Sunday, November 3, 2013

Movi M10 Stabilizer … 15 grand of goodness …

I was poking around today, looking at some tools I would like to acquire at some point (ACID Pro 7 and Vegas Pro 12 Edit for example) and one thing led to another and I found an unboxing video for this stabilizer. Stabilizers have always interested me because I like farting around exploring hack amateur level video. As a dilettante enthusiast, I find the one truly difficult thing about video is getting stable shots when you are moving.

But I am not alone. Professionals suffer from this issue too … at least at the indie level, where budgets are pretty tight and the crew cannot number in the thousands. The linked video below in fact is made by an indie team, where the short they were making is shot 100% with this stabilizer.

The M10 is a pretty recent arrival (I think it started shipping this year in mid-August) and wow … it solves a whole lot of problems. It has gimbals that run off of battery, so it plays an active role in stabilization. And it has remote control, which allows two operators to split the tasks of camera position and framing. Of course, it is able to work well with one operator too … so the options are almost limitless.

Anyway … I found a fantastic video showing how it works with clips behind the scenes and the actual resulting clips showing how stunningly well it stabilizes motion … I find it breathtaking. And the cost is actually pretty reasonable when you consider what it would cost to attempt these shots with gear instead of humans.