And the Oscar goes too............ Hamilton, Ontario (PV Labs)

And the Academy Award for best engineering achievement in motion pictures goes to PV Labs of Hamilton.
The company, one of the first tenants in the McMaster Innovation Park, will be honoured next month by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences – the group that gives out the Oscars – for its aerial camera equipment.
The award honours PV’s creation of the Pictorvision Eclipse, an electronically stabilized aerial camera platform.

Launched in the summer of 2008 the Eclipse can be mounted on any aircraft and provides rock solid images from a platform in motion.
Michael Lewis, Raigo Alas and Mike Vellekoop of PV Labs and Greg Marsden of L-3 Wescam will be honoured.

The Eclipse technology is a direct descendant of equipment first developed at Wescam, the technology powerhouse when it was led by Mark Chamberlain. Wescam was sold to L-3 Communications in 2002, and two years later Wescam’s Entertainment Group, including rights to the XR technology, was spun out to form a new entertainment centric company – Pictorvision (now called PV Labs at the corporate level).
Today, PV Labs is one of the fastest growing companies in Canada and employs 85 people working on some of the world’s most advanced visual imaging projects.
Images captured by the Eclipse can be seen on blockbuster movies such as The Twilight Saga, Clash of the Titans, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and upcoming movies including The Amazing Spider-Man and The Dark Knight Rises.
“Collaborating with industry innovators and users, our design team developed a product that unlocks a whole new level of motion picture artist capability” said company president Ty Shattuck. “We are so very proud that the Academy has honoured the accomplishments of this design team. I think it is fantastic that the designers and engineers behind the magic of Hollywood are recognized.”