Maker

MAKE TAKES: (clockwise from top left) Executive producer Richard Hudson and John Park talk about the Pole Cam rig. Director Greg Stiever reviews the

script while Park rehearses his lines. Series producer Michael Smith inspects the assembled rig. The crew discusses the build sequence for the Pole Cam.

Bird’s-Eye Hitchcock Moment enough,” worries one of the production assistants. It’s 8: 45 on Monday morning outside the Como “We’ll just have to try it,” Richard says. An Park Zoo and Conservatory. There’s a water garden Ultimate Frisbee player shows up and soon three with lily pads and an incredible plant called a Victoria people are tossing the Frisbee. John steadies an water platter that’s 3 or 4 feet across. We’re here to HD camera with the stabilizer and he’s running show the Pole Cam in action at the zoo, and we’ve back and forth after the Frisbee. A cameraman come before the day’s visitors arrive. follows John. Unfortunately, this part of the park In the first scene, John will stand in a grassy is inhabited by Canada geese, and their droppings courtyard and say, “Nothing beats a pole-mounted remain underfoot. At 10: 27, the scene is done camera,” then he’ll turn around and say, “Hi, I’m John but everyone needs to clean off the bottoms of Park.” The cameras are shooting him from the top of their shoes. a two-story building. Time and again, he does it.

The next scene shows the Pole Cam in action, and John can’t do it alone. So I’m holding the controller while a production assistant holds the pole.

Richard says it’s my “Hitchcock moment” where

I get to appear inconspicuously in the shot.

We wrap up at the zoo and go to the park next door to shoot a scene for a different project, the $14 makeshift Steadicam that appeared in the first issue of MAKE. It’s a tripod with a barbell weight used as a stabilizer. “I don’t know if the five-pounder is good

Drill, Baby, Drill!

At 11: 16, we’re back in the workshop. Bill and Richard are reviewing the build sequence for the Pole Cam’s two-piece wooden rig. There’s an upper frame that must fit inside a lower frame. The camera and one servo are attached to the upper frame, and another servo is attached to the lower.

Bill reminds Richard that he had to trim a tab off the servomotor with a knife. “Do we have to show that?” he asks.

36 Make: Volume 16