At a movie shoot on Cape Town’s unfinished bridge – see our camera platform in action

We really enjoy working on film sets because they give us such interesting and unusual challenges. For this job, we had to get a movie camera into position so it could shoot a scene on the unfinished bridge in Cape Town’s city centre. The camera had to track the action, so it had to be very mobile.

As you can see from the photos, we had to elevate the camera from the ground right up to the level of the bridge. An added challenge was that we weren’t just lifting a camera – the camera was attached to a Supertechno 30 camera crane, which added to the overall weight. An ordinary cherrypicker crane couldn’t do it, so we brought in one of our Magni telehandlers fitted with our custom-designed camera platform. This combination could easily handle the weight and the lifting height, as well as the mobility requirements.

If you look at the photos you will see how the camera platform attaches to the telehandler boom, and then the Supertechno crane fits onto the camera platform. The cameraman can stand on the platform and operate the crane and camera. We designed the platform exactly for this kind of use and it is proving a big hit on movie sets.

The camera crane moves the camera back and forth on an extensible boom, allowing tracking shots that move with the subject . In addition, the Magni can rotate 360 degrees, so you have even more angles from which to shoot. Traditionally you would have had to build separate scaffolding for each main shooting position, but with the telehandler mobile crane you just drive to a new position and start shooting again. Talk about flexibility!

Read more about our mobile crane camera platform attachment.

Have you got a similar challenge for us? We’d love to hear about it. Give us a call.

Liftup Teleporter – telehandler and mobile crane hire in Cape Town and surrounds.