Anthony Hardwick

I heard that the folks behind the design of this unit are ex-Arriflex employees. I also heard rumours of a law suit. I don't know for sure about either of these allegations, but perhaps someone else here does? One thing I do know is that the readout on the screen depicted on that website looks very similar to the Arriflex unit I saw at NAB last year.

I apologize for not being able to post the weights this week. I should have known better than to try to pin myself down on a due date. Unforeseen bookings coupled with an insanely busy Post Office this week (April 15th is rapidly approaching - Tax return filing deadline for our non-U.S.A. folks) have conspired to make this an impossible task for this week. I'll try for mid to late next week when I have a free moment... but no promises :unsure:

The trial I was on ended early, so I can probably weigh the sled on Monday. Will post results when I do.

Rich, The case is a beast. I'm thinking of an alternative design that will be smaller and lighter. I'm leaning towards a soft case (there are a few around like Rock Steadi's) for while I'm in town and just driving to and from shoots with the rig built, and a hard case for shipping and airline travel that is considerably more compact. This case would pack the rig more efficiently broken down into it's components. The Ultimate disassembles so easily that this seems like an easy way to achieve a smaller lighter case. Anthony

How about an electrical "shocking" mechanism that will automatically shock anyone (other than you the operator) who touches any part of the rig. This would take care of those occasional overzealous directors who try to "show" you the opening frame they want by tugging on your rig. ;) Also, how about an anti-gravity module that you can activate for those times when you are waiting to roll between takes, and your docking stand is too far away and the production is taking it's time getting their act together after they've called "Here we go..." If we're dreaming here, then why talk about solar cells to recharge batteries? How about a miniature clean power generating device? Something like a hydrogen fusion reactor? How about an arm that automatically adjusts it's springs for different weights at the touch of a button (like re-calibrating a Preston FIZ)? Lest anyone think I'm serious here... I am joking :)

Rich, If no one else gets around to it first, I will weigh my Ultimate with TB-6 and Ergo handle/gimbal as soon as I can. I'll weigh it both with and without the Preston MDR-2, and with and without batteries but no motors, batteries, cables. I'm on a trial at the moment as a juror, but it should end mid next week. I'll post the results ASAP with detailed info (i.e. battery types, etc). Anthony

Most vests feature adjustable side to side (or roll axis as you put it), as well as fore/aft adjustability. If the vest doesn't have both axis adjustable, then you could never fully trim the rig properly to float in the desired position while standing properly with good posture (or as good as possible with the rig on anyway).

DP dues are higher than that ;)

Jamie, Thanks for the explanation. I guess that makes sense, but I still wish we had a screening room. Having said that, I haven't had a chance to check it out yet. I'll have to get down there before long. Is the NYC office in the same place (14th off 8th Avenue)? Hope all is well with you, Anthony

What I want to know about the new building is.... WHY is there no screening room in it for the benefit of our membership? With all of the planning, renovation, etc. we are still begging and borrowing screening rooms from other Guilds (like the DGA). That makes no sense to me at all. Sorry for the rant. Maybe I'm the only to one whom this flaw seems obvious to.

The ones I tried were full covering types, but they had an opacity adjustment that lets you dial in whatever amount of opacity you wish. In other words, you could have view the real world through the glasses with an overlayed image of the video feed. Sort of like a double exposure photo. This was difficult to get used to, I think a one eyed version, or a corner of the lens being clear would be better for me. Having done many years of hand held documentary shooting, I am very used to walking around with my right eye open in the finder, and my left eye looking out at the world. I leave both open, and I guess my brain switches the view rapidly as needed for navigation. I've gotten pretty good at it over the years, and I don't need a spotter except for walking backwards.

I just tried a similar set of video glasses (made by SONY) a few weeks ago on the feature I am operating on. I was testing out whether or not they would be helpful to operate a shot where the camera was jammed into a very uncomfortable and nearly impossible position to operate (non-steadicam). Even using an on-board monitor was difficult for this shot because of the massive pan that the shot required and the fact that the only place I could physically be did not allow me to maneuver myself into a a position to easily view the LCD screen throughout the shot... damn the lousy limited viewing angle of many on-board LCD's! In any case, the other operator on our show owns a pair of these glasses, and I tried them out during a few rehearsals of this shot. The action I was trackiing was a basketball being shot to the hoop. I found the glasses to be pretty disorienting, and in fact I opted to not use them for this shot in the end. Instead I did the usual contortionist routine we seem to have to do every now and then. I do see how these types of glasses MAY be good for certain shots. In fact they may be the ONLY way to get some shots. Following action with them is difficult and counter intuitive though, because of the spatial disorientation caused by the disconnect between your vision and your various other senses (inner ear in particular). I think with some practice I could have made the system work for me, but on a feature with only a few minutes before the take, it wasn't enough time to be proficient with them. If any of you has tried walking through that amusement park gimmick of the rotating "star field" tube while trying to maintain your upright and balanced posture, you know what I mean by spatial disorientation. Another analogy might be the one where you have a set of headphones on and they feed you your own speech at a delayed interval (say a 1 to 2 second delay), and you try to speak normally. It is very difficult. In any case, the other problem with these glasses is that the resolution is pretty poor. At least they were with the model I tried. The SONY model is no longer manufactured, and it was never sold in the US. The menus were all in Japanese, so that made setting them up "interesting," to say the least. Thankfully, our loader speaks and reads Japanese fluently! Just my .02 cents... I hope that helps.

Oliver, I did a shoot in Nepal many years ago. I was an AC at the time. One day in the two week shooting schedule we flew up to a high altitude village called Lang Tang. If I recall correctly, it was located at an altitude of 16,700 feet. We flew in a massive Russian military helicopter with our crew and two full 16mm camera packages. There was no steadicam, but we were all suffering from the effects of mild altitude sickness by the end of the shoot. If I could figure out why my pics don't seem to post here, I'd post a beautiful picture from that day. In any case, if you can possibly ease into the high altitude stuff to let your body acclimate over a period of at least a few days, you will fare better. The rig will no doubt have you well out of breath before long. Be careful. Drink LOTS of water. It is easy to dehydrate at altitude. Wear sun block. Bring warm clothes. Take some tylenol with you. Good luck! Anthony

Bobo and Gregg Schmidt, I hope you both have a great birthday. May all your birthday wishes come true. A NYC Grip wished that for me on one of my birthdays years ago, and I told him the only birthday wish I had for that year was to catch a keeper Striped Bass (28" or longer at the time). I went fishing the next morning (which was my birthday), and I caught this beauty... If I had known the wish was gonna come true, I might have wished for something bigger :P Best, Anthony Ah well... the picture doesn't seem to be posting properly. Hmmm. I'll try to fix that somehow

Eric, Please do post the results of your extensive testing for us all to benefit from. Be sure to include relevant information regarding your control and procedural methods in evaluating the various batteries, as Greg has done. This would be most valuable information for all steadicam operators to have. Thanks in advance, Anthony PS - has anyone tried the Dionics on a sled to power a 435 at high speed? If so, how did it work? My apologies if this has been posted and I missed it.

Michael, I didn't mean to imply that Gregg had tested the Dionics, but I see how my post made it sound like that. My apologies to you and your English/Grammar teacher mum for that ;) When I wrote, "I haven't tried Dionics yet, but I've been meaning to give Greg Bubb a call to talk about batteries, since he has done some extensive testing of them, and is pretty knowledgeable about them in general." The "them" in that sentence was meant to refer to "batteries" in the preceding clause, and not Dionics. The unclear writing on my part was probably due to waking up too early and posting after a 3:00 am wrap this morning. Sorry about the confusion. Anthony

Alec, I haven't tried Dionics yet, but I've been meaning to give Greg Bubb a call to talk about batteries, since he has done some extensive testing of them, and is pretty knowledgeable about them in general. He has some info on his website about the results of these tests (the tests were done some time back). I believe he tested Hytron 50's against Trim Pacs. The Hytron 50's being a 14.4V 50 watt hr. NiMh batt, and the Trim Pac being a 14.4V 45 watt hr. NiCad battery. As I recall, in his tests, the Trimpacs won in pretty much each category. You can read all about it on his site: http://www.xcsinc.com/ultimate/ult_batcmp.html I have heard that it's not particularly good or rather efficient to mix battery chemistries as a general rule in powering sleds (i.e. flying one NiCad type batt with one NiMh or LiIon simultaneously). I can't remember exactly why. If I find out I'll post it. Maybe someone else remembers? Anthony

Marine Supply stores also carry a waterproof 3M product that is not velcro, but more like velcro on steroids. Maybe this is what you guys are refering to? It's called "Dual Lock," and here's the description of this stuff: 3M? Dual Lock? Reclosable Fasteners have been used extensively in transportation, electronics, business equipment, machinery, medical and sign and display markets. When the mushroom-shaped stems interlock, tensile strength is high enough to replace mechanical fasteners in many applications, yet you can readily open and close Dual Lock fasteners hundreds of times. High temperature and solvent resistant. Black, polyproplyene reclosable fastener with a VHB? Tape pressure sensitive 400 stems per square inch. Here's a link to the 3M website section on it. Unfortunately there isn't a very good picture of it. http://products3.3m.com/catalog/us/en001/a...ler/output_html The adhesive on the back is waterproof, and the fastener is really strong. I use it to mount a fish finder/depth finder to the top of my kayak. Coming back in through the surf and getting crashed by waves multiple times has not yet caused me to lose the unit.

Jerry, I am using the Panasonic deck, and posted about it a bit in last year's forum. It may be available if you search of the archives. In a nutshell, Erwin is correct. It took a lot of research and some emails to a Panasonic engineer to get the info I needed to get the job done. Then, a collaborative effort involving John from Wolf Seeberg's to make my Medusa cable (as Erwin calls it), Greg Bubb modifying my sled by hooking up the wiring to go from my topstage FIZ connector through the post through the LEH (lower electronic housing) ultimately to the record Lemo connector, and Brian (formerly with Preston) who modified my MDR-2 to send the proper pull down voltage to toggle the record/pause or record/stop as desired to the deck made it all possible. The Medusa cable has one connector that plugs into the sled's LEH, and three cables that diverge from that to provide power, video in/out, and the remote trigger to the deck. It took about a month of R&D to get the info, parts for the cables, and mods done to make it work. It works like a charm, I never have to think about starting the recording. If the camera rolls, we're recording. If the camera stops, we're paused. It's been great. The deck is not as small as the PC-5 or some other units, but it weighs less than you would think at 1.2 lbs). The 3.5" screen is quite good, and i have used it for DJ on more than 1 occasion. It's set up on my sled to provide a good view for some of these applications. If I can get around to taking some pics this week, I'll try to post them. All in all aside from my time invested to research it all, the mods and cable fabrication ended up costing less than $250.00. It is pretty sweet though now that the work is done! Best, Anthony

Gnespolo, My friend's wife's name is Mai. I think that's the way it's spelled. It's pronounced "my" in English. I don't know her maiden name, but it's now Mrs. Smith. My friend's name is Owen, so if you run into a gringo named Owen running around Buenos Aires with a beautiful woman named Mai... it's probably them. They'll be down there for another two weeks or so. I'm not really sure if she worked in film in Buenos Aires, but she does some art dept. stuff here. Take care, Anthony

Okay, I haven't seen Finding Nemo, or Sofia Coppola's first film. I also haven't seen her brother Roman's film or City of God, although it is high on my list of must see movies soon. I do get out to see a movie once in a while though! The thing about the Oscars (or any other awards ceremony), is that it is ultimately just the opinion of a group of people. There are so many political factors as to why one person or film wins in a given instance over another, that you just have to take it all in stride. It shouldn't diminish the value of any of the other films that were nominated simply because they didn't end up being the winning film. It's quite an honor and achievement to simply be nominated. Let's take a look at Sean Penn as a case in point. He won Best Actor last night, but he has been nominated quite a few times before. If I'm not mistaken, he never won before last night though. Does that make him any less great as an actor? Definitely not in my opinion. He got a standing ovation last night, I think because many of the people in that room thought he should have won a best actor award long ago. Why hasn't he won before? Who knows? Maybe some of the voting members of "the Academy" in years past simply didn't like him as a person, or didn't want to see him win for whatever twisted personal reasons. Or maybe they just honestly felt that other actors were more deserving than he was in those years. That doesn't mean that he didn't turn in one of the best (or even THE best) preformances of those years. Who's to say that Jude Law, Ben Kingsley, Bill Murray or Johnny Depp didn't turn in a better performance than Sean Penn's this year? It's all subjective, and ultimately meaningless (except in future earnings potential). City of God and the other films that didn't win in various categories would have definitely gotten a huge boost financially from an Oscar win, but just having been nominated should give a bit of a boost too. In any case, just because Lost in Translation won best original screenplay, that shouldn't diminish the value of the screenplay for City of God (or the other nominees in that category). As for the analogy of a steadicam operator losing a job to another "more handsome" operator... well, lots of guys have lost jobs to me for that very reason. just kidding :D Seriously though, the difference is that the directors and producers of the films that were nominated but didn't win are not losing out on jobs. In fact, just by being nominated they will probably be ensured of being able to continue working.... at least until their first box office flop. Sorry for such a long post, but I lost track of time. As for Wu Shu, no not exactly. I do study a system of Kung Fu called Wing Chun, and also a Filipino style of Arnis Escrima which is heavy on weapons (primarily sticks and bladed edge weapons). I am looking into starting a Chinese internal martial art like Xingyiquan or Baguaquan soon though. I'm taking my time searching for the right instructor. I'm up for that beer anytime! A good cinematographer buddy of mine recently married a gal from Argentina. They're down in Buenos Aires right now for a few weeks. I might visit sometime in the future with them.

With all due respect, Patrick, this thread resides in the "Off Topic" section. As such, I would have thought that posts in this section by definition do not have to necessarily be steadicam specific. Furthermore, I don't think either gnespolo or I can be accused of "not being nice" to eachother. This is a friendly discussion about a film. I am certainly not offended by his views, and judging from his last post, I don't think he's offended by mine. If this sort of discussion is off limits in the "Off Topic" section of this forum, then perhaps I'm altogether hanging out in the wrong forum. As I don't believe that your view is shared by most on this board, I will continue to discuss this topic in the mature manner that it has been discussed in up until now. If you are offended by this thread as you say you are (and I can't imagine why you would be), then please just don't bother to read this thread. That's your prerogative, just as posting in this thread or any other threads is my prerogative. Also, please explain in what way we (gnespolo and I) have engaged in social behavior unbecoming for this forum. You really have me puzzled with that statement. Gnespolo, I'll get back to you shortly... and you don't have to worry, you don't offend me in any way. I, too, enjoy exchaniging posts with you and discussing movies. It's great to have a resource like this international forum on the internet where ideas can be exchanged and we can learn about views of others from different countries and cultures. To me, that is a healthy educational exchange that everyone can benefit from. I'm only sorry to learn that this apparently isn't a view shared by everyone. Oh, by the way, your English is far better than my Spanish is (you're in Argentina if I recall correctly), so don't worry about that! I understand you just fine.

hmmmmm... okay. It just seems odd to me that in your first post you wrote "...the movie its not bad ...but came on nominated for best director?????," and after she won her Oscar, you now write, "i hate the movie cause i feel there is no writing and directing..." It makes no difference to me, I'm just trying to understand why you seem to have a such a visceral reaction to the movie. Is it that you hate the idea of a person who grew up quite privileged succeeding in such a mainstream way? Are you seperating your judgement of the movie from your opinion of the director? There are many great films (and I'm not trying to insinuate that her movie is necessarily great) that have been made by people who were personally not reputed to be very nice or good people. I think I've worked with at least one person who I can safely say is a totally unscrupulous, arrogant A-hole, BUT happens to be really talented when it comes to making movies. As frustrating as it may be to see someone like that achieving great success, I can't deny the fact the movie/movies they make are good. As for Sofia, yes she grew up privileged, and yes, she probably was spoiled, but so what? She took a chance in making a movie, and stuck her neck out there, and is receiving accolades for it. Remember that she tried her hand at acting years ago (in GF III), and she received scathing reviews for her work then. That must have been tough to read and live with. I think she deserves some credit, despite whatever advantages she may have had as a result of being papa Coppola's daughter. Being the son or daughter of a famous and talented father or mother is no gaurantee after all of future success. This fact is evident in so many cases.

Well, not that this has anything to do with Sofia winning best screenplay, but that film was shot by a very talented D.P., Lance Accord. His credits include Being John Malkovitch, Buffalo 66, and Adaptation in addition to Lost In Translation. I'm curious why you're so angry about Ms. Coppola winning the award. Did you hate the movie that much? Do you really think that there was nothing to writing and directing that film? I'd say that she made a smart little movie with a unique voice. Just my opinion.

Greg, if you're listening... Count me in for a run! I'll definitely buy one.