For Mark Woods, this year — “a record year, an insane year” for his nine year old Camera Crane Specialists ? isn’t over yet, with the arrival Monday of Steven Soderbergh’s big-budget, star-laden feature, “Contagion,” shooting here for the next two months.
“Contagion” is the latest feature shooting in the Midwest that will rent Panavision Techno Cranes from Woods’ Evanston-based Midwest-exclusive inventory.
After attending Columba College in 1989, Woods was a freelance camera assistant and also worked as at Panavision’s Chicago office as crane operator and remote technician. The Chicago office worked with a separate division, Panavision Remote Systems, which placed its Techno Cranes in the Midwest.
When Panavision packed up and left in 2001, Woods arranged with the company to keep a Techno crane in Chicago. He started his company with one Super Techno 30 in a Schiller Park garage shared with gaffer Marty Rhomberg’s Northern Lights & Power company.
As the Midwest production business, especially in Detroit, began to take off, so did Woods’ company, to the point where Camera Crane Specialists has a current inventory of six cranes and support equipment valued at $4 million.
One is the giant Akela crane, the biggest crane in existence, with an 85-ft. arm. “Out of 15 of these in the world, we have one,” Woods says proudly.
