“A Brief History of Jeff is the story of what happens when a self-described “gimp”, who can’t stomach the thought of being the subject of yet another teary-eyed inspirational video, takes control of the camera himself.”

The Jeff-Cam was pretty simple, just a Sony Digital8 camcorder locked in place over Jeff’s right shoulder. It provided an interesting perspective though, and on an even surface the video was silky smooth as long as Jeff didn’t spasm. Newer, smaller equipment and modern technology will soon lead to more sophisticated tools for him to use, but the Jeff-Cam was a good start

17 year old Steven Cayer shot this footage using our PoleCam dolly system after less than 12 hours practice time.  Steven operates the chair with his right hand, the camera head with his right hand, and the vertical movement of the jib with a sip and puff straw.

If you happened to turn to the CBC during the first intermission of yesterday’s game, or if you figured the game was over with Canada up 4-1, you may have seen this report from Theresa Lalonde.   Or maybe the TV in your fridge was on a different channel, or the old one in the bathroom has a broken channel changer, or…

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!”

Filmmakers have been using wheelchairs as camera dollies since the days of horse-drawn cameras and kerosene microphones.  Well, I’m not sure if that’s exactly true, but a long time ago someone came up with the idea of shooting film from a rolling wheelchair, and the idea stuck.   Google “Godard Breathless Wheelchair” or “Rodriguez El-Mariachi Wheelchair” for two pretty successful examples of wheelchairs used as dollies.

The first time I saw this “omnidirectional” wheelchair (on YouTube) I was in the middle of shooting a movie where the main character was a wheelchair user.  90 per cent of the shooting was hand-held, with the camera at his eye level. As my back began to ache –imagine holding a ten pound metal detector in front of you and beachcombing for 8 hours a day, every day for two months– it dawned on me that this would have been a great opportunity to use a wheelchair dolly.

And this would be no ordinary wheelchair dolly.  This one has many of the physical qualities of a more traditional dolly – the weight; the large, soft balloon tires.  And, because it’s controlled by joystick, an experienced wheelchair user would already have many of the skills to get the most out of the chair.

I got in touch with the inventors to find out more about their amazing chair, wondering how we might get our hands on one.  When I described what we wanted to do with it, they very quickly -and generously- offered to lend us the prototype.

A short time later we were able to put the chair though its paces.  We marveled at the technology and thrilled at the possibilities.

And then we broke the chair.

But it’s being repaired, and we’re still excited about the OmniChair.

Stay tuned.

Our board is comprised of five early signers-on to the idea of the BC Society for Disability and Media. Thanks to Jocelyn Tomkinson, Don Atkinson, Dave Symington, Terry LeBlanc and Jeff Moulins.

Onward and upward.

* I reserve the right to delete those first two sentences should it all get to be too much.