Last summer I met with Dr. Nigel Livingston, the director of CanAssist at the University of Victoria. His organization is “dedicated to developing technology, programs and services that improve the quality of life of those with special needs”.
I wanted to know if he’d help us develop a tool that would be unique in the media production world, a wheelchair-mounted rolling jib system that would be capable of shooting HD video.
When I said “help us develop” a rolling jib system, what I really meant to say was “please design and build” this system for us, and “please design it so that it can be operated by someone with little to no use of their hands”.
Dr. Livingston agreed –enthusiastically– and we were off to the races.
CanAssist’s Darcy Lane was assigned to coordinate the project. It soon became clear that the most difficult hurdle we’d face would be to come up with a head that would enable the operator to point the camera at the end of the jib arm. Google led us to the PoleCam web site.
How to describe the PoleCam? Imagine an egg-sized video camera at the end of a 20 foot fishing rod. Once I knew to look for it, I could see the PoleCam was being used everywhere. During the Beijing Olympics it was used to follow divers as they plunged through the air and into the pool. It was used to videotape long-distance swimmers and cyclists, and I’m sure a whole lot of other events.
As it turns out, a Victoria filmmaker had used a PoleCam to make a film for National Geographic Films. Darcy and I went to see the system for ourselves, and realized it was just the solution we were looking for. Not only was it light, well built and silky-smooth, but the business end of the pole, the head, is controlled by a joystick. Someone who spends 16 hours a day in a power wheelchair develops some wicked joystick skills.
I got in touch with Steffan Hewitt, the owner of the PoleCam company, hoping to convince him to lend us, or sell us on the installment plan, just the head mechanism. But, once I described our project and organization to him, Steffan shipped a complete PoleCam setup to UVic from his headquarters outside London. And then he arranged for Toshiba to send us the HD camera that works with the PoleCam!
With all the pieces in hand, the task of mounting them onto a wheelchair and getting them to work together fell to UVic engineering student Brandon Fry, and as you can see in the video above, he’s doing a great job. Brandon designed a sip-and-puff system to control the vertical movement of the jib. That’s Brandon operating the jib, and Darcy describing it.
Finally, thanks to Terry LeBlanc for letting us use his backup wheelchair, and for volunteering to test-pilot the system.
I’m pretty sure he volunteered. Someone volunteered him anyway.
The little Toshiba camera is now mounted in the PoleCam head, and we should have some sample footage to share very soon.
As Hannibal Smith used to say, ” I love it when a plan comes together!”
Very cool! Very ambitious and very impressive.