Steadicam Plateau: What gear do we want next?

[Victor Lazaro]

Quantum locked dolly.

[steve wagner]

I've never met Larry, but he seems fearless and forever enthusiastic to add new and useful technology to his rig arsenal, I'm assuming he just wants to continuously upgrade his already well recognized capability and deliver results to the client that drastically exceed expectations. Can't find any fault in that.

[Geoff Owen]

I've never met Larry either and expect that I sadly never will. Seems that this topic has drifted off from the original topic of "what new gear we would like to see in the future".

But to continue on the Larry topic, in the future perhaps we can have a micro chip installed in our head that has the "Larry" programmed into it so we could all think and operate like Larry. Perhaps we could have a choice of personality programes like a "Garrett" program or a "Ted" program. Sorry to all the other fantastic operators that I haven't mentioned here but once we have the tech to make all this happen we can expand the personality/operator choices. I guess I'll be stuck with my personality and operating shortfalls for the rest of my career, but the new operators coming through might have something to look forward to in the future. If I get the option I think I would get the "Garrett" simply for the ability to "Smile even though your in pain" element.

To a more realistic idea on this topic, I would like to see the standard "Rigs" to be "Waterproof" or at least "Showerproof", this goes for cameras as well. It's rediculous that as soon as a sprinkle of rain begins to fall we all have to wrap up the camera and Sleds etc with poorly fitting plastic bags etc. The job is hard enough to do without all this plastic stuff wrapped around the gear and the associated paranoia that surrounds the camera department when this common weather condition happens. We don't all rush out to our cars and throw bags over them when it rains do we, perhaps a few do.

I do realise that a lot of money is invested in our equipment and downtime fixing a shorted-out Rig is an expensive time consumming pain.

However I suspect that our gear is far more resilient to water than what we think and to make it "Showerproof" shouldn't be that hard. I think that Pro says that you can hose off their arms, can't this be done with the G series of Arms from Tiffen or anyone elses? Surely the amount of sweat that drips down your arm and into the Steadicam arm must do more damage than simple fresh water. The Vests, well the amount of sweat that poors into them should mean that we can hose them off as well. Most of the Sled is made of elements that are waterproof, it simply can't be that hard. Some monitors are waterproof etc. I just bought a new Sony mobile phone (cell phone) thats "Waterproof" to 1 metre for 30 minutes, although I haven't tried it out just yet, it isn't bulky or come with a plastic bag to put it into, it just is, simple.

I don't expect that the amount of "Waterproofing" of a Rig would allow us to simply walk into a swimming pool and submerg the whole Rig and back out, (but that would be interesting shot), but enough to be able to walk around in the rain without fear that the Rig will short out.

Perhaps this is worth a new Topic to be discussed on the forum? Anyone?

Thanks for reading

Geoff Owen