The Camera Rig

Brief:

Two Elements

1.       To conceive, design and fabricate a piece of auxiliary equipment for video and audio that:

·         Captures content in a way that you otherwise couldn’t

·         Provides audio/ video content for data analysis\

2.       To create a time based “visualization” of the city from the audio/ video content that is both:

·         Displayed or presented live during the operation of the equipment

·         Developed subsequently as a stand-alone representation

When we first got this project my first thought was that I wanted to get up in the air. I want to make a camera rig that could fly and get above the city. I joined a group of likeminded people and we set about brainstorming and researching ideas on how we could make a flying camera rig. We came up with an idea of emulating the Chinese paper lanterns but when taking safety considerations into mind a flying flammable paper rig would not be practical and could cause injury or harm to both people and equipment. This made us think about other options such as a helium balloon, but after talking to some 2^nd years that produced the same idea I realised that costs and practicality would cause some serious issues further down the production line. 1 meter cubed of helium can only carry l kilogram so we would be having weight issues cropping up all the time. Putting the flying balloon idea to the back of my mind I made my way home one night stopping in the park to have a thinking session there I brainstormed some more ideas such as a bridging the gap robot which would crawl the underside of the harbour bridge and an idea of up scaling natures machines, an example of this being the helicopter seed.  

In the end everyone decided they liked the idea of a one way mirror orb that would record people’s interaction with it without them knowing. This was aimed at exploring the curiosity and vanity of the human nature. Talking to other groups they suggested just using a cube rather than an orb as the housing so that the manufacturing would be easier. I had to agree with this. As a group we have started to build around the idea of Pandora’s Box and how her curiosity got the better of her and she had to look inside.

Talking to my boss I found out some issues that may occur with our design. First, wireless camera’s usually only have 4 frequencies so we would not be able to attach one on each face of the cube. Second, on such a close and small space there is a large possibility of their signals interfering with each other and affecting the quality of the image.  This may cause issues