MōVI Update – Availability, Awards, Contest and 1st Winner

Wow.

That’s seems like the only appropriate word to describe what’s happened in the past 7 days since the release of the MōVI film and stabilized gimbal. The videos that I’ve included in this Vimeo Gallery have been seen 1.6 million times in under a week’s time.

First a few important updates:

Ship times / deposits / availability:

Freelfy is taking pre-oders on the M10 and MR (RC Helo) units now here: movirig.com

The deposit is for $2,500 and is fully refundable. It simply ensures your place in line and allows Freefly to properfly set their production lines and order proper quantities of parts.

Both units are selling for $14,995 and come with a remote control and batteries for the unit.

The MōVI M10 supports the weight of a system that is 10 lbs – that roughly equates to a RED Epic with Cine Primes and Follow Focus + wireless transmitters. That weight range of course encompasses all Canon & other brand HDSLRs, C100,C300, C500 there with regular lenses and cine lenses (and similar systems of the same weight and size) that don’t exceed 10 lbs total. The rig itself weighs 3.5 lbs and can travel with you in the overhead compartment of an airline.

A MōVI M5 (that supports up to 5 lbs) and a MōVI M20 aimed at heavier camera systems such as the Arri Alexa or an Epic Camera with a zoom lens will be announced at a later date.

Ethos:

The Ethos of Freefly is to under-promise and over-deliver. Right now they have announced that the first units will start to ship in the third quarter of this year (that is the July-September range.)

They are also a company that have built a pretty sterling reputation in the RC Helicopter market and they are a bit obsessive with quality of manufacturing, software, and customer support. There is absolutely no room for error when you fly six figure cinema cameras in the air over an open field, let alone over a production. So these are not the type of people who tend to take any shortcuts regardless of momentum of demand – and I respect them tremendously for that.

If you were to order a MōVI today you should expect to receive yours within a reasonable period of time after the first ones ship – especially compared to general expectations of what other companies have done. (That’s as non-specific a way for me to say: put your name in line now, you can always change your mind and get your deposit back, once you do so you’ll have to wait what I would call an "industry standard" waiting period for any popular product – but if you choose to wait to put your order in you’ll obviously have to wait quite a bit longer as demand is quite strong and growing.)

MōVI M10 Giveaway:

One twitter follower was selected at the conclusion of NAB yesterday to win the very first MōVI M10 off of the production line. We used a random number generator app based on the total number of their followers at the time and have a winner. We just need a little time to track down who follower number "X" is without having to do it the hard way… and then we need to contact them to make sure their account is valid of course before we announce. We also have a fun idea for announcing it – so basically RELAX. You shouldn’t need to refresh your Direct Message queue on twitter every ten seconds… as some apparently have been doing.

There is still a second change to win the second MōVI M10 off the production line – all you need to do is to follow both @freeflycinema and @vincentlaforet on twitter and we’ll pick that winner within a month from now.

Demo requests / Production inquiries etc:

We’ve gotten a good amount of request to use the MōVI on some pretty um… let’s just say "respectable" movies and commercials. Kindly forward your requests to the following e-mail address: movi at freeflysystems.com and they will get back to you as soon as possible. The group at Freeflfy is passionate about filmmaking, and has a strong interest in getting these units out to as many productions as possible who would make the best use of their MōVI.

Awards:

Freefly received 3 significant awards during NAB this past week – notably the prestigious Digital Video Black Diamond Award, the Mario Award and the InBroacast Editor’s Awards.

As Jon Fauer of Film and Digital Times said:

"If FDTimes gave awards, MoVi would probably win most innovative new product of the show."

You can read his full article here.

Final Word:

Freefly is a company that started under a different name under a decade ago in a garage and that quickly grew to being one of the pre-emminent RC helicopter companies out there.

They employ some of the brightest engineers in the world – I’ve worked with engineers at Apple for 5+ years and I can confirm this from first hand experience.

They were anticipating strong demand (but not QUITE this level of demand) and they are already in production on getting these units out to everyone as soon as possible.

Two of the founders are filmmakers and have worked on some of the biggest hollywood productions and they understand our needs extremely well. One was a highly skilled Steadicam operator and one of the best I’ve had the chance to work with.

Their goal is to get these units to as many filmmakers as possible, as quickly as possible. They have a passion for filmmaking and want to make sure they can get enough high quality product out there without a hitch, so that they can eventually get it inthe hands of filmmakers of every budget level.

More posts to come soon on gear that we used on the two shoots – the original MōVI shoot in New York City on the Canon EOS 1DC and a commercial we shot together the week before NAB with the RED Epic.

If you’d like to download some additional footage and make a charitable donation to the Lollipop Theater on behalf of the cast and crew – please click here to see and download footage shot with the GH3, raw takes of the Roller Blade shots from MōVI and 2 others (ungraded) as well director and inventor’s commentary click here.

MōVI from Vincent Laforet on Vimeo.