Playing With the Robert Rig

[Alicia Robbins]

One thing that I have struggled with as a DP/Stereographer/Engineer, is finding that happy medium between your high end, expensive rig such as 3Ality Technica TS5 rigs, and the smallest, pro-sumer grade camera such as the Sony HDR-TD10 which I recently used for a shoot.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the 3Ality Technica rigs and have worked with them on numerous occasions as an engineer.  You can zoom, change IA, and converge all on the fly in perfect synchronization and alignment.  But then, I land a small shoot such as the one I had about a month back, and I knew I'd be shooting people at a very close range and ideally would need a beam splitter rig to get the IA needed to avoid people's eye balls popping out!  Fortunately, the content is only going to be displayed on the web, so we were able to go with the smalled IA camera out there without a beam splitter which was the Sony TD10.  

But what if I had a low budget 3D shoot, limited time, and I knew the film would be projected on a larger screen?  A beam splitter is a must.  And fortunately, after a demo of the Robert Rig with designer Jesse Blanchard, I think we found it.  The Robert Rig retails just around $2K, which is unbelievably cheap for a 3D rig!  It can take DSLR cameras, and the body is sturdy enough where you can basically align the rig at home on your large 3D monitor, then carry it to set and it holds its alignment within reasonable tolerances.  The manual mechanics allow you to change your IA on set so you can adjust for your closeups and distant shots.  You'd only want to use matching prime lenses on the cameras because it would be difficult to match zooms on the fly, but once again, finding a pair of decent photography lenses that can be aligned within reasonable tolerances is not too difficult.  In addition, the rig can actually handle cameras up to the size of the Red Epic!  So, you don't HAVE to shoot with your indie DSLR cameras.  You can take this up to the 4K resolution that you may be looking for, even on your low budget indie film.  

I really love the Robert Rig in it's simplicity.  The fact that it is a rock solid, small rig, that you can pretty much put anywhere makes it perfect as that happy medium 3D rig that you can actually afford.  

-Alicia Robbins

Robert Rig Website