| GYRON HISTORY |
Gyron Systems International was formed with the sole mission to design and develop the best aerial gimbal on the planet.
Back in 1984 Dan Wolfe Productions (Wolfe And Company Films) was awarded a contract by a Los Angeles advertising agency to produce and direct a package of commercials promoting the L.A. Herald Examiner newspaper. Dan was first commissioned to shoot a test commercial with the concept of finding, from the aerial perspective, upscale Herald Examiner readers in a variety of locations and lifestyles. Because extremely steady images were required, Dan studied the capabilities of all of the gyrostabilized gimbals. He ended up utilizing the Gyrosphere. The test commercial went well, but he could not help but think that the gimbal's stabilization and creative latitude could be much better.
In his continued quest to find the best stabilized gimbal Dan discovered that the Gyrosphere, the X-Mount and other units were in reality just spin-offs of the Wescam, a gimbal designed for Westinghouse by a small Canadian company called Istec. Istec was headed by a very smart, nice-guy / engineer named Nox Leavitt. The confusion surrounding the various gimbal names is similar to what is occuring today with the Flir - Gyrocam 360 - GSS - Cineflex/Shotover - Axsys, etc. units that are all essentially the same "good enough" John Coyle designed gimbal. John's designs, like Nox's, are good but lack engineering sophistication. Click here to see the Gyron vs. Wescam comparison.
After several conversations with Nox, Dan ended up hiring Istec and their Wescam for the package of Herald Examiner commercials. Nox sent his chief tech and camera operator Gary Childs to Los Angeles to join Dan's production team. Gary was awesome, the Wescam was definitely better than the Gyrosphere and the commercials that Dan ended up creating went on to win every possible award. Watch one of the Herald Examiner 30 second spots.
This whole ordeal was an epiphany for Dan. His drive to marry his two professional passions, image making and aviation, was even stronger. Shortly after the shoot, Gary let Dan know that Nox had just sold Istec to a young entrepreneur and the door was open for a potential joint venture. Dan flew to Canada and met with the new owner, Mark Chamberlain, and a deal was struck. One of Dan's companies, Pasadena Camera Rental, became a United States branch of Wescam Systems International.
After being in the trenches by introducing and using the Wescam in the United States, Dan came to realize that the technology incorporated into all of the various gimbals was actually being carried over, unimproved since the 1960's. Nothing new had been developed for many decades. All of the existing units provided an acceptable way to produce stabilized aerial images, but they all lacked the sophistication, modern technology, ultra-long lens capability and quality to provide reliable and consistently smooth, stabilized and controllable results. What was needed was extremely steady stabilized imagery that was able to shine in the "big screen" arena. Watch Gyron results from a recent feature film project.
While running the Wescam business here in the U.S. with his Pasadena Camera partner Stan McClain, they both grew increasingly frustrated. The units just could not stand up to the rigorous and punishing demands required of an aerial gimbal. Rock solid steadiness, expanded creative latitude (176 degrees roll capability) and robust reliability were lacking in all of the gimbal designs. Several of Dan's friends, such as renowned Directors of Photography Bill Bennett, Dean Cundey, Tak Fujimoto, etc. were beginning to look for quality alternatives to Dan's alliance with Wescam; so was Dan.
Consistently better gimbal designs were coming out of the aerospace industry. Seeking to find the best of the best that the field had to offer, and teaming them up with Hollywood's finest became the goal. Dan's (Learjet based) Vectorvision partner, Bob Nettmann, was clearly the right participant on the Hollywood side. Scrutinizing the aerospace industry, for high-end government contract type super-smart engineers led Wolfe to align with two extremely talented gimbal designers; Dave Hiley and Brad Fritzel. Bringing all of these players together culminated in the formation of the Gyron Development Group. Pasadena Camera's exclusive contract with Wescam (now Pictorvision/Eclipse) was then sold back to Istec and Gyron Systems International was formed by Dan to back the development of the new Gyron products in addition to taking on all of the marketing and operational functions.
|
|
|
|
|
