Pivo – New Kickstarter Gadget Gets Your Smartphone Spinning
Pivo is not trying to be a stabilizer. It’s simply taken the auto-follow idea used in several smartphone gimbals and made it a thing on it’s own.
Not sure if I’m just going nuts from watching this gif on repeat, but the shot where the camera follows the chef seems a little jerky?
This gadget seems designed to appeal to vloggers. And people who just like playing with gimmicky gadgets. But how about more serious filmmakers?
Even though the Pivo looks pretty basic, it claims 12 functions and 9 “quick create modes”.
- Veruses
- 50/50
- DoubleTake
- ManyMe
- Capture
- TimeLapse
- Pano
- Flash
- TinyPlanet
There are 2 auto-follow modes: FaceFollow and Object Tracking. There’s also a Multi Live Streaming function which allows you to “stream everywhere simultaneously” (Facebook, YouTube, Periscope etc).
You can also add on a turntable, GoPro mount or a lightbox, for extra $$.
The Functions
Here’s what they mean by the “Versus” mode:
They claim this is made with Pivo, but to my eyes, they’ve used a DSLR for this shot. So are they fallen for the dubious act of pretending to show you smartphone footage when it’s actually not.
Below is their demo (but not the produced footage). Watch the phone spinning (well… basically trying to keep up) as they pass the ball back and forth. You can see the phone is a little slow to react (at least slower than that gif above makes out). So somehow I don’t think the actual footage produced will be as impressive.
You can also do this:
This is the ManyMe function. With this you create a very wide panoramic, with you appearing in it several times. Honestly, I have trouble enough seeing myself appear once in a photo. With Pivo I can induce 6 times the level of self-inflicted cringe?
Yay.
You can see it in operation here:
The subject looks about as excited as I’d be. My mind reading skills tell me the majority of his excitement comes from the thought, “Holy shit, I’m getting paid $500 to do this.”
Having said that, I can see someone like Trump or Putin loving this feature.
Panoramic
One thing is appears to do well is panoramic shots. If you’ve ever tried to use the panorama function on your camera app, you’ll know it’s a bit tricky to get it even. So this might help out here, if panoramas are your thing.
You can also make it do this:
So, you can uhm… make a tiny planet based on the look of your immediate environment.
Uses for this function include: when you meet a friend and turns out they have recently visited the same branch of Nandos. Instead of saying, “it’s a small world” you can just pull out your phone and show this picture. And uhm..
Watch the Pivo demo guy struggle to get worked up about his TinyPlanet. “And the final result is something like… this.” Hmm.
Finally, you can also do TimeLapse. The demo guy from the previous videos was “let go”. One can only assume his lacklustre performance led to his dismissal.
Check out the new guy demonstrating the TimeLapse function. He’s having so much fun, he describes it as like “watching paint dry”. For some reason that tagline doesn’t appear on the Kickstarter page.
So, if you want a pivoting time lapse movie, this is the gadget for you.
Well, my head’s in a spin. So I’m gonna send one of my ManyMe’s over to their Kickstarter page and pledge the necessary $79.
Read Next: Best Smartphone Filmmaking Kit 2019.
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