Described by coworkers as a wizard, he's created all kinds of cameras and camera carriers that have made it possible for Luke Skywalker and other celluloid heroes to race pods through worlds that don't exist. Brenneis came up with the idea of a camera that moves down an 80-foot track so precisely that it can film several different takes, which can be combined to create the illusion of vehicles or monsters hurtling through space. Moving the camera instead of its target makes it possible for filmmakers to turn on lights during one sequence and engine flame during another, add an explosion in a third and then blend them all to get an image with far more details than a single pass could provide. Exactness is an obvious must, or else hours of costly processing time will be spent correcting the combined multiple images. That's why I use stepper motors to control the crane that takes the camera down its track.
Steppers are either dead on the mark or they're broken.
If a servo controller dies, it can tear your arm off. They keep telling me these cameras are going to be obsolete because everything's going digital, but we have four of them running simultaneously now. The newest is called the Mooseflex, because it used to make groaning noises that sounded like a moose. I went in and tweaked the steppers to make it quieter, but the name stuck. The cameras Brenneis designs are so unique that when they break, he's the man who's called to fix them.