Skycam Images

Larry and David

The author (left) and partner David Hastings using the theodolite that we used to survey the Skycam setup. Part of my responsibility was figuring out how the math worked to convert joystick inputs into camera motion. In order to do this, you need to know the position of the camera suspension points in 3D. To know that, you have to survey the position of the suspension pulleys.

Garrett and Steadicam

Garrett Brown (center) inventor of the Steadicam and the Skycam, strapped into the Steadicam and getting ready to do a shot. The Shoot was in Baltimore, for a Bank. The TV Ad we were shooting had a long Skycam shot where the camera swooped down across a City Square and ended up in front of a Bank entrance, then Garrett picked the shot up with a Steadicam and traveled through the door, across the lobby and right up to a teller.

Early Skycam Controls

Version 2 of the Skycam control setup. Left to right: the Blue and white box houses the twin joysticks for the Skycam pilot. the left stick is '"Z" or up and down, and the right stick is 'X and Y" or movement parallel to the ground plane. Below that is a black box with wheels, the "Geared head" used by the Camera Operator to control tilt and pan on the Skycam camera payload. It is a two man job. Behind that is the B&W monitor used by the Camera Operator to see the view transmitted by the Skycam. Next right with the black-surrounded tube is a teeny-tiny CRT monitor used as a test device. This was before any kind of LCD displays. The beige box with the black front is a Sage II - a Motorola 68000 processor microcomputer that David and I programmed in Hyper-Forth (a Threaded Interpretative Language favored by astronomers) to be the central motion control computer. The Silver box atop the sage is a custom GPIB protocol interface box that connected the Sage to the Joysticks and, thru serial links (!) to the motor controllers. Last is the "dumb" green screen terminal used to display status and coordinates ( no graphics) to the Pilot.

Team and Skycam

Here are Larry McConkey - Steadicam Operator, Ned Lex - Rigger, and Rich Friedman - Project Manager. You have probably seen Larry's work. Recently, he did the slick Steadicam corridor shot of the fierce Lucy Liu entering the restaurant with her gang to confront Uma Thuman in "Kill Bill".

Skycam v. 2 Payload

The whole point of the Skycam control system is to deliver a stabilized, in communication, in control camera to an interesting viewpoint above the action. Here is the top of the payload with the covers off. At the top are several boxes containing the Radio-frequency control system, the video signal transmission system, and the twin gyroscopes. Below that are the twin red-topped batteries that powered the rig. Below that, you can see the bands of the slip rings that carried power from the Batteries to the gimbals. Below that is a mysterious custom black Seitz box that used light-weight MOSFET power conversion to convert the battery juice to the four different voltages needed by the gear. The platform at the bottom is the powered gimbals that kept the rig upright, and the four attachment points for the suspension cables. The whole was exquisitely balanced before each job to minimize active gimbal power and thus load on the battery system.

Skycam Winch Rig

Here is one of four Skycam winch rigs tied down for testing. The silver box at left bottom is a custom interface and control box that managed motor mode and status, and allowed local manual control or remote central control. The Box atop it is a purchased power conversion and motor controller that accepted control input, and managed power output to the motor. The sled to the right contains the 1/4 hp electric motor (front), the gearing and chop, or counter wheel (left), the cable on its spool (back) and the cable guide that guided the cable on and off the spool. This version carried 1000' of stainless steel woven cable per spool, enough to span the largest stadium, custom-made and sled mounted.

Panavision Payload

The film-shoot payload for the Skycam, a specially stripped-down Panavision 35mm camera. Carried 200' of film at a time, with remote tilt and pan from the geared head. Probably the rig used at "The Natural"

Skycam Intern

Young Skycam Intern Missy Hall - who had no idea what she was getting into - nor did the rest of us!

Skycam Osborne 2

A very early shot of the author and the original Skycam control system, an Osborne 2 with a custom GPIB control interface box. This early portable computer ran CPM, had twin floppies, about 64K of RAM, and a smokin' 1 MHZ Z-80 processor. We chose this unit because it was (somewhat) portable, and had an addressable two way interface (GPIB) built in. The lack of much support for this unit meant that I ended up hand coding some key items in Z-80 assembler, including the GPIB interface and the square root algorithm. Along the way I discovered the Z-80's unique HCF (Halt and Catch Fire) op-code. (Sorry, an old assembler coder's joke that I couldn't resist throwing in). This picture was taken at our first field trial at Havertown HS in Havertown, PA, around (gulp) late 1982. The amazing thing was that the darn thing flew with this rig.