- 500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error
- Raising Cain–Steadicam Operator: Larry McConkey – Long discussion with Larry talking about the operating of his brilliant long steadicam shot in Raising Cain
- Behind the scenes of the recording of the Incredibles score – Love this score; fun to see the insane amount of brass needed to get that sound!
Latest Updates: steadicam RSS
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Ed's web picks for June 5th through August 31st
Ed Moore
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Ed's web picks for May 29th through May 30th
Ed Moore
- ross:ching » Death Cab for Cutie’s Little Bribes – The concept's a little bit croaky, but the variety of timelapse tricks in this video makes it well worth a watch.
- First sight: Duncan Jones – "So, Ziggy Stardust, Space Oddity – does he share his father's view of all things cosmic?
No: Moon is a million miles from spangled Ziggy spacesuits. It wears its sci-fi geekness loud and proud (Jones wrote his PhD thesis on artificial intelligence)."
Interview with the director of upcoming "indie scifi" Moon with Sam Rockwell which looks fantastic in the trailer. Even more excited about it now I know the director is not only David Bowie's son but has a PhD in AI…
- YouTube – ‘The Man Who Walked Around The World ‘ with Robert Carlisle – Astoundingly well-operating six minute steadicam shot for Johnnie Walker whisky. DoP and operator (a man after my own heart, if insanely better!) is George Richmond, steadicam op on Quantum of Solace, Burn After Reading, Wanted and more.
This is almost certainly a shot where the steadicam operator sits on the back of some sort of vehicle to operate as it's so long and so fast that you'd never be able to keep up if you were walking with the rig.
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Homecut (feat. Corinne Bailey-Rae and Soweto Kinch) - behind the scenes of the music video shoot
Ed Moore
This was a really fun steadicam job for Texture Films shooting around South London in April.  You can see the final video over here.  Shot on RED almost all at 100fps Рvery sympathetic to steadicam operation!
Highlight of the shoot was probably Homecut and Soweto Kinch doing an impromptu freestyle performance with lyrics about the production of the video – it’s the first clip in the video.
Some photos from the set after the jump – including one where I realised that my volunteering my car to the art department meant the wheel coming off…
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8 ways to improve your Steadicam or stabilizer shots today
Ed Moore
Whether you’re flying one of the fantastic Steadicam range of camera stabilizers – from the smallest Steadicam Merlin to the largest Steadicam Ultra 2 – ¬†or one of the huge range of other manufacturers… or you’ve even taken it upon yourself to build your own cheap steadicam, there are some basic tips you can benefit from immediately.
Steadicam operating is undoubtably a art, with the top¬†practitioners¬†having spent many, many years perfecting their skills. ¬†But with a nudge in the right direction, you can put yourself on a similar course today. ¬†There’s also plenty of pitfalls and bad habits to avoid.
Get hold of a copy of Jerry Holway and Laurie Hayball’s superb book, the Steadicam Operator’s Handbook. ¬†This recently-released tome represents centuries of experience from the top operators in the world. ¬†It is by far the best first investment anyone remotely interested in Steadicam can make. ¬†If you’re about to buy a rig, it will help you chose the right one. ¬†And if you own one – of whatever type – you can immediately take advantage of the huge number of exercises described to start improving your operating straightaway.- Book a workshop. ¬†You can only progress so far on your own – one-to-one instruction from an experienced tutor (it’s been said that it takes as long to learn how to properly teach steadicam operation as it takes to learn how to operate it yourself in the first place) is invaluble in cutting out bad habits early and progressing your techniques. ¬†There are a few courses to chose from, but in the UK the official Tiffen 2 or 3 day workshop is an excellent start at about ¬£700. ¬†
You’ll get to try a whole variety of steadicam rigs right up to the very largest; learn how to properly build, balance and put on the rig. ¬†You’ll be walked through the basic excercises which are designed to get you familiar with working with the rig and how to control its movement through space without introducing inadvertent wobbles. ¬†And you’ll build up to conducting typical shots the average steadicam operator encounters on a daily basis. ¬†The gold standard of courses is the Tiffen 5 day course, held every few months in a rotating schedule taking it all round the world. 
Check your socket block adjustments – if your stabilizer benefits from a vest and arm (unlike the smallest rigs), the connection between the two is absolutely vital to good operating. ¬†The socket block should be set so whilst the operator stands up straight (wearing the rig fully built with camera on) the steadicam sits happily just to one side of the operator without needing the operator’s hands on the rig holding it close into them. ¬†If the rig wants to ‘get away’ from you, the socket block should be angled back so the top of it gets closer to you. ¬†This should balance the rig out. ¬†Don’t try and set this without the weight of the rig on the end of the arm – once that weight is on the rig will settle your vest down on you and affect the socket block angle anyway.- Practise walking around in the rig with your hands behind your back. ¬†The position of the rig relative to you should be controlled almost entirely with the angle of your hips. ¬†Whilst there’s a tremendous temptation in the early stages of developing this skill, when the rig is wobbling all over the place, to grab on with your hands and try and ‘control’ the steadicam, the result is actually that you destroy all that expensive isolation of the camera from your own movements. ¬†In effect,¬†canceling¬†out the ‘steadi’. ¬†Your hands do have an important job to do in operating, but applying constant pressure on the rig to hold it in the same position relative to your body is not it. ¬†Don’t worry about the shot during this¬†exercise, keep the monitor turned off. ¬†The rig will tend to pan around as you walk – don’t worry; what’s actually happening if you take a look is that the camera is actually staying pointed in the same direction, it’s really you that’s moving around it. ¬†The bearings in the gimbal are isolating this movement from the rig.
- Beware of inertia – any stabilizer is effectively a pendulum: heavier at the bottom than the top. ¬†When moving off from a standing stop, the heavier bottom of the rig ‘wants’ to stay where it is, creating a pivoting force around the gimbal which results in the camera tilting down. ¬†Conversely, when stopping from a forward move the heavier bottom ‘wants’ to keep going, and the camera tilts up. ¬†Any acceleration of the rig will produce a similar effect. ¬†Learning to anticipate and compensate for this with your operating hand (the one on the post) is crucial to producing clean shots. ¬†A really good way to practise is to balance your rig extremely bottom heavy which amplifies the effect. ¬†Make lots of stops and starts, both forwards/backwards and left/right. ¬†You’ll gradually develop a muscle memory that will ‘know’ when the rig is off-level and compensate accordingly. ¬†For extreme situations a tighter than usual grip on the post is required momentarily… a quick release is needed though, or your lovely crash stop will be ruined by the shot drifting out of control right at the end.
- Check for wobbles in your camera mounting. ¬†The slightest tiny wobble can be amplified by the rig (or a zoomed-in lens) to produce a really noticeable shake. ¬†Check your rig after building it by picking up the sled by hand and giving it a good shake. ¬†Look for flex in the camera mounting or any cables or other bits coming loose. ¬†If you can’t get the camera bolted down by at least two screws, or you have and there’s still some play, a bit of camera type looped back on itself to make a bit of double sided tape and applied between the steadicam dovetail and the bottom of the camera can make a massive difference. ¬†And don’t get slack and leave a mess of cables all over the rig. ¬†Not only can they move around during the shot and alter your balance more than you might think, they can easily get caught on scenery, lighting stands and so on. ¬†Nasty.
- Record your practice shots, give it some time, and watch them back later on when you’re no longer wearing the rig and you can gauge them a little more objectively. ¬†If you’re trying different configurations or operating techniques, make a note of them on a bit of paper and shoot it as a slate at the top of the take so you know later on what it is you’re watching. ¬†Oh, and whilst we’re on the subject of practice shots:
- Learn what sort of shots work and what don’t. ¬†It can be depressing recording shots of you steadicaming your way around your flat. ¬†They look wobbly and boring. ¬†Okay, you could probably still do with plenty of practise…. but it’s also the case that the best steadicam shots involve a subject, usually an actor, to draw the viewer’s attention. ¬†You can see the effect for yourself: start a shot by moving through an empty space, panning and tilting around, and then get a friend to step into the shot and continue it following them as they move through the rooms. ¬†From the moment your friend enters the frame, the shot is instantly far more interesting, watchable, and any slight wobbles there might be are easily forgiven. ¬†Take a really good look at typical steadicam operation on TV and films – you’d be surprised how often the operating is not 100% perfect, but the content of the shot means you’ve probably never noticed.
Oh, and one more thing: it’s definitely NOT a steadycam…
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Jane Doe day 2: Car mounts
Ed Moore
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Why the RED modular system is good news for Steadicam operators
Ed Moore
If you’re reading this, it probably hasn’t escaped your attention that RED recently announced a new, extremely modular approach to digital cinema cameras.¬† Having had lunch with Garrett Brown (forgive a guy for being proud) which inevitably involved a lot of chat on how the steadicam system has evolved over the years, Jason Wingrove‘s twitter jumped out at me.
If RED can come up with (and I’m sure they will) a sensible range of cabling to attach their various modules together, Jason’s suggestion would produce a really interesting rig.¬† Traditionally if you want ‘feature film quality’ you’re looking at a big and heavy camera, with a Steadicam rig to match.¬† RED can be configured in any number of ways to meet and arguably exceed today’s concept of ‘feature film quality’, but with just the tiny sensor module and a lens at the top and everything else down below as the counterbalance, you have a lightweight system, requiring only a lightweight rig.¬† Hurrah!
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Why chickens make good Steadicam operators
Ed Moore
Fundamental to good Steadicam operating technique is to separate the movement of your body as you move around the rig from the rig itself.¬† Assuming you don’t jerk it around with your hips, taking your hands off the rig and moving around the rig in a circle should be possible, as the extremely low-friction bearings in the arm and gimbal stop most of your motion being transferred into the rig.¬† Not jerking the sled around when changing your own position relative to the rig is essential for changing direction from the camera facing in the same direction as you are, to ‘Don Juan’, where the camera looks over your shoulder.
This impressive video shows how extrordinarily good chickens are at cancelling out the movement of their bodies and keeping their heads in the same place.¬† If they could do the same thing with their arms – well, okay, they’d probably need a few upgrades on the arm front as well – they’d make excellent operators!
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Lunch with Garrett Brown
Ed Moore
Thank you very much to the Don of UK Steadicam, Robin Thwaites of Tiffen Europe, for inviting me along to a lunch with some Steadicam celebrities today.¬† Present aside from Robin, Terry and James from Tiffen were Peter Robertson (operator of such masterful work as Atonement, Hot Fuzz and many, many more), Roger Tooley (Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Match Point, Shaun of the Dead and many many more), Paul Edwards (Harry Potter, Sunshine, Love Actually and many many more), Imran Naqvi (Jack Says, No Smoking Please, Are You Ready for Love)… and of course we shouldn’t leave out Garrett Brown (inventor of the Steadicam as well as a insanely long raft of other extraordinary film and video devices).
The film industry is bloody hard work, and you could be forgiven for getting the impression talking to film crews on and off sets that we can be a miserable, chip-on-the-shoulder lot.¬† So it was absolutely great to be in the presence of a group of true professionals who couldn’t have been more genial and interested in each other’s work.¬† Particularly telling was the fact that Peter Robertson in particular operated two of the ‘big’ shots I’ve seen in the UK recently, the 5 1/2 minute shot from Atonement, and the Stanley Kubrick Film 4 promo, and we had to drag the stories out of him!
In an industry where it’s all too easy to find the ‘louder’ types regaling you endlessly about their remote involvement with some second rate movie, it’s extremely refreshing and inspiring when the guys really doing the top work are very modest about it, and immediately point to the work of the whole team that was involved.
I’ve been operating Steadicam for a couple of years now, which makes me a relative newbie to the whole thing.¬† As well as being honoured simply to have been invited, listening to Garrett talk about how proud he was to have been responsible for a worldwide network of people to have made a living (as Roger put it, “you’ve paid my mortgage!”) doing something that requires a extremely high level of skill and vision, was very inspiring.¬† Few people can say they’ve had that degree of impact upon so many.