Microsoft Used A Giant Robot And Xbox Controller To Film That Surface Studio Ad

Last week, Microsoft showed its gorgeous Surface Studio all-in-one PC to the world. It did so with one of the best tech product videos we’ve ever seen. That video was cool enough already, but we’ve just learned that it was shot using a giant freakin’ robot.

The majority of Microsoft’s video was done with computer graphics and renders — the first 45 seconds of the video in particular, where internal components slot together with perfect precision — but the second half was filmed using a KIRA robotic rig from Motorized Precision.

PremiumBeat has all the nitty gritty on the KIRA — it can move a metre in half a second, can carry an 18kg camera rig, and has a stable base that weighs as much as a small car. Motorized Precision used the KIRA, controlled from a Windows machine — naturally — with a RED EPIC DRAGON 6K camera and Canon 15.5-47mm zoom cine lens to film the motion shots in the ad.

Programming of the movements was done, in part, using a good ol’ fashioned Xbox One Elite controller. Motorized Precision is hard at work using a KIRA in Australia, too, on a major feature film. You can learn all about how the KIRA works in the CinematographyDB video above.

In case you missed it — how you could you miss it? — here’s the awesome ad for the Surface Studio, shot using one of Motorized Precision’s giant robotic KIRA rigs:


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