CandyCam wants to give filmmakers a cheaper aerial shot
Miles of cable cover CandyCam’s headquarters on the fifth floor of the Think Big Partners building at 18th Street and Baltimore. A swamp of parts, tools and prototypes spills out of the work spaces.
Chief design officer Coty Beasley’s desk is a mess of scattered parts and a busted-open radio controller. The 25-year-old’s messy tangle of brown hair and dark-rimmed glasses make him the real-life doppelgänger of cartoon character Steve Smith from Fox’s American Dad. Beasley hopes that by January, his year-old startup will be one of the cheapest cable-suspended camera systems in an expensive market dominated by Skycam, the brand featured in NFL and NASCAR broadcasts.
“Seven guys [to operate it], three days to set up – you can’t buy one, really,” Beasley says. “You’re looking at half a million to a million [dollars] just to rent one.”
With Skycam units priced out of reach of most filmmakers, Beasley says CandyCam offers a cheaper alternative. His company hopes to sell the cameras initially for about $18,000, then drop the price to $5,000 as production ramps up.
“What we’re doing is trying to give filmmakers a new tool to get all kinds of different shots,” he says.
CandyCam is designed to replace cranes and jibs and other camera equipment needed by filmmakers for hovering shots, Beasley explains. Here’s how CandyCam’s system works. The camera is made up of two parts. On the top is a box, with motors in all four corners, called the SkyHook platform. Each motor controls a reel that pulls on two cables anchored high on walls or pillars. Below the platform is an attached gimbal. Filmmakers mount their camera to the gimbal and use radio controllers to move the camera gimbal and the platform around a space to get a desired shot.
Beasley dropped out of the University of Missouri – Kansas City in 2010. Torn between a career in art and one in math, he started Beasley Creative, a branding company that also built websites. His office neighbored filmmaker Spencer Walsh.
Beasley and Walsh struck up a friendship and built a crane for Walsh to use on his shoots. But the process was long and labor-intensive, and their finished crane could get only one kind of view: a crane shot.
“What we realized was that these cranes and jibs are limited in their functionality,” Beasley says. “Why are we just doing what everyone else is doing? There might be a business here if we try to take it to the next level.
“We found out that a lot of people don’t do these four-line systems because there’s a lot of complicated math involved beyond what a three-line system requires,” he adds. “We’re having to do multidimensional calculus.”
CandyCam employs 15 full-time workers. Beasley and Walsh are focusing their efforts on getting investors and placing the SkyHook system in the hands of filmmakers. So far, they’ve raised $400,000, but they’re looking for another $1 million.
“We need this next round of funding to get us into production,” Beasley says. “As a company, we’ll need to staff up.”
CandyCam workers will build the units by hand, which Beasley calls “a garage startup situation.” From there, a few beta testers will be selected to use the cameras in the field. After the cameras are tested, a few will be sold.
Beasley says the “democratization of tech” – DSLR cameras that shoot high-definition video can be had for about $600 – means more people will consider a system like SkyHook for film projects.
“The barrier to entry in this industry has become as low as it’s ever going to be,” he says. “I mean, there are people shooting action sequences on the big screen on iPhones.”
CandyCam will eventually produce four models: a professional version for Hollywood productions, a sports model, a base model, and a slightly upgraded base model. “The Holly-wood version ends up having to be fireproof and bulletproof, things like that,” he says, adding that it’s a long way off.
On August 16, Beasley and the CandyCam team tested the latest model in a downtown parking garage’s glassed-in stairwell. The shoot was set up to demonstrate the system’s ability to glide upward in the open space in the center of a stairwell, with the camera turning to track actors running. About a half-dozen friends dropped by, all dressed as thugs. They wore leather jackets, masks and an assortment of hats while wielding crowbars, sledgehammers and bats as they chased another group up the stairs.
The 3-foot-wide space proved to be too perilous for the SkyHook and the Canon DSLR camera mounted to the gimbal. On a couple of trips upstairs, it swung to the side and bumped the stairs, causing all six CandyCam employees working the shoot to shout, “Stop! Stop!” After one bump, the rig appeared to be damaged and stopped responding to radio controllers. But a quick restart had it flying again.
Two hours later, the last shot was completed. Standing on the third floor of the parking garage, looking down as the SkyHook gently slouched into the dark garage basement, Beasley shook his head slightly and grinned.
“We get to do this kind of stuff every day,” he said.
