"Lucky Number Slevin"
Morgan Freeman -
Josh Hartnett -
Ben Kingsley -
Lucy Liu -
Bruce Willis
The first background plate I shot was for the TV series "Murder, She Wrote" and I was trained by the Jedi Master from the "Fugitive" TV series. We all did it the same way with a 35mm motion picture camera that was locked down and hard mounted. In the beginning there was no computer enhanced imaging - the studio and the rest of us just lived with the "shake". Some lenses were better than others. We let the air out of the tires and used sandbags as ballast but these were refinements not major improvements.
At the end of the series "Mad About You" the visual effects department started using computer stabilization which works great but costs about $500 per second of screen time and takes the visual artist days to complete even for small sequences. The studio finally saw that the background plates could be smooth but at a high price.
On the TV series "Will and Grace" I did a series of shutter angle tests with the visual effects department for Warner Brothers and we established some more refinements. We still had camera shake on the dailies and the price of the visual stabilizing is always an issue.
I was not happy and knew there had to be a better way. I started with spring shock absorbers then moved to silicon rubber mounts for "Mr and Mrs Smith" but again these were not working very well. They helped but it still was not a major improvement. I started looking at gyros and building a gimbal mount but then I found Aerial Exposures. I knew I had to test the Aerial Exposure mount for my current feature and TV series.
I was the first person to use the gyro mount on a process trailer and it has been working great for the feature "Lucky Number Slevin". This mount is what I have needed for the past 15 years. I could have used it on 8 features films and 35 prime-time series television shows. The mount takes out all small bumps and the large bumps are now small bumps that last no more than a second. As for the shots on 2nd Ave in NYC, a street that is a pothole nightmare, the Aerial Exposure mount worked like a dream. It is a major improvement for Background Plates. The mount is relatively inexpensive when compared to the Libra Head or a Westcam and it is just as effective. The mount does take some skill to use but any working camera operator will have no trouble getting up to speed with smooth shots the first time. The more you use it the better you become. You have to be careful of operator drift when the road has major potholes but this is just practice. The mount can also be used in a condor crane or boat but you must still operate the camera.
The mount can reduce your post-production costs, decrease your delivery time and give your footage the competitive edge that is needed.
M. C.
Arnie Itzkowitz - Owner of "Aerial Exposures International"
Designer of the "Aerial Exposures Gyro-Stabilized Mount"