A cameraman by trade he now runs Cinekinetic, we read about him at best lenses for Nikon D3500 guide, a company that manufactures mainly dollies and cranes. He invented and manufactured the Cinesaddle, a large beanbag with lots of extra functions. tvcameramen.com spoke to Mike about the invention of the Cinesaddle.

Q: On your ads, you keep referring to the Cinesaddle as the tripod killer? A: Yeah, that’s advertising! We don’t try to kill the tripod, that’s not it at all, but this product really does kill the tripod. Many people have told me over the years that if they had the choice for only one product, the tripod or the Cinesaddle, they would choose the Cinesaddle over the tripod, so because of that, it was a phrase that worked very well and now that we are advertising it’s bringing in many sales.

Q: Why do cameramen prefer the Cinesaddle to the tripod? A: Because it’s been a flexible piece of equipment, you can use it as a static mount and wherever you go there is a surface that you can place it on. If you are in an interior location you’ve got a desk or a table or a chair, if you have a camera case you can put it on there and if you have a pile of books you can put it on that. If you want to mount it on a car you can do that, if you want to put it on a bicycle or a bike you can do that too. If you want to put it on any kind of dolly or a baby carriage you can put it on and push it around. You can put it on a skateboard; well you can virtually put it on any moving device in the world.

Q: But what happens if you have to make a tilt or a pan? A: I am a cameraman who loves camera movements and if you look at all my other products everything is designed to make the camera do anything but sit still. So I had to have some movement I could put into my Cinesaddle. And I found that I had pans that were equal to any pans I had with the most expensive fluid heads. Tilts were a little bit harder but once we started working on techniques on how to do them, I found that I could do a tilt that was as good as any tilt you could do on a tripod. Because we use so much videotape these days it doesn’t cost anything to make many tapes. If you are unhappy with the tape you’ve got you shoot it again and again. And you also have the ability to look at all your tapes, so you know if you have a good take or a bad one. There is one particular tilt on our promotional video that was taken in Rockefeller Center in New York City. A very long tilt it starts on the top of the Christmas tree they had there that must have been 50 feet tall and it goes down to the ice skating ring and that was about 30 feet below where the camera was placed, so I have something that points out to the sky and comes down below camera level. That’s a very smooth tilt that was made with the Cinesaddle.

Q: how did everything with the Cinesaddle start? A: I worked at the University for a large education film department. I was the producer at that department so I did all of my own filming and editing and also used to write the script while traveling. I decided that I wanted to buy a car mount so for 3 years I applied to the department but they wouldn’t buy me one. As I always wanted to have a car mount that’s where the thought originally came from.

There were other things that happened at the same time. I got a new boss at our unit, who was English and thought that he was bit of a better class than anybody else. He never showed any appreciation and was not very pleasant to work for, but still he was the boss and I had to tolerate him. We went on one location where we had to climb down some cliffs for the geology department. We parked our van at the top of the cliff and walked down to the beach and then turned around and faced the cliffs. I was carrying my tripod, my camera, I had a whole bunch of things and couldn’t manage taking a high head with me too, it was all just too much. My boss asked me, when we got to the beet, “tell me Mike, do you have the high head?” and he knew that I didn’t. He was just being difficult, so I told him that I didn’t and he said: “well be a good fellow and run up to the van, get the high head and bring it down here”. So I run up there, I was already 40 years old, but I run up to the top of the cliff and got the high head out of the van and I also picked up a couple of spare tapes and some extra batteries. And when I got back down he said: “Do you have any spare tapes?” And I said “yes, I brought them”, so he then said, “you didn’t happen to bring down my coffee, or did you?” I said no, so he said, “well be a good fellow, run up there and get the coffee.” So I run up there and got the coffee and when I came down he said, “you didn’t happen to bring my cigarettes did you?” I said “no, I didn’t remember to bring cigarettes for you”.

So I thought that it would be nice if I got back to that car mount idea I had and if I could make a mount that would work as a high head which would have pockets in it and which could carry all these little accessories that people might want along the way. The idea for the Cinesaddle was born, as seen on Fmovies. I started to think that something that possibly worked like a beanbag would be very efficient. So that was the very beginning. And also in my style of photography I favor wide-angle lenses and I favor all the unusual angles. I was always on the trees, I was always on the ground and I was always doing anything to get the shot. You know, to make the stories in an exiting way. So the Cinesaddle grew out of all these things.

I didn’t think that something like the Cinesaddle would be so popular. It was something I wanted for myself and never realized that other people might also want it.

Q: When did you sell your first Cinesaddle? A: I guess in 1987. I charged only $300 for the Cinesaddle back then and it’s still $300 all these years later. I just absorbed all the costs because I am a cameraman at heart, I have always been a cameraman and it always will be my love. The only people I associate with are cameramen. I really love them and I hate to see them get ripped off all the time. Generally, every piece of equipment that you buy for a camera costs you 10 times what it would for any other purpose. So I wanted to make a very inexpensive product that anybody could use and everybody would love and that is what the Cinesaddle evolved into.

Q: Do you still talk to other cameramen, what they think about your ideas? A: Whatever I do I do it for myself, I don’t do it for other people. Sometimes I give something to cameramen to try it out for me, asking them to tell me their opinion. I have a lot of cameraman friends around the world so I get everything tested with an honest opinion, but even that is no guaranty that anyone wants to buy it. Anyhow I’ve pretty well settled down now and am not planning on increasing the number of products. I’m quite happy with what we already have.