There was a standing set in Downtown Los Angeles where they built a long run of city. When I got there to work on the first Transformers, I learned it was a set used for Spydercam shots in Spider-Man 2. I assumed this was a rig designed for the Spider-Man films, but the early version of it, designed by Earl Wiggens, was used in 1993 on Cliffhanger. The Spydercam is a suspended camera system that can repeat the same action for take after take. Raimi tested it out for the final shot in Spider-Man and used it extensively in the sequel. Tim Drnec, Ben Britten Smith and Matt Davis won a Special Achievement Oscar in 2011 after developing a 3D version of the system for Transformers: Dark of the Moon.
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