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Redford - "The Natural"

On the location set of "The Natural" in Buffalo.  Award-winning DP Caleb Deschanel is a good friend of Garrett's and he got us a trial on this fine Feature film.  My introduction to the business of making movies. We shot for three days on location, but none of our footage made it into the film.

Redford Lighting

Redford doing a lighting test.  Lots of hurry up and wait on a movie set - many crafts and skills come together for each shot.

Skycam control in action

The Skycam control setup on location at "The Natural".  This was the Sage 2 rig, with green-screen monitor on the left.  That's me in the yellow hat, left.  Then Garrett, Caleb, unknown, and at right John Seitz, who designed and constructed most of the custom electronics in the Skycam.  At this point, version 2 the Skycam was still in development.  I was coding all night, and running the system on a major motion picture set all day.  I was fried after four days, to say the least.

Skycam on the Field

Garrett and Bob Redford discussing the Skycam, and prospective shots.  The rig is to the left, held by John, with Tass Michos applying a final adjustment.  Garrett was something of a legend as the inventor of the Steadicam, and used his reputation to promote the use of the Skycam.

Natural Camera

Here you can see the camera payload.  The top and bottom of the spar was carefully balanced to minimize oscillations due to movement.  The muddy field is due to several days of rain - at one point they had a helicopter hover over the field for an hour to dry it off, to no avail.

Morgan Fairchld

You may have seen Morgan recently on Old Navy ads.  She was on the set because her boyfriend was the camera operator.  At this point she was a major starlet, equivalent to Paris Hilton today.  In Buffalo, there were hourly radio bulletins about Morgan sightings.  I had a poster of her in the software shop, and was awe-struck to see her in the flesh.  My shameless buddy Rich, the Project Manager, dragged me up to her and introduced me, and told her how she was my inspiration during the long nights of coding for the Skycam Software development effort.  Ms. Fairchild was charmed, and allowed me to take her picture.

I've still got your poster, Ms. Fairchild- hot as ever.  I'm still a big fan.  Call me next time you are out at QVC and lets do lunch.

Software Team

The Skycam software development team in the Skycam shop.  L-to-R - that's David Hastings, his wife Mary, My wife Marie and Me.  I'm holding a beer, so some kind of celebration is underway.  Note the Radio Shack RS-100 laptops we are holding.  Arguably the first affordable laptop - we used them to run basic programs to do the trigonometry needed to calculate the pulley locations based on survey data.