Newton's stabilized head allowed images to be captured from the top of the Oscars stage

Because of its reliability and compact form, a Newton system moved on stage at the live broadcast of the Academy Awards, controlling a Sony 4K camera.

The American Service Provider RailCam Robotic Systems supplied a dolly system for the fourth consecutive year SpeedWinch for the production of the awards ceremony Oscars. The SpeedWinch, created by the German company RTS, hangs above the stage and vertically moves a remote TV camera that moves up to 6 meters/second.

While its specialty is providing dynamic motion shots for broadcast TV, the SpeedWinch also allows the camera to be moved on and off stage in seconds. This feature allowed images to be captured from the top of the stage when the winners collected their Oscar with the audience in the background, disappearing just in time so that it did not appear in the frontal shots. These camera angles are also of interest to the Academy's photographers, who, in addition to the video camera, mounted two Nikon DSLR cameras on the SpeedWinch.

The 2020 Oscars were the second year RailCam used a Newton system in the SpeedWinch to stabilize and remotely control the camera. Space has always been critical in the Dolby Theatre's crowded onstage flight loft and Newton's stabilized head was chosen as the smallest and most reliable option.

Rick Compeau, dolly operator, points out that “the Newton head has allowed us to cut more than 45 kilos of our hanging payload.”

The remotely controlled camera was the Sony HDC-P43 4K with a goal Canon HJ14x4.3 and for this year RailCam Robotic Systems had acquired a Newton S2 with fiber optic slip ring, which allows unlimited panning rotations in the 4K transmission.

Brian Sheid, a RailCam Robotic Systems technician, highlights that “this gives the operator one less thing to worry about and we purchased our third Newton system this year specifically for fiber optic slip ring use in our aerial systems.”