This past weekend I was at the PhotoCine Expo in Hollywood and I think it’s safe to say that everyone had a great time! There were a number of familiar faces from the world of HDDSLR’s at the expo – including Rodney Charters and Shane Hurlbut. Aside from the familiar faces – a number of new pieces of gear also made an appearance. Given that I hand my hands full with prepping and giving both a workshop and keynote – I thought I’d link to a friend’s excellent videos on the matter (thanks to Jared Abrams at Cinema5D for his coverage of the Expo):
One of the items getting the biggest buzz at the Expo was Redrock Micro’s new microEVF. You can read PhotoCine’s review of the product HERE.
The kicker is: I didn’t have any harness… they simply didn’t bother to give me one and I didn’t need one for the most part, as I was climbing up INSIDE the antenna to get to the top (very similar to the video below)…
BUT, when I got to the top – I should of had one as I was out in the open, on a 3-foot wide crow’s nest… again w/ no harness… leaning on my stomach, with my shoes hooked in on the gap near the needle – looking straight down to see this image. Here I am on the crow’s nest in January of 2000 in the image below.
When people hear this story… they call me crazy. The real scary part about the walk up – was that there were 14,000,000 watts of radio/tv waves coming from the top of the Empire State Building – you’re not supposed to stand up too long: or you may never have kids… My pager was going off non-stop (this was the year 2000 remember pagers?) And then it was windy – and I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that the tower sways when it’s windy… just to add to the fun.
But if you look at the video below, it’s clear that I’ve been outdone – REALLY outdone:
One of the most attractive things about the HDDSLR movement is that it has led to some pretty incredible/resourceful innovation by so many people out there… and here we have a funny little contraption that pushes that envelope into new territory…
A follow focus made entirely from Legos. My son would absolutely freak if he saw me working with this (in a good way!)
Given how solid Legos can be – I wouldn’t be surprised to see this thing actually perform well…
Not sure I’d pull this out on the next job where you’re shooting Angelina Jolie (come to think of it, all of her kids might find it entertaining though…) but its definitely entertaining. I would be curious to hear how well it works. Hop on over to the HDV Blog to check out how they did it. The site is mostly in Japanese, but they provide plenty of pictures and a full list of the lego pieces involved.
In the voice of the little Xtranormal characters: I don’t care…. I must have one… I want to ride the Lego Super Techno-Crane with the Lego follow focus Preston unit!
