Trivia Q&A !!! Part II

[Charles King]

Alright everyone. It's time for another quick quiz. So let's get those brains cracking. For some of the technical genius here, these questions might be a day in the park For others, a little tricky but none are that difficult to figure out. See if you can answer some of the questions. I'll post the answers at a later date. You can go ahead and post your replies here. In fact, it will be nice to get a discussion going

This is for fun purposes.

1.  a/ What movie was the Steadicam Master first used?

     b/ What was the name of the Steadicam operator?

2. a/ The Steadicam Ultra also debut in a film. What was the name of the film?

    b/ Who was the operator?

3. Which stabilizer company had an immediate competitive response to the Steadicam System?

4. What is the MK-v's stabilizer system principle based on?

5. Put the list below in its rightful order, according to the most used device throughout the motion picture and Television era:

   Steadicam
   Dolly
   Crane
   Jib

6. Where is the point of balance on any stabilizer system?

7. What does these films have in common?

    Goodfellas
    Snake Eyes
    Carlito's Way
    Raising Cain

8. What is the main difference between a Lemo & Hirose?

9. What was/is one of the most famous dolly effect in the movie 'JAWS' ?

10. a/ Who originated this dolly effect seen in the movie 'JAWS' ?

     b/ Name the film it was first used in?

HAVE FUN!!!!

Test yourself first, then click link for the answers: http://homebuiltstabilizers.com/trivia.htm

[Alan Dague-Greene]

1a. All the Pretty Horses
1b. Jerry Holway
2a.
2b.
3. Panavision (Panaglide)
4. Modularity, upgradability
5. Dolly, jib, crane, Steadicam
6. Just below the pan bearing in the gimbal
7. All contain famous Larry McConkey oner's
8.
9. That thing where you dolly in a zoom out at the same time (or vice versa)
10a. Stephen Spielberg
10b.

Woohoo! How'd I do??

[Charles King]

Not bad Alan but you have a few mix ups as well as wrong answers but not bad at all.

[MikkoWilson]

Diddn't Hitchcock invent the Dolly-Zoom (AKA: Hitchkock zoom)

Tough call on Jib Vs Crane too...

- Mikko

[Charles King]

mmmmm! no one's taking a shot at this??

[Phil Kindred]

5  Dolly, crane. jib. steadicam
7 Larry McConkey
10a  Hitchcock
    b  Vertigo

[Charles King]

This is getting very interesting.

[Charles King]

I'll add the answers later on today.

[Charles Papert]

For the record, CK, your trivia challenges are TOUGH--I'd only feel 100% confident answering maybe 60% of these questions. Or 60% confident answering 100% of them...?!

[Charles King]

For the record, CK, your trivia challenges are TOUGH--I'd only feel 100% confident answering maybe 60% of these questions. Or 60% confident answering 100% of them...?!

Ha Ha, it's good to hear that CP. I appreciate the sentiments. I would really like you to try CP. I am just a stabilizer nut  like most of the folks on this board. I tend to learn the insides and out of known system but I too find it hard to grasp the most basic of things but it's all for knowledge purposes Keeps one abreast.

You could also take a look at the Trivia Q&A Part I posted in this same forum.

[Charles King]

I've posted a link to the answers under the questions.

[Charles Papert]

CK, I'd probably have to ask for a clarification on #3, in terms of the useage of "immediate response" since the PRO came out nearly 20 years after the first production Steadicam.

#5 is a really tough call, I wouldn't know how to truly order these. There are quite a few productions that have a Steadicam rig and operator on full-time call, while not that many have a crane or even jib full-time. Honestly I would have put Steadicam ahead of these two. But there are many exceptions.

#8: By contacts, do you mean pins?? Both manufacturers make a wide variety of connectors with many variations in pin numbers, from as few as two (maybe one, never seen one though) to upwards of 15. But perhaps you mean something differently by "contacts". My response would have been "Lemos are rugged and often back-ordered, and Hiroses are comparatively fragile and easy to find"!!!

[Charles Papert]

By the way, I wouldn't have done much better on the 1st quiz!

Now I REALLY can contest the question about the Model 1 not being able to do low-mode, as I owned one for about 4 years and suffered through the inelegance of underslinging that device. There were two ways to do it; you could remove the lower sled and invert it (the center post went all the way through the sled and was fixed by a locking ring, and the front post mounted to a swivelling bracket that could also be screwed onto the bottom of the sled. This would result in the monitor being the correct orientation, but sitting way up at the top of the rig. It's not hard to imagine how difficult it was to see when one was boomed up...! Also, it took a good 10 minutes to flip the sled in this fashion, outside of inverting the camera, adding J-bracket etc. I used to estimate 20-30 minutes for low-mode inversion back in those days.

The other way to do it was odd but quicker: you flipped the sled over and attached a small mirror to the bottom edge of the monitor and taped it off to the center post. This would deliver an image that could be fairly easily viewed. You had to have horizontal and vertical inversion switches installed into the sled to correctly orient the image. I still have a couple of spare mirrors that I had cut at a glass shop in the early 90's, all wrapped up in brown paper!

Suffice to say, neither method was particularly lovely and the Model 2 and subsequent rigs indeed solved the problem handily. I can well recall staring at my Model 1 and contemplating what would be involved in having the monitor cut out of the sled and rehoused/rewired etc. After doing some simple mods such as a vertical battery setup similar to the 3A, I ended up buying that very sled a few years later (and a PRO a few years after that).

[Tom Wills]

Well Charles, you stumped me on pretty much all of these, other than the Lemo-Hirose one (Which I sorta got, at least based on Charles Papert's answer), the MK-V one, and 9 and 10 about the pull-back zoom-in (something I swear I have to try one of these days)

[Charles King]

CK, I'd probably have to ask for a clarification on #3, in terms of the useage of "immediate response" since the PRO came out nearly 20 years after the first production Steadicam.

Hi CP, thanks for the feedbacks. Maybe immediate wasn't the most appropiate word to use but I meant that it was the next major stabilizer company to actually have a competitive pull against cinema products.

#5 is a really tough call, I wouldn't know how to truly order these. There are quite a few productions that have a Steadicam rig and operator on full-time call, while not that many have a crane or even jib full-time. Honestly I would have put Steadicam ahead of these two. But there are many exceptions.

Actually and honestly speaking, this one was a tough call and can't 100% verify but reading and doing some checking it seems the order in which I put them seem to be right. But like I said, I could be way off. So this one is pretty much optional.

#8: By contacts, do you mean pins?? Both manufacturers make a wide variety of connectors with many variations in pin numbers, from as few as two (maybe one, never seen one though) to upwards of 15. But perhaps you mean something differently by "contacts". My response would have been "Lemos are rugged and often back-ordered, and Hiroses are comparatively fragile and easy to find"!!!

When I did this question I was thinking of the minimum about of pins  each manufacture produced. I probably should have been clearer. Sorry CP