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At this years South by Southwest trade show, I met up with Justin Jensen, founder of Cinetics.
They're responsible for cool products like the Cineskates and CineSquid, and this year
Justin showed me their latest project—the Axis 360.
It's a motor system that can produce automated pans, tilts or slides. Time lapsers especially
love motors, because it's the only way to add precise smooth movement to a long exposure
shot. So I've seen a lot of time lapse motors on Kickstarter. But there's a reason that
Justin's Kickstarter for the Axis360 has been so popular.
It's not a one-trick pony. This motor can be set up for a pan, or a tilt, OR to run
a slider. And with bundles ranging from $400 to $1500, the price is pretty reasonable.
I've seen non-motorized sliders that cost $800, but for the same price, this slider
will do the work for you, which is great, because it usually takes me a few tries to
manually get a smooth slider shot. And you can reconfigure that same slider motor into
a pan or tilt. It's a versatile system, and the controller allows for several speeds,
acceleration options, and setting precise start and stop points.
I also like how the slider breaks down for portability, which also means I could buy
additional 16-inch sections to turn this into a really long, automated slider.
And if you pick up two or three of these motors, you could perform a slide, pan and tilt at
the same time. Imagine an interview shot, where the camera is slowly sliding, but also
turning just slightly to keep the subject perfectly in frame. This one product makes
it possible to get cinematic movement when a camera operator isn't available.
If you're interested, the Kickstarter campaign is running for another month, and then I'm
sure it'll retail on their website—cinetics.com.
Thanks for watching! If you missed 'em, check out the other videos I made at this year's
South by Southwest Film Festival.