Chapter 4: Cinematography

Essay: The Steadicam and Camera Movement

If you have ever shot film or video using a handheld camera, or if you have seen someone else's unedited footage, you know that handheld cinematography seems to exaggerate every movement, from an intentional pan to an unintentional bump or jiggle. Rapidly moving shots can become dizzying and unwatchable. To avoid these distracting effects, professional camera operators use expensive dollies and cranes to move the camera while shooting. But cameras moved with dollies and cranes have a different set of limitations. Because of their size and weight, for example, they have limited mobility and cannot be used in many locations. If a set or location has uneven flooring, elaborate tracks must be set up ahead of time for a dolly shot. In addition to the camera operator, a small team of workers is needed to operate and set up the equipment.

In the early 1970s, Garrett Brown, a former folk singer and producer of advertising, tried to find a more nimble, less expensive alternative to traditional moving-camera techniques. While running a small television-commercial production company, Brown discovered that his attempts to create inventive moving-camera shots for commercials was limited by his eight-hundred-pound dolly. After years of experimentation, he produced the first "Brown Stabilizer," a device that held the camera steady during movement. The initial designs showed promise, but were impractical for various reasons. As Brown continued to develop his stabilizer, feature film directors expressed interest. The success of Brown's invention was assured when director John Avildsen hired Brown to shoot the famous shots in Rocky (1976) of the title character (Sylvester Stallone) running up the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum. In 1976, Cinema Products released the first Steadicam®, based on Brown's designs; in 2000, Tiffen Company purchased the right to sell the Steadicam line of products. Brown has continued to invent and innovate, developing interesting and effective moving-camera technology such as the "flycam," the "divecam," the "gocam," the "skycam," and the "superflycam"—many of which are stabilized, remote-control cameras that have been used to shoot sporting events and other scenes in ways that traditional cameras would not have made possible. Among the many feature films for which Brown has served as Steadicam operator are John Schlesinger's Marathon Man (1976), Hal Ashby's Bound for Glory (1976), Francis Ford Coppola's One From the Heart (1982), Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Jonathan Demme's Philadelphia (1993), and Warren Beatty's Bulworth (1998).

How the Steadicam Works

To understand how the Steadicam works, you need to know why traditional handheld cameras produce such bumpy footage. There are two aspects to the problem. First, human perceptual and cognitive systems stabilize our own vision as we walk, run, and jump. This built-in stabilization mechanism prevents the person using a handheld camera from realizing how shaky the footage will appear when it is viewed later. Second, the handheld camera is operated by one of the least stable parts of the human body—the hands—and is too small and light to hold steady. In his early experiments, Brown sought to steady the camera by expanding its area and mass and attaching it to a vest the operator would wear on his or her torso. Although Brown experimented with bungee cords and gyroscopes in the beginning of his testing, there is no gyroscope inside a modern Steadicam. All the stabilization effects of the Steadicam are achieved by increasing the mass and area of the camera, shifting the camera's relation to the operator from handheld to body-supported, and using the stabilizing force of springs and pulleys in the arm that connects the camera to the body.

Steadicam Style in the Feature Film

In Rocky, the spectator's sense of being close to the action—both inside and outside the boxing ring—is largely a result of scenes having been shot with the Steadicam. In Marathon Man, the Steadicam allowed the filmmakers to film Dustin Hoffman's running scenes more dynamically. The Steadicam's potential to alter the look and feel of a film is perhaps most dramatically illustrated by Stanley Kubrick's horror film, The Shining (1980), for which Brown filmed the innovative traveling shots. Serena Ferrara, author of Steadicam: Techniques and Affects, describes the Steadicam's sensation of "presence" in The Shining this way:

In this film the Steadicam is used both as a neutral narrative voice, as it describes what happens and follows the characters in the story, and as an object that is "alive" in its own right, a separate entity that moves in a quasi-mental space. It fluctuates, thanks to its properties, between the physical reality of the flight (as in the escape through the labyrinth) and the unreality of a gaze that knows something, a gaze which, in its turn, has the gift of the "shining", which knows what might happen and allows itself to delay some things (such as the hallway sequence in which the Steadicam does not follow Danny around the corner). Here also, therefore, the intention in using the Steadicam is to record movement, but there is also the intention to create suspense, to enter the realm of the undefined, which becomes embodied in the gaze of the storyteller. (77)

Like The Shining, John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) uses moving-camera shots that seem to suggest a living, moving presence. Carpenter used a now-defunct competing technology called the Panaglide, here operated by Raymond Stella.

More than twenty years after the release of Halloween, The Shining, and other early Steadicam films, the film and television industry supports hundreds of specially trained Steadicam operators around the world. The Steadicam has become an expected tool of most feature films. While lower-priced Steadicams have been developed for small digital cameras and for smaller productions, the Steadicams used in feature filmmaking remain highly sophisticated tools. Steadicam operators must have the artistic ability of traditional camera operators, the specialized knowledge of the Steadicam mechanics, and the ability to move with grace and precision. These elements make the role of the Steadicam operator one of the more important and interesting jobs on the contemporary film set.

Garrett Brown in the wheelchair for moving Steadicam shots taken in The Shining	Brown getting a shot
Brown and Steadicam in the maze set for The Shining

Danny Torrance (Danny Lloyd) running for his life	Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) lurching toward danny
Kubrick and Brown preparing for another shot in the maze

One of the effective and historic shots from The Shining: a camera moving backward, slowly, up a stairway and directly over the shoulder of a character	Brown running with Steadicam to get a dramatic shot on the Overlook Hotel set for The Shining
Acting, art, and technological innovation combining to change the way movies work

The low-angle use of the Steadicam in The Shining to follow Danny on his Big Wheel trike through the long, empty hallways of the haunted Overlook Hotel

Steadicam operators on the set of Antoine Fuqua's Training Day (2001)

Steadicam operator on the set of Training Day following Denzel Washington

Steadicam operator on the set of Training Day being guided as he tracks backward during a shot

Steadicam is a registered trademark of The Tiffen Company, LLC.

 

FOR FURTHER READING

Comer, Brooke. "Garrett Brown: Father of the Steadicam." American Cinematographer (June 1992).

Ferrara, Serena. Steadicam: Techniques and Aesthetics. Oxford, England: Focal Press, 2001.

Harris, Tom. "How Steadicams Work."

"Interview with Garrett Brown, Inventor of the Steadicam." Filmcrew 16 (1997).

SteadiCenter.

Swanson, Eric. "Steadicam Frequently Asked Questions."

www.garrettcam.com