Missing Technology: Tools for Digital Film Making

Film making is not something you can do all by yourself.  Sure, you can set up a tripod and then stand in front of it.  But if you want actual camera work, and the ability to move within a scene, you need, at absolute minimum, two people.  

What I'd like to see developed is a cheap, programmable tilt-and-pan head for attaching a camera to a tripod.  Something that can produce smooth, perfectly identical camera motions time and again.  It would have to be rather silent, vibration free, and very smooth.  Shots would be programmed with a laptop inside of a 3D virtual environment.  You could chain shots together and, using a remote, have the camera begin the next motion only when you're ready.  

Even better (but more difficult to do) would be to teach the pan-and-tilt head right there in the field exactly what movements you wanted it to reproduce.

Such a system should also have control over the zoom and, preferably, the focus of the camera. This would have to be handled after-the-fact through firmware updates from the more serious camera companies.  It could be administered via the camera's own remote control.  

You could use a projected laser line to define the edges of the shot box.  Because laser light would reflect and possibly polute the shot, you'd want to use it only to rehearse blocking.  

A programmable tilt and pan head would allow you do do complex compositing shot.  You'd just run the same movements on your scenery, or in your 3D CG program, as you did on your green-screen-backdropped actor.  

And why stop there?  Why not have a programmable track system too, based (perhaps) on model train tracks.  You'd need to create a very finely-tuned locomotive.  You'd then put the tracks on specially built workhorses (taller than average).  

Crane shots?  Not exactly.  But a system that simply raises and lowers the aforementioned pan-and-tilt head on a system of smoothly-moving pulleys.  Keep in mind, there is no reason to expect to need extremely long shots with many degrees of motion in them.  Especially on a programmed system, shots should be kept short.  Push the envelope in later developments, perhaps.

I've thought about this as well:  if you could build a sufficiently smooth programmable pan-and-tilt head, why not give it the ability to track a target?  The actor would wear a beacon of some sort.  I don't think that would work all that well.  It wouldn't be able to intelligently anticipate the actor's motion.  It would feel rather artificial.  

How cheap would it need to be to acheive maximum profitability?  $399.  Anyone with a digital camcorder has proven that they can afford at least this much, if not more, at some point in the past.  They are not likely to covet a system that costs more than their camera did.  It needs to be cheap enough that they can purchase it without feeling that they alread need it.  In other words, it should be sold as a toy, not as a tool.  That's not to say that it shouldn't be an effective tool.  It has to be.  It must be presented in the most professional manner possible.