Hi guys,
SIB owner here, so be gentle with me, but I had exposure to a bit of technology this week during the Wildscreen festival in Bristol that I thought might be of interest (at least in concept) to any of you fine RIB owners who hire out to work with film companies.
Basically, the same sort of gyro technology that we all take for granted in our mobile phones with their tilt games is now being adopted in tripods, and you can get a powered tripod head that will compensate (quite successfully from the demo I saw) for your boat moving about - keeping the camera level whilst in choppy water.
This is the demo reel for the kit that I saw :-
Motion Picture Marine - Demo Reel
and there are others :-
PEACE RIVER STUDIOS: 3Sixty and 3Sixty Jr.
Seeing it in the flesh mounted on a RIB was a bit spooky as the boat moves, and the camera doesn't.
Citing full disclosure, the company I work for has bought a couple of these to hire out, but I'm not going to tell you the company name as I don't like to mix business with pleasure if I can avoid it!
Suffice it to say that I was impressed with the concept, and I saw a few experienced film-makers quite impressed, as well as the nice gent who was running the RIB.
I'd imagine that film clients are probably quite fickle characters, but if you can offer up a stabilising solution off the bat, it might not only cut down on 'waiting for the perfect weather' time, it might also make the difference between hiring a RIB or not.
I also saw a radio controlled octo-copter which was nothing short of awesome, but that's got nothing to do with RIBs at all ;-)
Cheers,
Mike.
