THE STORY BEHIND MULE…
The MULE GoPro mount for Hero cameras was conceived and brought to market by a guy named Del. He’s a designer, tinkerer, dad and car nut. This is our short story of how the patent-pending MULE mount came to be:
Not long ago Del was given an opportunity to drive a priceless race car. Wanting to capture the one-time-only experience he asked the owner if he could mount a couple of GoPros to the car to document the experience. Understandably, the owner was concerned about about a mishap and only agreed to a single mount. Needless to say, Del totally respected his concern and went on with the drive…
Passing a real Mustang GT350. Made possible with a Hero2 and MULE.
Afterward, Del thought about his words and realized that, technically speaking, he was limiting the number of mounts but not necessarily the cameras themselves. This got him to wondering if a two-camera mount/adapter existed for GoPro. As we often do with these sorts of things, he kinda just let it go.
Fast forward a couple months and Del was again at the track helping out with a rare 1963 Corvette. It’s a pretty famous car attending a pretty famous gathering of race cars that was being covered for TV by FOX Sports. One of their camera guys wanted to put a GoPro in the Corvette. The owner obliged and FOX proceeded to mount the GoPro to the roll cage with a hose clamp! The whole process took a minute or two which caught his attention. “Oh dear. What on earth? Why so clunky and slow?” Del thought to himself. There has to be a better way.
After much research by he and his wife, they found no better solution and decided he needed one in case the opportunity to drive came back around. Further, the idea might also be helpful if ever he found the need to quickly mount two cameras in a tight space, or capture the action and a selfie! Many race cars don’t have much room and life experiences can’t be repeated so capture all that you can.
As work on the idea that would become MULE continued we knew it had to work within the GoPro ecosystem. But it also had to work alone and in less space, if possible. Ideally, it needed to work on a roll bar by itself. (This is where the rubber groove comes into play allowing the MULE to mount directly to a curved surface.)
Naturally we made prototype after prototype and, as testing began, people saw the MULE and took notice. They wondered if it would work for scuba diving (yes), surfboards (yes), cycling (yes), home movies of the kids (yes), snow sports (yes), zip-lines (yes), hiking (yes) and more… And that is the story of MULE! So far…
Hopefully you find MULE helpful in your film making. The fun and experiences we’ve had has led to more ideas and we plan to bring them to you soon.
And if you have any questions, please reach out to Del directly at del at mulemfg dot com.
