GEAR CAMERA ROBOTICS
to use a global shutter camera that no broadcaster has. “We found a solution,” Geissler says, “to have AI-assisted generation to give a multiview preview for off-air cameras. Disney, through its Star network in India, has been using this to broadcast the Cricket World Cup with 15 million viewers. And it’s not ridiculously expensive either; you can do it with any LED controller and any camera.” Camera movement has long combined precision engineering and electronics, though that alliance has become much closer as other systems start to require positioning data. Ian Speed, owner and founder of Camera Revolution, points out that “all this camera movement was doable 20 or 30 years ago, but it was all analogue. Whether it’s a camera crane that has encoded axes so you can generate graphics, or a crane for when the VFX guys want 20 passes of a shot, it’s all now doable in standard grip equipment.” The pressure to create ever more sophisticated broadcasts has attracted technology from other areas and has provoked the development of entirely new features. “It’s being driven by the requests from the broadcasters,” Speed continues. “How else can we generate an augmented-reality signal? That’s why we’re looking at the automated dolly system AGITO, and we just got a Towercam. This is the tech we’re talking about – for the football, the rugby, the flying wire cameras, the Spidercam systems. Being digitised means you can put graphics over the top of them. We’ve never really utilised Technocranes before, but we’ve been asked for a completely encoded Technocrane.” Making these things possible is one challenge; making them creatively usable is another entirely. “For the AGITO
remote dolly, rather than having a fixed track down the side of a cycling or running track, it instead runs on a magnetic track – you just have to run a mag strip. The gallery can programme shots into the dolly, while the new telescopic cranes we’ve got have the ability to output encoded data. “Technocrane now has the Technodolly, and it’s possible not only to record a job but also get the set-up to repeat the shot. The grip and operator can do the first pass – the hero pass – then the system can take over and do seven more passes. We can now do it with a wire system that’s all digitised.” Crew might worry about reduced opportunities, though Ryan Turner, equipment development technician for Camera Revolution, is an experienced crane technician who has found his niche in a world of increasingly ambitious broadcasts. The job, as he puts it, “without sounding too showbiz, is to spice it up a bit. Not too much – you don’t want to upset the blokes down the pub watching the football – but especially with augmented reality, we’re trying to put something different on the screen. Especially in what we’ve been doing on the rugby, which is heavily presenter- based – the presenters now interact with the virtual world. Things like players popping up out of the ground!”
CUSTOM CAMS VEGA robotic control set-up (top); FHR 60 with bespoke support (above)
THE grip and operator CAN DO THE FIRST PASS – the hero pass – THEN THE SYSTEM TAKES OVER”
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