operator can learn some special skills to dampening his cameras position in space better than without the rig, well then you think wrong. As (again) all the gimbal does is stabilizing the interest point of the camera it does not help the camera position to be stable. On the conterary the rig itself probably make things worse as it's quite heavy to hold etc.

So interest point and position is two completely different things.

And also learn that paralax change is only, and by nothing else, depending on camera position. What lens is used has nothing to do with it what so ever and will never have.
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Any thoughts on combining the 3 axis gimbal and steadicam?
 
Björn Benckert said:
Thats what I want to see. I also think we will see alot more of things like this, and also 3D wire cams now when the gyro part of the equation is solved for such a low cost and weight.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1655931057/linecam-systems-innovative-cable-assisted-media-ca
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Funny that you mention that Bjorn. On our first Proline Steadicam shoot 10 days ago link they were also using a sky cam for game coverage. It is much more sophisticated than the Line cam. It must react in all three dimensions to follow the ball and stay out of the way when necessary. At the end of the game, as we were breaking down, I asked one of the Skycam employees how much a system like that cost. "About a million" he said. He went on the say that the stabilization system was one of the most expensive parts. It's interesting to imagine what the future holds.
 
Alec Morris said:
Also, they are the EXACT SAME THING. Image stabilizers. There is no way in 5 years any production has both on set. No producer would ever pay for both because the end result it THE EXACT SAME. When the operators skill gets up to par, I don't see anything a steadicam could do that a gimbal could not (though I see many things a gimbal could do that a steadicam could not)
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Please tell me you don't call yourself a cinematographer.

As someone who has professionally operated on almost every type of camera support, from russian arms to technocranes/hydrascopes, most remote heads, gimbals, steadicams and dollies, I can safely say you have very little idea what you're talking about.

A lot of the posts on this thread are accurate and insightful. This shows a complete lack of understanding of what gear we use for different shots and why we use it.
 
Bjorn is on the money as usual, but I would argue that electronic gimbals demonstrate just how significant roll is compared to translation (position).

The greater point is that this is a new tool with a new aesthetic, which factors in the movement of the arms, legs and torso to the move giving the trajectory an unmistakably human feel, whereas the Steadicam attempts to mute this. This kind of movement would be ideal for some moments in a story, because it is half way between mechanical perfection and hand held.

Like with with video or synthesiser, software-mediated instruments always become staples of the artist's toolkit because of their versatility and range of expression.
 
18 years operating steadicam for me and owning an Ultra for a while. I wouldn't be running out to buy one now. I had a play with a Movi and was very impressed. The biggest drawback of conventional steadicam is horizon roll that these rigs are actively compensating for. I bugged the guys from MK-V to create a version of their alien stabiliser to go on a normal rig just to control 15 degrees of roll. Had they done that I would have been able to run full tilt and not worry about roll (something I was often asked to do). Also all the ops would have bought the add-on. Instead the cameras keep reducing in size and these gimbals get better.

To reiterate, I know where I'm putting my money. No comparison as far as cost against utility. $15K for Movi that can pretend to be a Libra head or upwards of $60K for a more conventional steadicam rig? Ummmm...

Of course I agree time will tell if the look of these shots will suit enough to replace a steadicam operated well. I'm sure I'll be strapping myself back into the "grumpy suit" in the years to come.
 
Hey thinking about it... Why doesn't someone make a roll axis only stabiliser to interface with a normal steadicam that can then take larger cameras? Wouldn't this be MUCH easier to do these days with all this gimbal stuff flying around? Wouldn't that be the best of both worlds? Just an active rocker plate of some sort.
 
The thing that no one is commenting on, is is it actually a decent head? Can you put it on a dolly, and operate it remotely with the same results as any industry standard hot head. Is it as good as hot gears? Is it as good as a jimmy jib? Is it as bad as an alexmos board? That really is going to dictate how it is adopted on big sets. No operator is going to go, "Oh good, the big car stunt is coming up. Lets put up the shitty little head that is hard to control." If all it does is sloppy wide, it is of limited utility. I'd love to hear that it's ultra precise. If any professional operators get to operate the gimbal (not just run around and point it at stuff) I would be very interested in hearing their opinions.

Nick
 
Hey thinking about it... Why doesn't someone make a roll axis only stabiliser to interface with a normal steadicam that can then take larger cameras? Wouldn't this be MUCH easier to do these days with all this gimbal stuff flying around? Wouldn't that be the best of both worlds? Just an active rocker plate of some sort.
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I have all the stuff to do this and plan to do it with an epic within a week.

Nick
 
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