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2 How It Works 3 Introduction of the Steadicam 4 Filmography 5 External Links |
Purpose
A tripod or other mount normally supports a motion-picture camera: when supported by its operator, in what is described as "hand-held" camera work, the
projected image resulting will show visible effects of even the small motions operators cause while standing still. Hand-held footage has raditionally been considered suitable mostly for documentaries
or as a special effect to produce a similar impression. A director who wants relative motion between the scene and the audience viewpoint, perpendicular to the camera's line of sight, can use a dolly -- that is, a camera mount that runs on a track. The limitation to fairly even surfaces, where the track can be laid, and the need to avoid the including the track in the shot, are significant problems. Before steadicams, however, the only alternative to this is to use a moving hand-held camera, even stable than for stationary shots.
A steadicam mounts the camera to the operator's body and provides them a freedom of comparable to a hand-held camera. The steadicam absorbs the jerks, bumps, and other small movements of the operator, but but follows the broad movements needed to position the camera.
The steadicam consists of a harness worn by the operator and attatched to an iso-elastic arm, which is in turn connected by a gimbal to the camera sled. The sled has the camera at one end and a counterbalance at the other. The counterbalance is usually the battery pack and a monitor. (The monitor substitutes for the camera's viewfinder, since the motion of the camera relative to the operator makes its viewfinder unusable.
The weight of the counterbalance and camera means that the sled has a high inertia and will not easily be moved by small movements from the operator. The free-swinging counterbalance -- not the harness itself -- accounts for most of the stabilization of the picture; shaky filmed images mostly result from a change of angle, not a translation of camera position.
The steadicam was invented in the 1970s by Garrett Brown. It was feared that the novel and unusually smooth but free moving imagery would cause discomfort in audiences, so it was used in a test case in what was expected to be a little-seen film: Rocky (1976).
Today the steadicam is a standard piece of film-making equipment, used in many productions. However, they have been used to great effect in some notable movies including:
How It Works
Introduction of the Steadicam
Filmography
External Links