We had so many interesting comments on last week’s trip down memory lane, I thought I would show another interesting solution to a problem we ran into while shooting space ships. Budget always being a problem, I had to devise a way to get close enough to the miniatures to give the illusion of the “paint scraper” shot. Taking a lead from Don Trumbull, Doug’s father, this was my interpretation of the underslung magazine adapter. This is a light-tight channel that mounts to the Mitchell Standard magazine port and, with a series of rollers and light traps, let us put a 200′ theodolite magazine behind and below the camera. I used this unit in shots for “V”, “V – The Final Battle”, “Tales of the Gold Monkey”, “Real Genius”, and “Starcrossed”, among others. The budget answer I came up with was the mag adapter described above, with the follow focus L-base, mounted on a stepper motor driven Mitchell straight head, on top of a stepper motor driven panoram dolly, on top of 40′ of Tiffen track. Not elegant, but it worked well.
