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A Camera for the 21st Century In 1972, Panavision president and founder Robert Gottschalk unveiled the first Panaflex silent reflex camera (see AC Nov. '72). Its groundbreaking modular design — built around the well-established Mitchell-style, pin-registered movement — allowed for unparalleled versatility. Capable of performing as a fully-featured studio camera, and accommodating Panavision's widely popular lenses, the Panaflex could be quickly reconfigured into a lightweight, handholdable unit. Additionally, it incorporated state-of-the-art electronics, ergonomic styling, and a fully compatible set of standardized accessories.
The Panaflex camera made its feature-film debut on Steven Spielberg's first studio project, The Sugarland Express, which was photographed by Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC (see AC May '73). In 1978, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honored Panavision and its engineering staff with an Academy Award of Merit (Oscar) for the concept, design, and continuous development of the Panaflex. Over the course of the following decade, the camera platform — dubbed the Golden Panaflex — would become a standard for the motion picture industry.
Panavision continued to integrate the latest technologies and improvements into the Gold's design by retrofitting earlier models, and later introduced the Golden Panaflex II (GII). This research and development ultimately resulted in the creation of the Platinum Panaflex (AC Dec. '86), which offered improvements in the viewing optics and electronics, ran quieter, and was significantly lighter — while maintaining full compatibility with existing Panavision products. (The company's history has been more fully detailed in AC April '77 and Feb. '97.)
However, by the early 1990s, Panavision's president and CEO, John Farrand, determined that a new version of the Panaflex camera system — incorporating over 20 years of design refinements and customer feedback — should be developed. The goal was to examine and rethink every component of the company's field-tested design and integrate the latest space-age materials and technologies into its structure — just as the company had done with the very first Panaflex. Thus, the Millennium Panaflex camera system was born.
In charge of overseeing the Millennium's design was Panavision's director of product development, Nolan Murdock, who orchestrated this task with the designer of the original Panaflex, Al Mayer, Sr., and his team. "In 1992, we started conceptualizing and thinking about the camera, which was code-named the 'SLQ' — which stood for smaller, lighter and quieter," Murdock reveals. "We went through [the Gold and Platinum] module by module, and looked at the reflex mirror, the video and viewfinder optics, the shutter, the motors, the drive mechanisms, the control electronics, and the movement — asking ourselves what could we do to improve it. We knew there were certain functions that we wanted to incorporate into the viewing system that necessitated a complete redesign of the optics from scratch. Our customers have always requested backwards compatibility. Therefore, this had to be one of our primary goals, and made the design task much more difficult. Over the years, we have developed accessories such as Smart Shutters, FTZSACs [focus, T-stop, zoom, speed-aperture controller] and other modular devices which could be mounted on Platinums, Panastars, or Golds, but we now felt we could build them into the camera. However, if you're on a show in which you have a Platinum and a Millennium, you may want to carry an older FTZSAC for the Platinum, so we designed the Millennium to work with both the older and newer units. Making the Millennium compatible with virtually every accessory in our inventory proved to be an enormous challenge, but we had done it before. In fact, only a few components aren't completely backwards compatible with the Millennium. You can't mount a Millennium magazine on a Gold, and the Millennium's extension viewfinder cannot be used on other Panaflexes. However, you can mount Millennium magazines on Platinums and Panastars, and any of the older Panaflex magazines can be mounted on the Millennium."
An interesting aspect of the Millennium's evolution was the enlistment of the Thousand Oaks, California-based industrial design firm RKS to update the visual styling of the camera — while maintaining Panavision's instantly recognizable look — and increase the platform's ergonomic functionality. Murdock notes, "Additionally, we wanted to make the system as user-friendly as possible, so it would not require a lot of user retraining, particularly in terms of muscle memory [usage]. A lot of assistants can thread a camera without even looking. For that reason, the Millennium threads the same way, and its new magazines load the same way, as other Panaflexes. However, the inching knob isn't on the back of the camera anymore. It's now on the inside, which is the one muscle-memory aspect of the camera that people will find different."
AC examines Panavision's next-generation production camera, the Millenium
by Christopher Probst
The Millennium comes outfitted for studio operation — with on-board/witness
-camera monitors and the LAC controller — and can be quickly converted for Steadicam usage by removing the viewfinding optics.
The Millennium's "dummy" motor side.
The focus-tube section of the viewing optics — showing the anamorphic/ spherical and open/close selectors at the upper left, and the knurled locking knob on the right.
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© 1999 ASC