Louma Crane Co-Inventor Jean-Marie Lavalou Dead at 76

Jean-Marie Lavalou, co-inventor the world’s first distant-management camera process, which gave birth to far more fluid crane photographs and a new earth of resourceful options for movement photographs, passed away in Paris on July 15. He was 76.

According to a press launch from Loumasystems in Paris, Lavalou passed away from a sudden and unanticipated sickness.

Born into a well known family members of camembert cheese makers in Normandie, Lavalou’s career took its tech twist when he fulfilled inventor-companion Alain Masseron. In the 1970s, the duo devised one of a kind digital camera actions when producing a movie inside of a submarine all through their national service in France.

This at some point led to the invention of the Louma Crane, which turned greatly utilized in movie and tv output around the world. (The phrase Louma derives from LOU and MA from their names.)

For the venture, Lavalou and Masseron at first introduced their concept to SamAlaga Cinema in Paris. Subsequent investigate and development in Paris, as very well as alongside lover David Samuelson of Samuelson Movie Services in London, with his group of engineers, resulted in the world’s 1st distant-controlled digicam crane.

SFS financed advancement of the Louma, and David Samuelson is credited with obtaining the eureka moment of combining the online video support system that was in development with the Louma challenge to make it distant.

An early person of the program was director Roman Polanski along with his cinematographer Sven Nykvist on 1976’s “The Tenant,” wherever it was deployed to make the film’s opening and closing sequence photographs.

Retired Panavision government Andy Romanoff recalls that the Louma Crane arrived to The usa in 1978 and was used on Steven Spielberg’s “1941,” released in 1979. The process “introduced us to a whole new digicam language,” he says. (Pictured higher than: Lavalou, remaining, and Spielberg on the established of “1941,” with the Louma Crane in the track record. William A. Fraker was the cinematographer.)

“Jean-Marie labored working day and night time adapting the crane to the calls for of Hollywood filmmaking,” adds Romanoff. “In afterwards yrs, he turned buddies with digital camera crews all all over the environment as he frequented sets to listen to how he could make the crane easier and much more beneficial for them… He expended his entire everyday living devoted to building much better resources for earning videos.”

Lavalou is survived by 4 sisters and many nieces and nephews.