Steadicam

The steadicam is an apparatus of Cinéma allowing the catch of sight carried, the flight, in Travelling changeable, thanks to a clever system of harness and hinged jib. The operator can thus walk or run while keeping a completely stable image. He amongst other things allows long follow-ups, rises of staircase, ambulations in rough ground, etc

The steadicam is a registered trade name which belongs to The Tiffen Company.

History

The steadicam was invented by Garrett Brown in 1972, then thereafter sophisticated. It named at the beginning the Brown' S to stabilize (the stabilizer of Brown in French), which was then made up only of the handle carrying the camera. Quickly, Brown notices that the weight of the handle, addition to that of the camera, is uncomfortable and prevents the operator from completely carrying out movements " libres". It then develops the famous arm with spring and the body harness (see the section Mécanique steadicam ) which make it possible to transpose most of the weight of the camera unit/handle on the back and the shoulders of the operator.

Its ready prototype, Brown then proposes it with ED Di Guilio, the owner of Cinema Products, which is impressed by the images filmed by the operator during a projection at Deluxe. It immediately signs with him an agreement of development.

Once the apparatus developped at the point, Garrett Brown tries out it on publicities, then comes the turn from the cinema with the film Marathon man of John Schlesinger in 1976 and Rocky of John G. Avildsen the same year. It is necessary to await the film Bound for glory of Hal Ashby, always in 1976, so that Brown turns a first Plan-séquence provided with her invention.

Then the film The Shining will come from Stanley Kubrick in 1980, where Kubrick will make of it a privileged use allowing thereafter the true commercial flight of the apparatus.

Garrett Brown gained a technical Oscar in 1978 for its invention, which became integral part of the " machinery cinématographique" , as well as that the Dolly or the Louma.

Mechanics of the steadicam

The steadicam is composed of three distinct parts:

  • a body harness ( Vest )
  • a mechanical arm ( ARM )
  • a handle ( Post ) equipped with a support for the camera, a counterweight and a handle-Cardan joint ( Gimble ), which form with the batteries and the monitor a unit named Sled .

The basic principle of the steadicam is centered on the Sled and the arm: the camera is fixed on a support envisaged for this purpose, at the top of the Post . With its base a counterweight is which makes it possible the center of gravity of the camera to be " transposé" on the level of the Gimbal . The operator holds the Sled by the handle of the Gimbal .

ARM comes to be fixed on the Sled and transposes the weight of the unit on the harness by a complex system of pulleys and springs (Garrett Brown would have taken as a starting point a Anglepoise lamp to conceive it). The harness itself is fixed around the shoulders, of the hips and the back of the operator, to equitably distribute the weight on all the body, but the back remains the part of the body where most of the weight concentrates.

Thanks to this process, the operator obtains a great mobility of movements and the image remains stable whatever the surface where it operates. However, the handling of the steadicam remains complex, and only an experienced and trained operator will be able to obtain perfectly fluid images.

Famous plans

Several plans brought to the steadicam its current fame. They are mainly sequence shots:

  • Bound for glory (Hall Ashby, 1976); operator: Garrett Brown. It is about the first sequence shot of the history of the steadicam, which lasts approximately 4 minutes. The plan begins on a goliath crane, which drops to let Brown work on the steps of the main actor, David Carradine, which crosses a crowd of 900 observers.
  • The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980); operator: Garrett Brown. Plans of anthologies which confirm the fluidity of the movements of the apparatus, as when the Danny young person crosses the hotel on his tricycle, when Wendy is continued by Jack in the staircase or the famous final continuation in the labyrinth.
  • Brian De Palma brought much to the history steadicam, by its complex sequence shots, in particular in the following sequences:
    • to rough-hew It vanities (1990): plan of opening, according to the character of Peter Fallow (played by Bruce Willis) in the mazes of the basement of a hotel (operator: Larry McConkey)
    • the Dead end (1993): At the station, at the time of the final scene, the plan proceeds between the first stage and the ground floor, passing along the mechanical escalator to finish its race in bottom (operator: Larry McConkey)
    • Snake Eyes (1998): it is here about a " faux" sequence shot, which gathers some in fact three, at the time of the scene of introduction
    • Mission to Mars (2000): Two sequence shots after introducing the main characters of film in the scene of introduction.
  • Freed the (Martin Scorsese, 1990): Sequence shot which follows the progression of Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) and of his friend Karen (Lorraine Bracco) inside a restaurant, on the basis of the street, crossing the kitchens and joining their table (operator: Larry McConkey)
  • the arch Russian (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2002): The film is single a 96 minute old sequence shot turned to the steadicam, which saunters through the corridors of the museum of the Hermitage. To carry out this plan, Tilman Büttner, which was chief-operator and operator steadicam film, used a numeric camera high-definition, which allows the recording of film on hard drive.
  • the operator Mathias Mesa and the realizer Gus Van Sant used the steadicam to turn the majority of the sequence shots of the films Gerry (2002), Elephant (2003) and Last Days (2005).

See too

External bonds

  • patents of Steadicam
  • How Steadicam functions, on the site HowStuffWorks.com
  • Several photographs showing the handling of Steadicam
  • How to manufacture oneself a steadicam

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