Once he had set his mind to creating a flying camera, Brown started out in his kitchen, with tiny motors and spools of thread, sending a bolt flying past the stove and refrigerator -- and sometimes to the floor. As with the Steadicam, at irst he financed his escalating research and development efforts from his outside earnings -- Steadicam revenues and royalties from the Molson ads. But he decided early on not to turn this invention over to somebody else, since bringing it to market was going to be so complicated. "I found out with Steadicam and Cinema Products that there's a stage when you've got to be hands on with these things," he says. "You know more about them than they do. I was afraid the whole thing might sink into a [corporate] swamp and disappear."
He figured, too, that on the verge of production he could raise the necessary capital: He would have a working prototype, some spectacular footage, and his reputation to dangle in front of investors. First, though, he had to round up the talent he needed to help him get his dream airborne: Larry McConkey, a Steadicam operator with expertise in remote control; John Seitz, a crackerjack electronics maven; Larry Cone, a computer software wizard; John Russell, an engineer and machinist. Brown sold them on his dream. He would cover all the necessary expenses, but until there was money to hire them full-time, everybody would work, as he would himself, without salary, after their regular jobs and on weekends. Instead of stock, he promised film-style points, or percentages of earnings of the project.
"None of us entered into this as a business proposition," says Skycam pilot and designer Larry McConkey. "I always figured if I were trying to make money, this was the absolute wrong way to go bout it." Like everybody else, he came aboard to be at the edge of a developing technology. He was fascinated with the idea, the challenge of Skycam. As for his "points" in the project -- the potential of perhaps a good bit of money down the road -- McConkey considered them "just a way to justify what otherwise seemed like lunacy."
Some of Skycam's unpredictable maneuvers along the way do fall into the realm of the mad, or at least the madcap. There was the voyage of an early prototype in the gymnasium of Haverford (Pa.) Junior High School, Brown's alma mater, in January 1982. instead of flying smoothly around the gym, the weight that was being used in place of a camera took a nosedive. Someone, it turned out, had typed a seven instead of a nine into the computer that told the drums how much cable to let out. "One goddam keystroke," recalls Brown.
In Baltimore, not long after, while another early version of Skycam was being set up on a commercial shoot, one of the pulleys broke loose and sent the dummy rig -- a 25-pound padded weight -- swinging toward the plate-glass windows of a federal building. Luckily, the weight harmlessly banged into a narrow section of marble between two windows -- believed to open onto a judge's chambers.
Despite the occasional errant flight, by July 1983 Brown felt confident enough to arrange for a demonstration of Skycam in Philadelphia's spacious Veterans Stadium, home of the Eagles and Phillies. A time clock had started ticking in his head. When ABC beamed the 1984 Olympic games worldwide in February, he wanted Skycam to be flying over Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. So he picked up the phone and invited ABC Sports to come to Philadelphia to see what Skycam could do. The ABC executives were impressed, so much so that they started making noises about exclusive television rights to Skycam. Brown demurred, his sights on all three networks. But yes, he said, he would be happy to take a shot at readying the still-rough Skycam for the Olympics. He then showed his demonstration tape to NBC and CBS. It was time, he felt, to found a company and gear up.
In August 1983, Skyworks Inc. was born. By his estimates, Brown had enough money to keep things afloat until October, so he put everybody, excluding himself, on a modest payroll, and looked for a facility in which to step up his Olympic dash. He settled on a nondescript industrial park off a lane of fast-food restaurants in Aston, Pa., that rented for about $3 a square foot. Standing in the center of his office, Brown could just about touch all four walls. "I didn't want a fancy company," he says. "I wanted to spend money on the machine."
Brown called John Jurgens, former executive vice-president in charge of engineering for Cinema Products, who arrived on the next plane from San Diego to become Skywork's production manager. Soon, he had 23 people on the payroll -- and a pressing need to hear from the venture capitalists he had approached on the strength of the successful stadium demonstration and the encouraging responses from the networks. In October, on the verge of missing a payroll and the day before he was to leave for Italy to teach a Steadicam class, his phone started ringing. First on the line was a venture capitalist who said no thanks. Then his bank called to turn down Brown's application for a mortgage on the house in the country he had cherished. His account was $17,000 overdrawn. His last hope was venture capitalist Richard Woosnam of Capital Management Corp., a subsidiary of Innovest Group Inc., in Philadelphia. Woosnam finally called and said, "Look Garrett, we've thought about this very carefully . . . and we've decided to do it."
When all the papers were signed, Capital Management had anted up $1.2 million, and an additional single investor chipped in $250,000. In return, Brown gave up 40% of his company. His original four partners and Jurgens, now president, retained their point interest. Meanwhile, Brown's clock continued to tick.
In the factory, the engineers were redesigning and fine-tuning different components of Skycam. Each part of the rig had to be light to keep down the weight of the payload, be durable, and be accurate to the most minute specifications. Many components didn't even exist before Skycam called for them. The computers commanding each of the cable-wound winches, for instance, are a product of Skyworks. "In their own way," Brown says, "they are as much computer as [Apple Computer's] Macintosh."
At the same time, in his cubbyhole of an office, Brown wrestled with some of the less technical, but no less demanding, aspects of introducing Skycam. As word of the project got around, the requests had started coming in: Would Skycam be ready for the Orange Bowl game? How about auto racing? Film directors and cinematographers called, too. Brown soon realized that he had an idea that didn't need so much to be marketed as to be merchandised properly. The potential users already were eager and calling. The beneficiaries -- television viewers and moviegoers -- were bound to be enthusiastic. His primary job would be to persuade those who would be subject to Skycam's use: the actors, the athletes, and the sports officials.
