Indians suffer considerable heartburn year after year at the Oscars after failing to win any of the awards up for grabs. This year, however, an engineer from Mumbai's Mulund area, has brought some good news home. Vikas Sathaye on Saturday won an Academy plaque for innovating a camera system that has been used in numerous Hollywood blockbusters. The camera mount is said to be such that it can be attached to the base of a helicopter and its main function is to eliminate vibrations for a steady footage, according to a Times of India report. The K1 is a gyro-stabilised aerial gimbal platform that features an open architecture design that allows for the most comprehensive range of camera and lens interchanges. Since its launch in 2012, the Shotover K1 has been relied upon by production companies and aerial cinematographers across the globe for motion picture, television, and commercial productions, according to the company's website.
The system has worked on over a hundred different feature films, including The Hobbit, Transformers: Age of Extinction, Spectre, Deepwater Horizon, Spider-man: Homecoming, and Dunkirk.
In a press statement, the innovator is quoted as having said that he joined the company Shotover Camera System in 2009 and 'the natural beauty and stunning scenery' led him to start a company there. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences official press release says: To John Coyle, Brad Hurndell, Vikas Sathaye and Shane Buckham for the concept, design, engineering and implementation of the Shotover K1 Camera System. This innovative six-axis stabilised aerial camera mount, with its enhanced ability to frame shots while looking straight down, enables greater creative freedom while allowing pilots to fly more effectively and safely. Big names like ILM, Pixar, DreamWorks find mention among the 10 Academy Science-Technology honorees. The Scientific and Technical Awards Presentation will take place on Saturday, February 10th, at the Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills, California. Sathaye completed a BTech in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Vishwakarma Institute of Technology and then proceeded to Indian Institute of Science for an MTech in Electronics and Instrumentation. In 1992, he joined an engineering college as an Assistant Professor and stayed on for six years. He started working as an Assistant Manager for Honeywell Process Solutions in 1999. During the next 10 years, he changed a few jobs while working in the embedded systems industry. Finally, in March 2009 he took up a position at Shotover Camera System in New Zealand's Queenstown where the award-winning technology was developed. He has been working as a Software Engineer in RFI Industries for the past 6 years in Australia's Adelaide, according to his LinkedIn account.