First 3D Epic Aerial shoot with the SpaceCam

The first aerial 3D shoot with Epics took place 5.19.2011 in Los Angeles, on the SpaceCam. SpaceCam has a long history of industry firsts, with their custom IMAX cameras, the first Red One flight in February of '08 in Las Vegas, to the first Red One 3D flights and rigs to be used on Pirates of the Caribbean 4, Final Destination 5 & Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (Journey to the Center of the Earth sequel).

The Crew: In attendance was SpaceCam inventor and Academy Award winner Ron Goodman and his team from SpaceCam, Andrew Sych, Phil Rothwell & Café Cibilis. From RED we had the pleasure of Mr. Ted Schilowitz, Travis Sims & Justin Jones. Local 600 DIT's myself & Tony Kwan and 1st AC extraordinaire Richard Avalon. Piloting our helicopter was President of the MPPA (Motion Picture Pilots Association) Rick Shuster flying with an A-star provided by Southcoast Helicopters. Inside the R22 was pilot Dave Childs & photographer Merlinda Salas.

This flight was done for the purpose of testing the unit and for showing several upcoming films what 3D aerials can do, instead of a single camera converted in post. Unfortunately there wasn't enough prep time to use the new dome that SpaceCam is working on, in order to make the 3D rigs more compact. Instead we used the same dome used for the IMAX & 3D on previous films. The size of the Epics is ideal for this type of work and increases the lens options. SpaceCam had only about 10hrs of prep time to pull this off. It was pretty impressive of them.

We shot at 48fps baserate at 6:1 compression ration, which gave us about 13.5 minutes per 128mag.