How we set out to design and successfully skydive, for the first time ever, with the IMAX giant screen camera system ... page 1

Giant Screen Theatre Audiences have been thrilled by the experience of watching IMAX films since the early 1970's, but until the mid 1990's, the largest and highest quality film format in the world was saddled with camera equipment so heavy and cumbersome that many subjects were in the realm of the impossible. The camera, bulky and awkward to carry, weighed well over 100 pounds (50 Kgs.).

I always thought that Skydiving, like any kind of flight, is everything to which the huge IMAX format is suited; with a screen that fills the peripheral vision and a superb high quality image, it offers an unparalleled sense of realism. If an IMAX camera could follow skydivers out of an aircraft into free-fall, it would offer a theatre audience a thrill of a lifetime.

Skydiving and IMAX, however, experienced an unfortunate first meeting. In early recognition of the extraordinary visual possibilities of putting skydiving on the IMAX screen, an attempt was made back in the seventies to film in free-fall using one of the first IMAX cameras. Due to the weight of the assembled camera package, which was well in excess of fifty kilograms, it was not possible at that time for a skydiver to fly with it attached to his harness "tandem-style". So, for the first attempt at filming with an IMAX camera in free fall, a spherical shaped housing was made for the camera with its own independent parachute, but unfortunately it proved difficult to control during the descent, and, for one reason or another, the parachute malfunctioned and the camera was destroyed on impact. Back in the 1970's, it was not a good beginning, and the concept of filming IMAX under such extreme conditions was shelved.

The 1970's were early days however; tandem parachute systems had not yet evolved, round parachutes were still in use, giving hard openings, and the possibilities for carrying heavy packages were limited by bulky parachute rigs. Expertise and manoeuvrability in free-fall were also limited in those days; nobody had dreamt, for example, of jumping from a plane on a snow-board, or of hundreds of skydivers joining hands in a giant free fall formation!