Flipping Gravity for Climate Change Action

Science journalist Eli Kintisch wanted to make a short video about climate change and he wanted gravity to go wonky. To achieve the effect he needed a movie set that could be fully inverted, with actors, lights, scenery and camera rigidly attached, and he needed it by next Wednesday. Eli had tried a number of fabricators before finding me. The few that would even quote a price were exorbitantly expensive, the rest simply laughed.
As a professional maker, solving interesting problems is what I live for; naturally I took the job. Working with Eli, I rapidly developed a design based on standard building materials. After a few long days in the shop, we had a proper mechanized movie set: our scene was anchored to an M5X10 I-beam suspended on a beefy axle through industrial pillow bearings. Hanging roughly 7 feet above floor height, the beam and all attached scenery could be inverted with the tallest components just clearing the floor. Our final safety tests concluded just in time for filming, less than one week after accepting the job.
In the video a couple debates climate change at the breakfast table. Pancakes fall up off the table, syrup pours sideways and sausage links stand on end. The film was selected as a finalist for the 2017 Global Poverty competition sponsored by VidCon, CrowdRise and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. For our efforts, the contest awarded $100k to Oxfam to be used for global efforts to support people most vulnerable to effects of climate change.

See the video here - Back to Earth, Back to Reality