Fisher and Chapman is the lead North American dolly manufacturer. As a result, Panther has always been a dark horse over in Europe making cool, different, and often weird dollies and cranes that are beloved by a niche audience, however not in stock at every rental house. While Fisher and Chapman has mostly stayed out of the slider game, Panther has gone in whole-hog with the robust U-Bangi slider system, which the company has now revised to allow for two axes of movement.

Pricing has yet to be announced; U-Bangi is likely to be purchased by rental houses rather than owner/operators. However, the range of motion it opens up in complicated shots makes it something to keep in mind for upcoming shoots.

Sliders particularly excel in situations where you can't set up a normal dolly—either because the ground is too uneven or the room is too small—but you still need movement. The XY takes this one step further by letting you move the camera around on a plane, extending slider moves side-to-side and also forward and backward.

U-bangi-slider-xy_extended-640x2842x Credit: Panther

The U-Bangi system is highly versatile, with features like rubber feet for floor mounting, a variety of tripod and head adapters, and a car mount. If you are a previous U-Bangi owner, you can upgrade your system to the XY and create a shockingly wide array of complicated camera moves without pulling the dolly off the truck.

The XY system could be particularly useful for moving in or out on the windshield for a car shot, which is tricky to do with most mounts (though we don't recommend doing it with the car in motion).

Ubs_carmount Credit: Panther

For more, check out the Panther site.

Tech Specs:

48/64cm, 64/88cm, and 88/136cm pairings available
Longest run offers 290cm (nearly 9 feet) of movement in one slider.
Previous U-Bangi sliders can be upgraded

panther slider ubangi u-bangi

What's the Hype With 'Interstellar' Revisiting Cinemas After a Decade in 70mm IMAX?

Here's Why You Need to Revisit 'Interstellar' in 70mm IMAX

Celebrate the love and hope at the center of Nolan's space epic in the format it was meant to be seen.

If we know anything about Christopher Nolan, he likes to go big. Nolan started with smaller-scale stories (as many of us do) with early noir adjacent works like Following, Memento, and Insomnia, then started going and staying big with his illusionist drama The Prestige. Since then, the scale has been various degrees of massive, with the biggest scope in his time-and-space sprawling epic, Interstellar.

While Interstellarmight not be everyone's favorite Nolan outing, there's no denying it's an impressive feat of filmmaking and his most emotional—if watching Matthew McConaughey's Cooper desperately try to reach his family through quantum space-time doesn't make you cry at least a little bit, what's going on, dude?

With Interstellar'sIMAX release, it's a great time to shed some tears in a public setting in one of the most prestigious film formats around. As we mentioned in our film gauge piece, Nolan loves shooting on film and utilizes 65mm intentionally to provoke a tone of massive scale. In that regard, Interstellar was made for 70mm IMAX. That goes without saying, dawg. That being said, other factors make Interstellar a perfect movie to revisit in theaters while you can.

Let's break down the release further below.

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