Introducing The Revolutionary Mini Eclipse

The long awaited and eagerly anticipated arrival of the new, state-of-the-art, mini Eclipse has finally happened. Wholly owned by Marzano Films and based in the UK at the Cinemoves Europe facility – Pinewood Studios, the system has already been busy.

Immediately after its highly successful launch at the BSC Expo in February this year, the system was shipped to Uganda and South Korea to shoot aerial sequences for the Marvel Studios blockbuster "Black Panther".

The restrictions on night landings with the helicopter in South Korea meant the only viable camera was the Alexa M with its split head option, recording ARRIRAW to Codex cards inside the helicopter, allowing us to re-load in the air.

The second unit DOP also wanted to shoot with the Fujinon Premiere 4K 24-180 at T2.6.

The only stabilized gimbal capable of handling this large and heavy camera and lens combination was the mini Eclipse.

When the helicopter company switched the available aircraft at the 'eleventh hour' from a single Squirrel to a twin engine BO105, the question of ground clearance for the camera system came up. Similar sized systems perform a full 'sweep around' to initialize the system in both pan and tilt. With a 5cm ground clearance when looking horizontally, this process would have resulted in the lens hitting the ground. However, the static initialization of the mini Eclipse meant that this was not a problem.

The mini Eclipse is built around the revolutionary Gen V stabilization technology from the same designers who brought us the Oscar-winning Eclipse XL system. It has all the brilliant functionality of its big brother system but adds several more, including the ability to track a sighted or unsighted moving target. The open architecture volume of the system allows for a truly extensive choice of camera and lens combinations with more being regularly added.

But it isn't just an amazing stabilized aircraft mount. The system can also be used for land-based vehicles such as tracking cars, quad bikes, boats and rail systems, etc.

Along with our drone capability of either the Alta 8 aircraft and Movi pro gimbal from Freely, or the Aerigon UAV, Marzano Films can now truly offer crew and equipment packages to meet the most demanding production criteria.

www.marzanofilms.com

This article is also available to read in the latest edition of Broadcast Film & Video here, page 34.

(JP/LM)