In the early years of my film making career back in the mid 90’s I took a class in Pyrotechnics at NISS in Oslo and started blowing things up. Having studied chemistry in school I naturally knew a bit about the chemistry behind these pyrotechnics after many shady «after school» projects with home made gunpowder in the 80’s. To make a long story short…I gained a lot of «knowledge» around the effect of rapid expansion of hot gasses, and how it works affected it’s surroundings.
After blowing up a few cars, fuse boxes, vegetables and TV’s in the pyrotechnics class, I was asked by the instructor if I would consider being his assistant as I had a lot of knowledge of the chemistry and physics behind this. Since this meant getting payed to blow up cars I naturally said yes.
After about a year I became the main instructor at the Pyro-course witch gave me the opportunity to meet the few SFX workers in Norway at the time. This further led to a career in the SFX department.
With a background as a process engineer, it was quite easy to see that many of the effects we made in the SFX department in fact was created using process equipment. Industrial pumps and fans, valves, piping, hoses, nozzles etc was needed to create effects.
Since I now had experience in both SFX and process technology, I figured that I might as well put my strong passion for inventing into this as well. Finally I now had a good excuse to invest in some real equipment for my workshop in order to put my ideas to life. Equipped with a lathe, mill and a TIG welding machine I could finally get those ideas out there.
I started making all kinds of fun stuff like compressed air an propane cannons from small handheld units up to 150 liter ones, a 200 bar high pressure cannon (yes, this one can scare the shit out of most people, trust me..), flame-bars, propane driven smoke-machines, pneumatic rams, rain equipment, flame-throwers and various other specialty rigs on demand.
At the time the main focus was on developing equipment for SFX and working as a SFX tech or supervisor but I was working more and more with cinematography and video again so making special camera and grip parts was natural. I had previously been making both a jib and dolly while attending film-school in the 90’s, and made a time-lapse motor and Arri lens adapter for my first Bolex camera so I felt the calling to continue in that direction.
Maybe it was the age affecting the testosterone level that made the interest for blowing things up less dominant.
I started focusing more on making gear and gadgets so in 2007 I got my first CNC machine. Since the direction was towards making moving camera equipment the company name became Cinemotion.