Zinema Motion – A success story made in Germany

Paid Partnership with Zinemamotion.com

Here we go again guys with an extension of the incredible story of Michael Ziganek, creator of Zinema Motion, a new robotic motion control solution, that is becoming a new industry standard!

For those who don’t know, Michael is a community member with a background in software development and experience as an executive and project manager in companies such as Siemens.

Michael combined his passion for photos and video with the development of an affordable robotic motion control solution. 

He searched for something similar in the market, but at some point, he decided to build everything for himself and for others. This is the story of Zinema Motion.

Hey Michael! We are excited to share a new piece of your journey with our community. So please tell us a bit more about your idea, the vision, and why you have started Zinema Motion.

Hello to the community – I’m very happy to share my whole story with you!

Film and video creation have always been one of my passions since I was a kid playing around with the first Video 2000 cameras and recorders many years back. As you already said my background is in software development and for over 25 years this was my daily job.

About 3 years ago I started a small side business focusing on creating tabletop video ads for social media and was always fascinated especially by the food & beverage super slow-motion sequences created in the past years. Of course, I also started to explore the market for affordable motion control solutions needed to create that but found nothing suitable for my budget.

Since I also have a technical background, it was clear for me to look into the options to build a system like that myself. After some research, I found a local German robotics manufacturer and did the first tests using their robots for camera motion control. And I started creating a completely new software for this use case to control the robot.

A few months later the decision was clear – this idea was very much larger than just creating a motion control setup for me. So Zinema Motion was born to make this technology also available for other video studios facing a similar problem.

So we introduced our first camera robot system LOKI last year October to the market and presented the first time to the public at IBC 2022 in Amsterdam, thanks also for featuring us at this time on your channel!

So your start was only 6 months ago, and now you have already been to NAB Las Vegas with new products – that is fast!

You are right …well…we have been super busy since then.

Quickly I understood that most of the studios I have talked to require more payload and range for a camera robot and it happened by accident that our robotics partner introduced an updated larger robot arm to be launched in April. Of course, we were very excited about that and also started to introduce our second larger robot THOR.

The Linear Track and additional accessories were already planned as the next product update and we managed to get all that designed and integrated just before the NAB Las Vegas 3 weeks ago.

Organizing a “local” event like IBC Amsterdam last year was relatively easy, but just the logistics to get everything prepared and delivered to the US for the NAB show were crazy. But finally, we did it and we had a great show, made very good new contacts and enjoyed this big event!

We saw that you have won the NAB 2023 Product of the Year Award – tell us more about that!

Yeah – this is crazy. 

NAB Show Product of the Year Award Winners were selected by a panel of industry experts in 15 categories and announced in a live awards ceremony on April 18. To be eligible for an award, nominated products had to come from companies exhibiting at the 2023 NAB Show and be delivered within the 2023 calendar year.

The first time at NAB Las Vegas for a small start-up company from Germany and then we won this award for our THOR Camera Robot System. I was very excited and also a bit proud of all the hard work put into that.

Before we went to the show I was not 100% sure if all that work and investment for such a big event is worth it, but after I have been there it was clear – we will go again next year! Our much larger booth is already booked for 2024!

What is your plan for the future, are there more plans to grow?

My vision is to provide a full motion control ecosystem for small to mid-sized studios which is kind of affordable and easy to use. We will keep on working on our HEIMDALL WORKS software to add new features and improvements and also keep on listening to our community of users for future requests and use cases. I guess we will never stop working on the software! 😉

I’m also looking into adding new products needed for all kinds of different applications, like rigs for product launchers for example. The main idea is to stay as close as possible to our customers, understand their needs and challenges and work on solutions for them to improve or enable their workflows.

Are there any more events planned for this year?

Thanks for asking, yes – we will be at IBC Amsterdam from 15-18 September this year and we will be showcasing our virtual production setup and also a live high-speed camera demo setup, but it’s too early to share more details! Our booth setup is growing and this will be very exciting!

Sounds all amazing Mike!

Guys, we are at the end of this blog, and we have popcorn ready x the next chapter at IBC! We can’t wait to see more and to see in person the evolution of this incredible project! Stay tuned!

Below you can find the latest creation by MacroRoom using Zinema Motion and another video by Michael that we shared a few weeks ago.

More info > https://zinemamotion.com/
Instagram > https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq8R8SUgebq/

Thank you so much Michael for sharing with the community your story and hope you guys loved it!

We are cooking a new piece fam, and release soon the new magazine layout. So stay tuned and subscribe to be sure to not miss the next one! Have a great day on our channels.

FilmmakersWorld Team