Pacific Motion Control

This promo for the Google Science Fair, featuring a fantastic Rube Goldberg machine consisting of typical science fair elements, was filmed in a single continuous pass using the Graphlite motion control camera crane.

Motion Control Operator – Paul Maples
Motion Control Tech – Adam Francis

Broken Bells “The Ghost Within” Music Video

The Gazelle motion control camera crane was recently tasked to do some classic motion control work for a very modern music video.  In films like Star Wars and Star Trek: The Motion Picture motion control was perfected while shooting miles of film of miniature space ships, and that technique was used very effectively in music video for “The Ghost Within”.

On the set of a recent Tsubaki commercial, I had the opportunity to capture a few hundred pictures of the Gazelle Motion Control Camera Crane in action, in order to put together a couple of really good 3D photo sets on Microsoft’s Photosynth website. For someone unfamiliar with motion control equipment, this is a good opportunity to see what a motion control camera crane looks like, set up and ready to go.

For this shot, we were on a very long track run, and the rig needed to go about 13 feet per second, so we were using our large servo track motor, and a 5/1 gear ratio for the track drive. we also needed to pan very quickly, so we fitted our motion control pan/tilt head with a servo motor for pan, and a large servo amplifier rode on the rig.

At the time of this shoot, this was as fast as we could possibly make the Gazelle go, and it performed flawlessly. Since this time, we built a much faster track drive system. Originally built for the Cheetah dolly, this track drive system can be used on all of our rigs, giving them the fastest tracking speeds of any full motion control systems.

Shutter Island – Directed by Martin Scorsese

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, and Ben Kingsley

Tooth Fairy – Directed by Michael Lembeck

Starring Dwayne Johnson and Ashley Judd

New Moon – Directed by Chris Weitz

Starring Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner, Robert Pattinson, Billy Burke, and Ashley Greene

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian – Directed by Shawn Levy

Starring Ben Stiller, Amy Adams,  Owen Wilson, Hank Azaria, Robin Williams, and Christopher Guest

This commercial was filmed using the Graphlite live-action motion control crane.

Motion Control Operator – Paul Maples

Motion Control Technician – Adam Francis