"I realized the almost Orwellian implications, if you will, of this ultimate medium," Brown says. "I knew there would be a distance at which athletes would be uncomfortable, and that had to be respected. And there would be a size and shape and color of machine that could annoy the fan in the stadium." At one point, Brown thought of personalizing Skycam, maybe painting the face of a cameraman on it, cap askew. Perhaps he should give it a voice. "Given a virtuous invention," he says, "you can still fall on your ass and be unable to sell it. It isn't just inventing, it's merchandising."
As November turned to December, the push in the Skyworks factory turned to shove. The lights burned long into the night and the demand for speed burned money. In a few wild weeks straddling year end, expenses ran to $110,000 a week. The "need it yesterday" spirit had taken over. There was no time to order a part, test it, and, if necessary, order a different version -- "for God's sake get them both. And fast." The Federal Express man was in the door nearly often enough to make coffee.
But in spite of the scramble, Skycam never made it to Sarajevo. It was grounded by a last-minute glitch in some high-frequency motor controls. The disappointment weighed heavily on the staff, and did nothing to soften the necessary personnel cutbacks. The runaway spending engine had to be set at a lower idle. Two dozen employees became nine. The clock was reset for the summer Olympics.
And, finally, one spring day, Garrett Brown demonstrated Skycam in the L.A. Coliseum for Olympic officials and representatives from ABC. In the process, he managed to introduce Skycam to one of the goalposts. He described the incident in a letter to his insurance company this way: "I did not hear a spotter's warnings [over a walkie-talkie], beause of either dropout in one of the radios, or perhaps because of the loud cheering and comments all around me caused by the quality of the image. The consequence was that the Skycam cable, and subsequently the camera itself, strongly contacted the goalpost." The goalpost was bent, the camera unharmed. It was an inadvertent demonstration of the durability of Skycam -- and of the project itself. For although the Skyworks chairman would for months endure the tag, "Goalpost Brown," the incident was overlooked. Skycam was wanted in Los Angeles in late July.
New problems cropped up in May, with Skycam strung above a block of Philadelphia row houses on location for the film Birdy. Director Alan Parker stood by with high hopes that Skycam could give him the swooping, aerial point of view of the movie's canary. "Garrett Brown is a cross between an eccentric genius and totally mad," said a nervously expectant Parker. "Who else would think of something so ridiculous?" A couple of days later, a disappointed Parker ended up not with minutes of Skycam footage, but seconds. There was trouble with low voltage into the system, and possibly harm from the soaking effects of a surprise thunderstorm. Among those who thought they had exterminated that sort of bug, the term "Skyluck" was batted about. Even the hydraulic cranes raised as perimeter mounts for the pulleys seemed guilty of conspiring against them -- sinking perhaps only 1 foot of 150, but enough to throw off the precision computer programming and to send the rig, at one point, into the ground during a shot calling for the camera to skim along just above the ground. More disturbing, though, was a problem with the Kevlar cables used to fly the camera. The wires within the Kevlar (the stuff of bullet-resistant vests) were not conducting power reliably enough.
Because the steel cables needed to replace the faulty Kevlar ones were not quite ready, Brown turned s down Skycam's Olympic invitation. He could have flown it on battery power, but he would have had to ground it periodically while crew members inserted a fresh power supply. Brown wanted a soaring premier for his Skycam, not, in his words, a "lame" one. He may have been one of the few people in America disappointed by the spectacle of the opening ceremonies of the summer Olympics. Tears streamed down his face as he watched at home on television. In his mind, he could see all kind of missed Skycam shots.
By August, Brown felt he was ready to launch Skycam in its "soaring premier" -- when the San Francisco 49ers met the San Diego Chargers in preseason play. He admitted, flying out from Philadelphia, that he had pushed too hard for the Olympics. "We weren't ready. I was out too early selling it to ABC. It was one of the few times I allowed myself to consider a particular sale more important than it should have been. I'm convinced there is no crucial sale. Ever. Even the games this weekend."
Still, a lot was riding on those two scheduled games for CBS and NBC. New financing was desperately needed, and if all went well, an NFL contract for the regular season would do a lot to excite potential investors -- and might go a long way toward meeting the $2 million to $3 million Brown figures he will need to meet his ambitious goals for Skyworks. "Round two financing will require a dilution of the present shareholders by about 30%," he says. "We hope to issue about 500,000 shares at around $6 a share." His five-year plan goes something like this: By the end of the decade, he expects to have 15 road machines working one day a week, generating $3 million annually. And he plans to have 37 Skycams permanently prestrung in various multipurpose arenas and stadiums that host both sports events and entertainment, such as rock concerts, each renting for $250,000 a year, which would bring in more than $9 million. A training school for Skycam pilots, following the pattern of his Steadicam classes, would add perhaps another $75,000 to annual revenues.
