We are sure most of you must have seen movies like ‘Dunkirk’, ‘Blade Runner 2049’, ‘Rampage’, ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales’, ‘The Hobbit’, ‘Spectre’, or ‘Spider-man: Homecoming’. While, we thoroughly loved watching them and their drop-dead striking aerial shots, I’m sure most of us barely gave a thought to the hard work and technology that went behind it.
But, Oscars did. Hence, they decided to acknowledge and appreciate their efforts at the Scientific and Technical Awards that took place over the weekend in Beverly Hills. The 90th Academy Awards aka the coveted Oscars 2018 is still a few weeks away.
© Twitter
However, this is not the reason why we are jumping up and down in excitement and beaming with pride at the same time. It’s the fact that India received a great reward for its contribution in movies. In case you are scratching your heads in confusion, here’s what happened.
Vikas Sathaye, a genius Indian engineer raised in Mumbai, proved his mettle in front of the whole world and made the nation proud with his achievements; after he won an Oscar for Shotover K1 Camera System. Sathaye was a part of the esteemed four-member team that was honoured with the scientific and engineering award “for the concept, design, engineering and implementation of the Shotover K1 Camera System.” Brad Hurndell, John Coyle and Shane Buckham were the other team members.
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We realize most of you will be confused right now wondering what did they really do, but trust us, you’re not alone. So here’s how the Academy broke down the explanation. Apparently, this is a “six-axis stabilized aerial camera mount” that has an “enhanced ability to frame shots while looking straight down.”
Reportedly, Sathaye joined Shotover Camera Systems, located in Queenstown, New Zealand in 2009. He worked on the aerial mount there. In fact, Sathaye said, “One of the reasons to start this company in Queenstown was the natural beauty and stunning scenery which attract a lot of film producers and directors.”
He further explained, “The camera mount gets attached to the base of a helicopter, which carries the camera and lens. Its primary function is to eliminate any vibration from reaching the camera and thus getting steady footage. The other function for the camera mount is to move the camera head in the desired direction as required by the camera operator, who sits inside the helicopter and uses a joystick to control the camera head movement.” Isn’t this so cool?
Sathaye was born in 1967 in Pune and spent most part of his life in Mumbai. After school, he completed a diploma in instrumentation from VPM’s polytechnic, Thane. Then, he studied BE in electronics from VIT Pune and MTech in instrumentation from IISc. Sathaye was earlier a teacher, who taught at Pune Cummins College of Engineering for Women for a couple of years, during which he was sent to Italy for a project and it was there that he got inspired to take up this field.
© Shotover
So what do we learn from this folks? First, Oscars 2018 is around the corner and it’s becoming difficult to contain our excitement.
Second, let’s not judge or make memes and jokes on engineers anymore guys; if they can create such brilliant and Oscar-worthy concepts, we guess they can do anything in the world and outer space and any other dimension they might have accidently found.fww