The Talos – one year on

The Talos – one year on 

 The Talos has been doing a lot of travelling in the last year, with 2008 marking its first year in full service.
The start was in Italy on the new action feature film of Tom Tykwer “The International”, to be released this year, but since then it showed up in numerous locations including the south of France, in Spain, in Belgium, more times in France, in England, it flew twice to Egypt for different commercial shoots. It was also used on a new French feature “Cineman” shot on location in Belgium and it flew to Greece for a commercial shoot.

 The Talos proves to be an excellent tool in modern film making. It goes places where traditionally a Milo would have gone but being half the weight and size of the Milo, the Talos is much easier and less costly to transport allowing the Talos to be used more easily and frequently. It is also incredibly quick to set up and fits through standard doorways.

 Alex de Heus, from Motion Control Europe had this to say: “We used it for both, real live action shooting and stop motion shooting. In a commercial for ING Banks we used the Talos to shoot at different speeds, the main talent Alonso (Formula One Driver) was shot at 25 FPS and the people around him had to be moving in slow-motion so they were shot at 125 FPS with the rig moving 5 times faster and matching perfectly. In Cineman we used the Talos to create weird effects like a person walking backwards in time.
Another commercial was about a singer that was walking in a set with the camera following, the whole movement of the head was done in mimic, to compensate for the irregularities of the singer. Since the singer and the extras couldn’t be shot at the same time, the following day all the extras were shot with the original move and interacting with the singer that was no longer there.
 One commercial was about creating a sort of “one shot” however shot at different locations and partly in studio. By using the Talos we could control the different moves and speeds to make it look like one continuous movement. Recently we used the Talos on the 4th floor of a building with limited access, we filmed shots done as a stop motion shoot of 35000 candles that formed the lights of a city by night. The Talos was also used to do food & table top shots.”
For more information on the Talos click here or contact us info@mrmoco.com