John Mahaffie (Second Unit Director) and Tim Coddington (Production Manager) put their faith in Team Velocity for their cable suspended camera flying work on Chronicles of Narnia (Prince Caspian).
John and Milan Chadima (DOP) tested us off the top with a challenging shot list set in a very confined stage in Prague. The shots required good control of the camera through aggressive accelerations and decelerations. To meet this challenge we coupled Our 'Vector-Cam' cable suspended camera flying system to the latest Libra 5 3 axis head (supplied by Camera Revolution and teched by Mike Buxton) for an unbeatable combination. The scenes required that we build 3 separate 2D rigs with a shooting schedule that dictated nightly changeovers and one that had to be changed mid shooting day which we accomplished in under 2 hours much to the delight of Phil Jones (second unit 1st Assistant Director).
Having past the first test with smiles all around and with outstanding footage in the can, John and Tim asked us to look at their next exterior scenes (a big battle) requiring a flying camera.
The set was a large meadow outside of Prague. The shots were originally designed as 2D requiring two different setups occupying different geography in the meadow dictating a shooting schedule break to accommodate rig relocation. John and Milan knew we had the ability and equipment to fly their camera in 3D and they could see that 3D flight would give them the most flexibility creatively as well as logistically, having complete freedom to change the direction of camera flight based on direction of light etc. Tim and the Producers could also see the advantages in both creativity and logistics, so they asked us to build a 3D rig.
We brought in four large cranes and positioned them in the four corners of the meadow to suspend our 'Vector-Cam' computer controlled camera flying system to create what we believe to be one of the world's largest 3D vector rigs. It was an astoundingly large rig, 310m X 200m (1,000ft X 650ft) with the ability to fly up to 30m (100ft) high and travel at speeds of up to 25m/sec (82ft/sec) or 90km/hr!
Over a four-day shooting schedule Team Velocity and their Vector-Cam rig far exceeded everyone's expectations both creatively and professionally. John and Milan got the utmost in flexibility and creativity and Tim and the Producers got it on schedule with no downtime or costly delays on set.
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