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MAT with Towercam and esitron drive: Germans at the cutting edge of film technology

And the Oscar goes to… These poignant words, which are spoken every year at the Oscar awards ceremony in Hollywood and always give you goose bumps, have become particularly historic for Germany in 2023. The team behind the anti-war drama “Nothing New in the West” received no fewer than nine nominations, including in the supreme discipline of “Best Film. The result was four Oscars, and with them a lot of honor and attention for director Edward Berger and his crew. But what no one knows is that the laudators at the glamorous event were staged with German camera technology. The award winner photo, which went viral through all the media, shows the real star for us right in the center – the guide camera on a remote-controlled telescope column.And the Oscar goes to… These poignant words, which are spoken every year at the Oscar awards ceremony in Hollywood and always give you goose bumps, have become particularly historic for Germany in 2023. The team behind the anti-war drama “Nothing New in the West” received no fewer than nine nominations, including in the supreme discipline of “Best Film. The result was four Oscars, and with them a lot of honor and attention for director Edward Berger and his crew. But what no one knows is that the laudators at the glamorous event were staged with German camera technology. The award winner photo, which went viral through all the media, shows the real star for us right in the center – the guide camera on a remote-controlled telescope column.

The camera system “The_Towercam XS++” of MAT Technology GmbH around the two main actors Sebastian Auray and Andreas Schüler went “last minute” to LA to broadcast the spectacle in the Dolby Theatre. It was set up on an “Agito” dolly, i.e. a camera transport trolley that does not run on rails as usual, but can be moved on steerable wheels by remote control. The guiding camera itself is mounted on a motorized adjustable telescopic column, which is designed to be absolutely silent, backlash-free and speed-controlled. The compact all-in-one solution of esitron’s decentralized servo drives is used here. The column is driven by an esiMotXL compact motor with CANopen fieldbus interface. In this setting, the motor-integrated controller controls to an external absolute encoder system to eliminate the inherent slip of the design.Special features of this dolly, which was used in Hollywood, were the new controller and fiber optic transmission, as well as the inverter used to power the system by battery.

During the Oscars, for example, it was possible to remotely control the entire camera system with its technical design and thus change the shooting angle as desired. The stars on stage could therefore be brought into focus from a wide variety of positions – without cameramen on stage disturbing the audience, but especially without interfering with the video, lighting and sound technology.

MAT Technology GmbH specializes in camera shots from great heights and long distances and films worldwide at a wide variety of events. A constant for the medium-sized company every year is the use at the Berlinale, but also at major sporting events, such as the Biathlon World Cup or the Olympic Games. In film shoots in all parts of the world, impressive moving images are created using this unique technology from Germany. In order to design and further develop this pioneering technology, the MAT team has been supported for many years by esitron-electronic GmbH, in succession to Mr. Peter Braun.

Based in Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance, esitron manufactures sophisticated positioning and automation products and offers a complete automation system consisting of controllers, servo drives as well as servo amplifiers. To customize drive technology and to find a completely individual solution for the customer’s requirements are always a special motivation for esitron… even if not every application site is so spectacular!Based in Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance, esitron manufactures sophisticated positioning and automation products and offers a complete automation system consisting of controllers, servo drives as well as servo amplifiers. To customize drive technology and to find a completely individual solution for the customer’s requirements are always a special motivation for esitron… even if not every application site is so spectacular!