Premium Members Ed Moore Posted April 10, 2008 Premium Members Report Share Posted April 10, 2008 I'm sure I'm the last person on this forum to encounter this, but it's fun anyway. Did a shot involving travelling in an elevator for the first time yesterday, and discovered first hand the effect of near frictionless bearings and the inertia of a large mass which wants to continue travelling upwards :) Obvious when I thought about it for 1/2 a second afterwards, but was a bit of a shock to see the sled happily continuing its journey upwards as the elevator reached the next floor. It's not having a reference to your surroundings that gets you. I expect it must be fun shooting inside a big ship with no view of the horizon... Ed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Members Erik Brul Posted April 10, 2008 Premium Members Report Share Posted April 10, 2008 I'm sure I'm the last person on this forum to encounter this, but it's fun anyway. Did a shot involving travelling in an elevator for the first time yesterday, and discovered first hand the effect of near frictionless bearings and the inertia of a large mass which wants to continue travelling upwards :) Obvious when I thought about it for 1/2 a second afterwards, but was a bit of a shock to see the sled happily continuing its journey upwards as the elevator reached the next floor. It's not having a reference to your surroundings that gets you. I expect it must be fun shooting inside a big ship with no view of the horizon... Ed Hey Ed, i did a corporate last year and experienced the same effect.. We had to do the shot 3 times just because i couldn't stop laughing on camera.. :lol: It is really a strange effect... Will search for the shot, maybe i can post it online.. Erik Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Members JimBartell Posted April 10, 2008 Premium Members Report Share Posted April 10, 2008 Ed DiGiulio told me a story about doing a Steadicam demonstration for some venture capitalists in the TransAmerica Pyramid in San Francisco. John Jurgens, the mechanical engineer who did a lot of the design on the original model, put the unit on before getting in the elevator to do a "dramatic entrance". They didn't anticipate the effect of a high speed express elevator on a free-floating mass. The elevator took off, slamming the sled into the floor and pulling John off his feet. John just managed to get it back under control and the elevator decelerated and the sled went right into the ceiling (John was quite tall). A much shaken John and Ed got off the elevator, pulled themselves together, and went ahead with the demo. Jim "steadi-lore maven" Bartell Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Members Erwin Landau Posted April 10, 2008 Premium Members Report Share Posted April 10, 2008 Oh yeah, acceleration and deceleration of mass... Elevator, Escalators, Crane step on/offs, Motorcycle rigs, traveling Trains or Busses... always fun. Think ahead and compensate, always easier said then done. I did a movie a couple of years ago in Vegas were we shot in one of these Limo Taxies (the ones with the dance poles), the owner wouldn't allow use to use a professional driver, I guess he wanted to be in the movie... First corner first traffic light... I made it to the windshield and almost through it... It wasn't a surprise but then again it was, we ended up doing it handheld and 2 guys spot me, I did several excursions with the mass on my shoulder, everybody was happy after a week that we left that Limo Bus , with only little cuts and bruises... In the past I have faked elevator travel on stages, where you get into the elevator, the dialog continues as the prop department changes the floor number and props to make it appear like another floor... and they wanted that little bobble to make it appear like a real elevator and not a set... Jim, the express elevators are always fun, in the past I had two hands on the rig just to not loose the rig and switch back for the exit... Oh I saw a behind the scenes with Garrett a couple of years ago, as he was faking the turbulences in the Airplane for "Twilight Zone: The Movie" ... so many uses for the steadi... fun, fun. Erwin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Members Afton Grant Posted April 10, 2008 Premium Members Report Share Posted April 10, 2008 In the past I have faked elevator travel on stages, where you get into the elevator, the dialog continues as the prop department changes the floor number and props to make it appear like another floor... and they wanted that little bobble to make it appear like a real elevator and not a set... Funny how sometimes we'll sometimes try to make something real look fake and something fake look real. In McConkey's shot from "Raising Cain", he is aware that bobble will be unavoidable when the real elevator comes to a stop. In order to mask it, he asks the actor in the foreground to shift his weight just slightly as the elevator stops - distracting from any potential bobble. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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