June 18, 2022 • 34 mins
There have been many inventions that have advanced filmmaking, but maybe none as important as the steadicam. Invented in the mid-70s, it literally changed the way movie making happened, and made the impossible possible. Learn about the fascinating history behind this amazing technology, in this classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M Hey everybody, it's your silly pal Josh. And for
this week's select, I've chosen our episode on Steadycams. What
with it being the beginning of the summer blockbuster movie season,
I figured that the chances you want to know how
movies are made have gone through the roof, So I'm
here to satisfy your curiosity with, like I said, our
(00:20):
Steady Cams episode, Enjoy, Welcome to Stuff you should know,
a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant.
(00:41):
Jerry's over there. Chuck's wearing a hat, so Steady should know. Yeah,
he's still still pretty sad. Yeah, are you really sure?
All right, Pete? You know what I'm getting the Josh's
referencing my last chance garage hat that I've talked way
too much about. Um, I'm getting the patch remade as
we speak. WHOA actually found one an eBay that had
(01:04):
been sold three months ago, and he's all a big conspiracy?
Is that right now? But I found a picture of
the patch that I sent to a patchmaker who like,
can digitally reproduced this thing? Nice man. Well, then I
got to find in the right hats coming back home. Well,
that's step one. That's a big step one. Yeah, I'm
getting a few patches and a few hats this time.
(01:25):
I think that's a good idea. You can name them
one through eight. That's right. Uh, let's see, Chuck, you
worked in the film industry previously. Yeah, so did you technically? Yeah? Um,
you did more than I did by far. You worked
in front of and behind the camera, that's right. Um,
(01:45):
did you ever work with a steady cam at all? Yeah? So,
like you've seen these things up close. I don't recall
Scott or anybody using one. We did not have one
on our show. Okay they're expensive, Okay, but I mean
there's some pretty good equipment, said it seemed like, but
there was no steadicam, right, Nope, Because I was trying
to recall and I could not, for the life of me,
(02:07):
remember a moment when there was an awesome like extendoh
arm camera with like all of the components exploded out
in the different parts of a poll. That didn't happen
because he would have walked in and said, what's that right,
and everyone would have laughed, and you would have been like,
what does everyone to make fun of me. Stuff dressing room. Uh,
now we never use one on our TV show for
(02:28):
Science Channel because, like I said, it's pricey to rent
um And this is a bit of a giveaway. But
a person steadicam operator comes with the package with all
the equipment, it's a lot of times their own and
uh it's you know, it's pricey to pay for that,
that lady or that dude. But the reason it is
(02:50):
prices because it's it has a really good effect and
the person who's doing it really knows what they're doing.
I I don't know, but just from researching this, it
seemed like they were probably the most skilled tradesperson on
the set at any given time when they were on
the set. Is that right, Well, I think it's just
(03:11):
a matter of what skill. Uh, it's just a different skill.
Are they like the highest echelon of camera operators? No,
it's just different. Okay, like a top nine niche Yeah, okay,
I got it. But but you don't just wade into
steadicam and and start getting work the next day. It
does take a lot of work to master. But like
a good Dolly grip, uh is just as skilled. It
(03:33):
just pushing that thing around. But that takes a very
non herky jerky well it's not in the herky jerky anyway,
but just to hit the marks right and I see, Yeah,
I mean all that stuff takes a great amount of skill. Well,
let's talk about this because steadicam. You know, when I
came of age, it was already invented. It wasn't It
was basically became commercially available a year I was born.
So I don't really know a world prior to Steady Camp.
(03:56):
I've never seen a movie that came up before six
funny and um, I'm just used to it, right, But
it's it's it's interesting to look back and see that
there there actually is a point in time where this
one dude who was actually kind of an outsider of
the movie business, um basically changed it permanently forever for sure.
(04:20):
His name was Garrett Brown. Is Garrett Brown. Yeah he's
still around right, Yeah, and he um he was working,
uh for well, he was working in TV commercials in
on Sesame Street in Philadelphia, and um, he got a
little frustrated, as camera people do, uh pre steadicam with
(04:40):
not being able to accomplish certain shots. Yeah, there's supposedly
there were thirty impossible shots that just based on the
the equipment at the of the day, you just couldn't
do right. Yeah. Well, and a lot of it had
to do with like rough terrain. Sure, Staircases were a
big one. And the reason the shots were impossible not
like you couldn't lug a camera around up and down
(05:02):
the stairs, but the movement that the camera recorded would
be so jarring that it would render the film like
that that it would be unusable. Yeah. And then this
was in the day before I mean there were shaky
cam shots and like Cassavettis and all these early indie
filmmakers did a lot of like avant garde handheld stuff,
but it was known as avant garde because it looked
(05:24):
different and people were used to kind of smoother looking
things in mainstream movies at the time. Yeah, it had
like a real frenetic energy to it, Yeah, which you
see all the time now. It's like a bona fide thing.
But it wasn't just like picking up the movements of
the camera. It was like telegraphing them as far as
the human brains concerned. Because we take it for granted,
(05:44):
but we have in our own brains, a pretty complex
system that involves the inner ear coordinating with the movement
of the retina so that it offsets the movement and
the motion in the jarring um impact of like just walking. Like,
if we didn't have that, we wouldn't be able to
focus on anything while we were moving around. Yeah, you wouldn't.
(06:07):
People wouldn't jog. They would get sick and vomit every
time they jog, exactly right. And you certainly wouldn't be
able to like read US magazine while you were jogging
or something like that. And the fact that you can
it really is uh, it really shows how incredibly complex
and well developed the system is. Right. Yes, that's what
the steadicam that Garrett brown Um created sought to recreate.
(06:30):
Any he did it, he nailed it, like on the
first time out. Basically, Yeah, because we we mentioned a
dolly that is Um, people that no film know this
stuff is like pretty rudimentary information. But a lot of
people don't know what a dolly is, and they see
the word dolly grip in the movie, they just think
it sounds funny. Um, But the dolly is how you
typically would get a smooth shot. It's just a big,
(06:50):
super super heavy sled with wheels that the camera sits
on and the camera operator sits on. And it's either
on a very smooth floor on a piece of track
like a little railroad car, and it pushes along and
that's how you get those nice smooth shots. Right. So
that's a dolly. The problem with the dolly is is
you can't really lay that track over um, a rocky
(07:12):
terrain if you're filming on Mars or something like that. No,
and like you said, you can't push it up and
downstairs just had its limitations, right, it did. So Garrett
Brown said, I'm sick of these limitations. I'm so tired
of being limited by dollies, stupid dollies. I'm gonna invent
something better. And so he tinkered around um with his
(07:33):
what was called the Brown Stabilizer at first, which he
later renamed the Steadicam and to show off UM like
at first he he was just using him in commercials,
and he was like, this is way bigger than just commercials.
I'm gonna make a sizzle reel. And he made a
sizzle reel of the thirty impossible shots that you just
(07:54):
couldn't do before, and he did it with the steadicam,
but he didn't show how it was done. Yeah, and
you can. He was able to save ten of those shots,
uh and digitize them, and a couple of years ago
he finally released online ten of those so you can
actually go see this original reel. His wife and his
best friend like just doing stuff, while just doing stuff,
(08:16):
like you know, like one of them was swimming. You
can't run alongside somebody's swimming, apparently was an impossible shot.
I'm not quite sure why. Well, you just couldn't run
alongside someone doing anything. Oh okay, that's what it was,
even with a dolly. Uh, well, no, you could have.
You could have laid dolly track down the length of
a swimming pool shirt, right, That's why I didn't understand
that one was an impossible shot. Um. And to show off,
(08:38):
he goes question he goes around a slide just to
kind of show maybe maybe that was the impossibility of it.
But then his buddy gets out of the pool and
like walking like he's he pivots around him and I'm
sure he When he put this reel together and he
sent it out, the directors are like, uh, this is
magic sorcery. Well it was mind blowing, and some people
(09:02):
say it was the first UH viral video because it
was shared around Hollywood. Literally in a matter of days.
Everybody in Hollywood was saying, what in the world, Like
you said, what is this sorcery this Garrett Brown has
bestowed upon us? Yeah, it's It was a bit of
a mic drop as far as that reel goes, and
Stanley Kubrick being Stanley Kubrick sent a message to Garrett
(09:25):
Brown that said, if you are really concerned about protecting
its design before you fully patent it, I suggest you
delete the two occasions on the reel where the shadow
on the ground gives the skilled counter intelligence photo interpreter
a fairly clear representation of a man holding a pole
with one hand, was something or other at the bottom
of the pole which appears to be slowly moving. All
of that is Stanley kubrick Ian for, hey, there's a
(09:49):
shadow and in one of your shots of the steadicam op,
which was pretty cool of him to do, because I'm
sure there were plenty of people in Hollywood who would
have been like, Okay, think I kind of get the
idea of what this was, because there was no suggestion
whatsoever of what what Garrett Brown had used to get
these shots except in those shadows. So he went eat
(10:10):
and went and immediately cut those those I think fourteen
seconds out of his reel and then released the second
edition and it looked pretty good. I mean it's it's
rough compared to today's standard. Sure, but in the time
it was it was like unbelievable. It changed everything. Um.
And one of the shots that he got was his
(10:31):
wife Ellen. He said, dear, why don't you put on
your most seventies bell bottoms you can find? And I'm
going to run up behind you as you run up
the steps to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and maybe
when you get to the top, you can raise your
hands in triumph and I will spin around you. And
then if that shot sounds familiar. Uh. It actually attracted
(10:54):
a guy, a director named Um John What is the
evil Son? Yeah, John Um, who said I like this,
I'm going to use it in this little film I'm
directing called Rocky. Yeah. And I didn't get whether or
not this was the case. But did they Um? Did
they locate Rocky in Philadelphia because of those steps? No?
(11:15):
Because he said, how did you do that? And? Um,
where are those steps. I don't think so, man, because
I wondered that too, Like, uh, like, did he not
have a scene written where Rocky just runs up those steps?
I mean Stallone wrote it. Um, I think they just
have to ask him. Hey, Sly, I was wondering if
(11:36):
that was pretty good, I answered in that little moment,
someone will have to interpret that. Great movie though, Man,
I rewatched that. Yeah, like this year, from beginning to end,
just phenomenal movie. I'm trying to get Emily to watch it.
She never seen the original. No, it's its own thing
for sure. Like it's not, it's not really it's a
(12:00):
story for the most part. It's a love story and like, um,
the triumph of the little Guy story for sure, Yeah,
featuring boxing, Right, that's exactly right. But two and three
and on onward, it's like a totally different thing. Yeah,
but those are good too. Yeah, they said, let's take
your story, take out the heart, and insert cocaine instead
(12:20):
insert Mr T. I don't get the cocaine reference. Well,
it's just the eighties in Hollywood got hands on, you
know what I mean. Uh, yeah, that's a good question, though,
I wonder about that. If he surely they didn't remake
it for Philadelphia just for that well. But the point
is is Garrett Brown created on this sizzle reel the
(12:44):
one of the most iconic shots in filmmaking history for sure,
and he sent that real out and within that year,
I believe six three major motion pictures hired him to
operate his steadicamp for it. Um, there was Rocky, there
was um what was the one about what you Gut
Thrie Bound for Glory? Yeah, I think that one came
(13:05):
out first, So that was the first actual like uh
and that one, uh, the steady came up was Garrett Brown,
I think for all these because he was the only
guy that knew how. He got a lot of work
early on. Yeah, and I think I think the paton
was still pending until ninety seven, so I'm sure the
thing out of the side everybody closed your eyes while
I shoot this. But on Bound for Glory, he was
(13:26):
on a crane even that lowered down, stepped off the crane,
so people have seen crane shots, but then for the
crane to go down, down, down, and then all of
a sudden start following this guy, everyone was like, what
in the world, right? There would have been a cut
after the crane stopped and then before you know, they
would have cut and he would have gotten a position
and then started up again. This is one smooth shot.
(13:47):
One smooth shot. Yeah, and then the other one was
Marathon Man. So right out of the blue, this guy
who was a commercial director and made short films for
Sesame Street changed filmmaking like single handedly. Yeah, and one
an Academy award, uh for technical achievement. I got that
patent in seventy seven. And um, well that's it. That's
(14:09):
the history of the steadicam. That's it. Everybody, good night,
But we're gonna should we take a break and tell
everyone how this thing works. Let's do it man, alright, Chuck,
(14:34):
So the Steady Camp. Do you remember when we did
our episode on breathalyzers. Oh boy, that was a long
time ago, and we found out that the breathalyzer is
one of the most complicated machines. Yeah, on the planet.
I kind of hated that one, like there were there
were crystals involved somehow. I hated that one too, dark
crystals or um. This is a bit like that, like
(14:55):
if you really dive into city camps, like this article
on how stuff works does it's it's it's labyrinthine talk
about the dark crystal. Yeah, we're talking labyrinth instead. Yeah,
but we're gonna simplify it because, uh, you don't need
to break this thing apart and look at every component
like this article does. I mean, it really gets involved.
What you should do is look at a picture of
(15:16):
someone operating one and just because when you look at it,
you go, it all makes a lot more sense, right,
And there's really just three main parts to the whole thing.
There's a vest, there's an arm that's attached to the vest,
and then the other end of the arm is attached
to what's called the sled, which is what the camera
and um it's components are mounted on. Right, Yeah, and
(15:37):
that arm it um, I mean, just pick your picture
yourself wearing a uh like a baby beyorn baby carrier,
except for instead of the baby at your stern um,
there's a mechanical arm coming out like a spring arm lamp. Yeah,
like accordion arm or spring arm lamp. Right, and it's
virtually the same thing. Well, yeah, and you guess who
(15:58):
made one of these by himself before they started making
them for at home people. Who? Casey who? My brother
of course? Oh did he really. Yeah. Yeah. My brother
made one of these in like the early nineties out
of door hinges and rubber bands and springs. Does he
still have it? Is it in the Smithsonian? I don't know.
It's in the scottsn Ian, which is where all mentioned
(16:21):
with all his pinball machines. Yeah, but he made one.
He basically did the same thing. He he looked at
it and looked at these uh swing arm lamps and
accordion arm lamps, and it's like, well, it's the same thing.
I'll just make a version of that. It is, and
it worked pretty good. It's virtually the same thing. Yeah.
So the whole point of a steady camp is that
it basically simulates or the arm at least simulates a
(16:42):
human arm right to where it can move around very easily. Yeah. Um.
And it redistributes the weight of the camera, which can
be up to like seventy pounds I imagine probably more. Yeah,
the whole unit is pretty heavy and it's not easy
to operate, but a wary out it holds it effortlessly,
and it holds it in place. This arm does and
it does it by using springs, and you can adjust
(17:03):
the tension of the springs by using a cable and
pulley system so that it offsets the balance of the
camera and holds it in space in front of the
camera operator basically so that they can move it effortlessly
up down to the side. Um, you can put the
camera on top of the sled so that you get
high shots. You can switch it so it goes on
(17:23):
the bottom so you can get low angle shots. Yeah,
the traditional it's called high mode and low mode, and
high mode is uh, it doesn't mean it's high. It
just means it's on the top of the unit. And
then low mode is when it's on the bottom. So
if you wanted to film a mouse running across the floor,
you would put it in low mode. Right, if you
want to film human you put it in high mode.
And the camera itself is broken out into pieces, which
(17:46):
is kind of an ingenious trick that I guess Garrett
Brown came up with himself. I think he did. Um.
And this is the this is the third part. The
camera sled. Right. Yes, the sled is what holds all
the right and it's basically a pole with a little
bit at the top called the stage, and that's where
(18:07):
the camera goes or it could be at the bottom
wherever the camera is. The camera's mounted to the stage.
Then you get the pole itself and then the I
guess the arm is connected to the pole by a
a gibble gimbal, A gimble, that's right. And it's like
an old technology. It's basically something that uses basically a
(18:27):
gyroscopic action to um take the movement of whatever is
seeking to move, whatever you want to hold still, and
getting rid of it. Like everything around it moves except
for the thing that you want to hold still. It's
pretty neat, it's super neat. And that's just the one
arm that's connected to the pole. So you can see
how complicated this thing is. That this guy sat back
(18:49):
and I think in a hotel room somewhere you put
it together, Garrett Brown, the first one. There's just the
ingenuity it took to to put this together. It's pretty
pretty in depth as far as inventions go. Yeah, and
there's a little science to it. There's there's something called
moment of inertia. It's basically how much that camera is
resistant to rotation. So if you want the camera to
(19:11):
be still, you want to increase that resistance to the rotation.
And this is determined by a couple of different things, uh,
how much mass there is to the object, and how
far that mass is from the uh from its own
axis of rotation. So by spreading the camera out, he
basically took the little you know, cameras come with a
monitor now so you can see what's going on in
a big heavy battery. He took the monitor off of
(19:33):
the camera. He took the battery off of the camera
and redistributed that up and down the pole. So what
he ended up doing was spreading out that mass, which
takes away the center of gravity from the camera itself. Yeah,
Because like with a regular camera where all the components
are in one single unit, that center of gravity is
inside the camera, so it's easy to rotate. But since
(19:55):
he exploded it out into its various components, he made
that center of gravity land somewhere on the pole, right,
and the gimbal attaches to the pole just above the
center of gravity, so that the camera operator holds the
pole and manipulates the camera at the center of gravity,
which makes it very easy to balance keep. Yeah, and
(20:15):
they do a good job in this article. If you'd like,
just take a broomstick and you find that center of
gravity with your finger. You can hold it with with
your finger and lift it up and down right, and
it's it's just it's balanced on your finger because you're
hitting that center of balance. That's right. It's the same principle. Um.
And in fact, if you took, uh, if you took
that same broomstick and cut it off and you just
(20:36):
had three ft of broomstick and just took your SLR
camera and screwed that broomstick into the bottom of your
camera instead of a tripod, that would function. You could
walk around with that and it would be steadier than
if you just had it in your hand. I could
see that because of the change of the center of
change of the center of gravity. And if you put
(20:57):
a little counterweight at the bottom, it would make it
even more steady. And that's the whole concept of the
steadicam sled. Then attached that to an arm, that that
accordion arm and you're cooking with gas. Yeah, because you
were saying like, if you walk around with just the
pole holding or the broomstick, cut off broomstick and you're
holding it um just with your hand, it's steady. The
(21:19):
point of the arm is it's taking your hand out
of the equation and replacing it with something that can
isolate movement even more so that your movement of you
walking just gets lost within the arm before it ever
gets to the camera and could shake it. Yeah, like
if you did it with a broomstick. Your arm is
the same thing as a stead camera, right, except it's
better if the steadicam arms is better than your human arm, right, yes, exactly.
(21:43):
Pretty neat stuff. It is neat stuff. Um, and I
think that's it for the science man. We made it through. Yeah,
I mean, it's all got to be very precisely balanced. Um,
you don't just throw the stuff on the pole willy
nilly though, And they point out that the balance of
the camera can actually change during film, just from the
film moving from one end to the camera to the
(22:04):
other as as it records. Right. Well, yeah, in the
old days when they use film, sure, nowadays it's just
that digital card. Yeah, well not always quain Tarantino's camera
operators have to deal with this. Yeah, And if you've
ever been on a job with a steadicam, there are
a lot of uh, there's a lot of breaks where
I mean you can adjust them on the fly more now,
but I remember there just being a lot of breaks
(22:24):
with a steadicam up would say hold on, you know,
I need five minutes, and they go over and they
have a little stand that they put it on to
take because you know, it takes the weight off to
a certain degree, but it's still a lot of weight
to be carrying on a vest on your chest, um
and running and moving and doing all sorts of stuff. Yeah,
it's it's it's it's a tough gig. Like there's a
(22:45):
pretty amazing video did you watch it of that Eurovision shot.
There's a guy from I think Belarus singing and they
showed they showed him like he's like they they showed
the shot and then they showed it somebody filming the
shot being done, and the guy with the seticam wearing
the vest rides down the aisle on a um segue.
(23:09):
Is that what he's on? Yeah, pops off, runs up
this ramp and then starts circling around the guy who's singing,
and it's a pretty amazing thing. It's a great shot.
But then when you see how it's done, Wow, that
guy deserved a standing ovation. It would have been more
impressive hit it not like the subject matter have been
more interesting in the video quality been better, pretty pretty bad.
(23:31):
Like if it was a Scorsese movie, you would be
like wow, But it was just, you know, kind of corny. Well,
I mean it looked like an American idol or something
it was, but it was American idol. If you took
American idol at its peak and then spread it out
over Eurasia and and like it was popular over that
that large of a population. That's what your O vision is.
(23:54):
That's right. So you want to talk about some of
the shots when we come back after a break, please, okay, alright,
(24:17):
So chuck, Um. In addition to that Rocky shot and
that Eurovision shot, there are some other very famous shots,
classic shots of all time. Uh yeah, that had to
do with steadycam. It couldn't have been done with without
steady cam. Well, The Shining is the first one that
pops into most people's minds because, like we said, Kubrick
(24:38):
was a big fan of this invention and immediately started
talks with Garrett Brown on how to help him out
with this movie, The Shining, that he was making. And um,
apparently they kind of battled one another quite a bit
on the side of the Shining, and Garrett Brown later
admitted he said a lot of that was probably what
do you call it, like inventors pride or something kind
(25:00):
of getting in the way of this like brilliant all tour.
So um, Kubrick already had his own ideas on how
to best use this thing that this other guy invented. Um,
and you know the shining classic example, those tricycle shots,
the famous maze chase at the end, uh, very iconic
in motion picture history. And UM, I mean the the
(25:23):
how did they do? You know how they did that
that shot behind Danny and his a little big wheel.
They probably just went into low mode and uh like
walked behind him or I ran down the hall after him.
That's really impressive. So the Shining is a big one. Sure,
Rocky is a big one. Good Fellas is another classic
example to classic UM where Rayliota and Lorraine Brocko are
(25:44):
going into the Cope cabana, but they go through the
back and they're followed like throughout like the backstairs into
the kitchen and then they finally come out into their
table and UM, it's like one uninterrupted like five minute
shot or something. It's amazing and it's um I think
when you see this, you're you might see it and
not be a discerning film you were and just say
(26:06):
well that I didn't notice anything, which is probably good. Um,
or you might be a fan of steady cam and
just say, man, that was amazing. Uh. Then you have
to step back and look at lighting and realize that
how incredibly hard it is to light a shot like
that that takes place over I don't know how many
hundreds of feet but without seeing the lights in the shot.
(26:27):
Well that or just consistent lighting and having it look good.
I mean that's just usually you light for like a
room or something, or a hallway, but to light all
those different rooms and hallways and just incredibly I can't
imagine how long it took to set that shot. You know,
they were like, wait, what do you want to do? Yeah,
it would be great. Do'torry about stay with me. Uh.
(26:48):
You know he's making another gangster movie. No, I didn't
know that. Yeah, and it may be like the some
folks are saying it's like, you know, his last Big
Gangs your movie. Yeah, but it's got de Niro again. Uh.
He had worked with him in a long time. UM
Pacino and Joe Pesci is coming out of retirement. I
(27:09):
didn't even know he was retired. I just thought he
wasn't doing stuff anyway. Man, he retired. Yeah, so he's
he's got the three heavy weights and supposedly Harvey cut Tail.
Of course you gotta throw him in there. But I'm
just like giddy thinking about this. Yeah, I'm glad he
is because his last one was departed, right. No, he's
made movies since then, like Wolf of Wall Street, Yeah,
(27:31):
which I thought was great. I know you didn't love it.
I thought it was awesome. I thought everything. But what
Jack Nicholson did was was pretty good. Yeah, like his performance, No,
I really didn't. Well, sorry, Jack, He'll forgive that because
you like him as an actor, right yeah, okay, Uh,
(27:51):
come on Return of the Jedi, the famous um Faeder
bike chase scene and uh the indoor. Yeah, California's Redwood
National Park doubled his indoor and that was Garrett Brown,
uh walking and they sped it up. Yeah, but and
(28:14):
then you're just like, wow, who cares. The reason why
it's such an iconic steadicam shot is because he walked
very slowly, and when you speed film up the tiny
movements involved their telegraphed, they just become much more exaggerated.
So without a steadicam when they sped the film up again,
it would have been just so blurry and just jarring.
(28:35):
It would have been unusable. Yeah, the fact that you
can see the trees and stuff, and even at that
high speed, it's all steadicam. Yeah, and people, I think
it's just so easy to take it for granted now
in movies when you see these shots. But to pioneer
these these things and this equipment was remarkable. Uh, and
nowadays you can they're all manner of at home steady cam.
(29:00):
You don't have to do like my brother and build
one out of spare parts and door hinges. You can
buy one for not too much. You can. He's spent
a hundred dollars on a on a decent enough little
home steady cam. The this article says that the steadicam curve,
which was made for go pros, it was like a
(29:21):
hundred bucks. Yeah, well those are teeny tiny. And there's
one for um the iPhone called um, what's it called,
the Smoothie. That one is like it's like, I think
even less than a hundred bucks, and it's just like
a handheld camera stabilizer that works pretty well from what
I can gather. Yeah, we should have had Casey, our
video producer, Casey. He's in France right now though, Live
(29:42):
in the High Life. Should we should have had Casey
in here. Just given thumbs upper thumbs down to each
one of these brands that we mentioned, and I would
trust that is like the gospel truth. But Casey's not here,
so we're just gonna say read online reviews. I also
saw that there's like a lot of um gimbal based
(30:04):
drone steady camps. Yeah, they are just not not that expensive.
They're changing the game again because then you can do
a shot where you follow someone by the swimming pool
and then fly up into outer space with them if
you want, in one continuous motion, like the Quisp Monster.
What the Quisp monster? You remember the alien from Quisp Cereal?
(30:27):
Do remember Quisp? Remember the weird alien sort of at
an eat Quisp? Wasn't that a Captain crunch knock offer.
It was a different It was different because they were
saucer shaped rather than square waffle cut got you same
thing though, yeah, same thing. It was good. It didn't
cut the tongue like Captain crunch did oh yeah, the
roof of the mouth. I'll suffer through that still. Uh.
(30:51):
And then of course, uh, steady Cam is a name brand, right, Yeah,
it's made who makes it? Tiffin? Tiffin, Now that's what. Yeah,
I think I think Tiffin does. They have a pretty
good site, like if you alright all interested in this,
like they've got a great site and they have all
of their Steadicam models with a real like in depth
(31:11):
overview of them and yeah pretty Uh. I think it's
got all their manuals and everything just right there for
you to read. Yeah, there's other companies making them. There's
one called Glidecam in Vera Zoom. Yeah, but you know,
Steadicam is still probably the giant. It's like dollies. There's
only two dolly makers well or there maybe more now,
but it's like Chapman and Fisher and each you know,
(31:32):
every dolly grip has the dolly makers. Yeah, Chapman Dollies
or Fisher Dollies. It's kind of like Jamison or bush Mills,
you know, adviser or course neither uh and then um
Garrett Brown as if the steady Cam wasn't enough as
far as revolutionizing filming goes. He later on invented something
(31:53):
called the skycam, yeah, which like if you watch any
kind of sporting event now especially it's especially useful for
football in in football, um where like it's there's just
cables above the field and there's cameras hanging down that
are just like doing overhead shots following the action. Like
it's nothing. It's pretty neat. Garrett Brown invented that too.
(32:15):
I got one more little thing for you. Uh. There
are two positions, uh not high mode. Low mode positions
are like how you're operating the camera, but uh, if
you are pointing forward as the operator and your camera
is pointing forward, you're just walking. It's called missionary no.
And then if you are uh if the operators forward
(32:37):
and the camera is backward, they call that don juan.
So leave it to film set goons to think of
sexual names for sex it up camera positions, don Juan, Yeah,
I never heard of that one. I hadn't either. Well,
if you want to know more about steady camps, including
a really really fine grain involved look the physics of
(33:01):
how the steady cam arm works, you should go type
steady cam into the search part how stuff works dot Com.
Since I said search part its time for a listener mail.
I'm gonna call this, uh encouragement from a Christian listener. Okay,
hey guys, I was listening to the Easter Show and
was compelled right in. As a Christian, I've always appreciated
(33:22):
how you make a solid effort to not rail on
the church too hard. I found it humorous and simultaneously
sad when you felt you had to tiptoe around the
pagan traditions that have been integrated with the resurrection. UH
find it disheartening to think that other believers can't find
anything better to do than wait to be offended by
something then jump all over you for it. But based
on your years of experience and careful treatment of the subject,
(33:44):
it must be the case a lot of the time. Personally,
I just want to say, I can't think of anything
you've ever said to offend me. I think you've done
a stand up job with sensitive subjects like satanic panic
in particular. Uh. It's also nice just to hear you
talk about things directly related to my beliefs without sneering
like many others will. That's nice. Dane in Minnesota. Yeah,
(34:04):
for real, thing, if you want to get in touch
of this like Dane did and be a super cool person.
Um lay it on us, Send us an email to
stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should
Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts
my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(34:25):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
M Hey everybody, it's your silly pal Josh. And for
this week's select, I've chosen our episode on Steadycams. What
with it being the beginning of the summer blockbuster movie season,
I figured that the chances you want to know how
movies are made have gone through the roof, So I'm
here to satisfy your curiosity with, like I said, our
(00:20):
Steady Cams episode, Enjoy, Welcome to Stuff you should know,
a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant.
(00:41):
Jerry's over there. Chuck's wearing a hat, so Steady should know. Yeah,
he's still still pretty sad. Yeah, are you really sure?
All right, Pete? You know what I'm getting the Josh's
referencing my last chance garage hat that I've talked way
too much about. Um, I'm getting the patch remade as
we speak. WHOA actually found one an eBay that had
(01:04):
been sold three months ago, and he's all a big conspiracy?
Is that right now? But I found a picture of
the patch that I sent to a patchmaker who like,
can digitally reproduced this thing? Nice man. Well, then I
got to find in the right hats coming back home. Well,
that's step one. That's a big step one. Yeah, I'm
getting a few patches and a few hats this time.
(01:25):
I think that's a good idea. You can name them
one through eight. That's right. Uh, let's see, Chuck, you
worked in the film industry previously. Yeah, so did you technically? Yeah? Um,
you did more than I did by far. You worked
in front of and behind the camera, that's right. Um,
(01:45):
did you ever work with a steady cam at all? Yeah? So,
like you've seen these things up close. I don't recall
Scott or anybody using one. We did not have one
on our show. Okay they're expensive, Okay, but I mean
there's some pretty good equipment, said it seemed like, but
there was no steadicam, right, Nope, Because I was trying
to recall and I could not, for the life of me,
(02:07):
remember a moment when there was an awesome like extendoh
arm camera with like all of the components exploded out
in the different parts of a poll. That didn't happen
because he would have walked in and said, what's that right,
and everyone would have laughed, and you would have been like,
what does everyone to make fun of me. Stuff dressing room. Uh,
now we never use one on our TV show for
(02:28):
Science Channel because, like I said, it's pricey to rent
um And this is a bit of a giveaway. But
a person steadicam operator comes with the package with all
the equipment, it's a lot of times their own and
uh it's you know, it's pricey to pay for that,
that lady or that dude. But the reason it is
(02:50):
prices because it's it has a really good effect and
the person who's doing it really knows what they're doing.
I I don't know, but just from researching this, it
seemed like they were probably the most skilled tradesperson on
the set at any given time when they were on
the set. Is that right, Well, I think it's just
(03:11):
a matter of what skill. Uh, it's just a different skill.
Are they like the highest echelon of camera operators? No,
it's just different. Okay, like a top nine niche Yeah, okay,
I got it. But but you don't just wade into
steadicam and and start getting work the next day. It
does take a lot of work to master. But like
a good Dolly grip, uh is just as skilled. It
(03:33):
just pushing that thing around. But that takes a very
non herky jerky well it's not in the herky jerky anyway,
but just to hit the marks right and I see, Yeah,
I mean all that stuff takes a great amount of skill. Well,
let's talk about this because steadicam. You know, when I
came of age, it was already invented. It wasn't It
was basically became commercially available a year I was born.
So I don't really know a world prior to Steady Camp.
(03:56):
I've never seen a movie that came up before six
funny and um, I'm just used to it, right, But
it's it's it's interesting to look back and see that
there there actually is a point in time where this
one dude who was actually kind of an outsider of
the movie business, um basically changed it permanently forever for sure.
(04:20):
His name was Garrett Brown. Is Garrett Brown. Yeah he's
still around right, Yeah, and he um he was working,
uh for well, he was working in TV commercials in
on Sesame Street in Philadelphia, and um, he got a
little frustrated, as camera people do, uh pre steadicam with
(04:40):
not being able to accomplish certain shots. Yeah, there's supposedly
there were thirty impossible shots that just based on the
the equipment at the of the day, you just couldn't
do right. Yeah. Well, and a lot of it had
to do with like rough terrain. Sure, Staircases were a
big one. And the reason the shots were impossible not
like you couldn't lug a camera around up and down
(05:02):
the stairs, but the movement that the camera recorded would
be so jarring that it would render the film like
that that it would be unusable. Yeah. And then this
was in the day before I mean there were shaky
cam shots and like Cassavettis and all these early indie
filmmakers did a lot of like avant garde handheld stuff,
but it was known as avant garde because it looked
(05:24):
different and people were used to kind of smoother looking
things in mainstream movies at the time. Yeah, it had
like a real frenetic energy to it, Yeah, which you
see all the time now. It's like a bona fide thing.
But it wasn't just like picking up the movements of
the camera. It was like telegraphing them as far as
the human brains concerned. Because we take it for granted,
(05:44):
but we have in our own brains, a pretty complex
system that involves the inner ear coordinating with the movement
of the retina so that it offsets the movement and
the motion in the jarring um impact of like just walking. Like,
if we didn't have that, we wouldn't be able to
focus on anything while we were moving around. Yeah, you wouldn't.
(06:07):
People wouldn't jog. They would get sick and vomit every
time they jog, exactly right. And you certainly wouldn't be
able to like read US magazine while you were jogging
or something like that. And the fact that you can
it really is uh, it really shows how incredibly complex
and well developed the system is. Right. Yes, that's what
the steadicam that Garrett brown Um created sought to recreate.
(06:30):
Any he did it, he nailed it, like on the
first time out. Basically, Yeah, because we we mentioned a
dolly that is Um, people that no film know this
stuff is like pretty rudimentary information. But a lot of
people don't know what a dolly is, and they see
the word dolly grip in the movie, they just think
it sounds funny. Um, But the dolly is how you
typically would get a smooth shot. It's just a big,
(06:50):
super super heavy sled with wheels that the camera sits
on and the camera operator sits on. And it's either
on a very smooth floor on a piece of track
like a little railroad car, and it pushes along and
that's how you get those nice smooth shots. Right. So
that's a dolly. The problem with the dolly is is
you can't really lay that track over um, a rocky
(07:12):
terrain if you're filming on Mars or something like that. No,
and like you said, you can't push it up and
downstairs just had its limitations, right, it did. So Garrett
Brown said, I'm sick of these limitations. I'm so tired
of being limited by dollies, stupid dollies. I'm gonna invent
something better. And so he tinkered around um with his
(07:33):
what was called the Brown Stabilizer at first, which he
later renamed the Steadicam and to show off UM like
at first he he was just using him in commercials,
and he was like, this is way bigger than just commercials.
I'm gonna make a sizzle reel. And he made a
sizzle reel of the thirty impossible shots that you just
(07:54):
couldn't do before, and he did it with the steadicam,
but he didn't show how it was done. Yeah, and
you can. He was able to save ten of those shots,
uh and digitize them, and a couple of years ago
he finally released online ten of those so you can
actually go see this original reel. His wife and his
best friend like just doing stuff, while just doing stuff,
(08:16):
like you know, like one of them was swimming. You
can't run alongside somebody's swimming, apparently was an impossible shot.
I'm not quite sure why. Well, you just couldn't run
alongside someone doing anything. Oh okay, that's what it was,
even with a dolly. Uh, well, no, you could have.
You could have laid dolly track down the length of
a swimming pool shirt, right, That's why I didn't understand
that one was an impossible shot. Um. And to show off,
(08:38):
he goes question he goes around a slide just to
kind of show maybe maybe that was the impossibility of it.
But then his buddy gets out of the pool and
like walking like he's he pivots around him and I'm
sure he When he put this reel together and he
sent it out, the directors are like, uh, this is
magic sorcery. Well it was mind blowing, and some people
(09:02):
say it was the first UH viral video because it
was shared around Hollywood. Literally in a matter of days.
Everybody in Hollywood was saying, what in the world, Like
you said, what is this sorcery this Garrett Brown has
bestowed upon us? Yeah, it's It was a bit of
a mic drop as far as that reel goes, and
Stanley Kubrick being Stanley Kubrick sent a message to Garrett
(09:25):
Brown that said, if you are really concerned about protecting
its design before you fully patent it, I suggest you
delete the two occasions on the reel where the shadow
on the ground gives the skilled counter intelligence photo interpreter
a fairly clear representation of a man holding a pole
with one hand, was something or other at the bottom
of the pole which appears to be slowly moving. All
of that is Stanley kubrick Ian for, hey, there's a
(09:49):
shadow and in one of your shots of the steadicam op,
which was pretty cool of him to do, because I'm
sure there were plenty of people in Hollywood who would
have been like, Okay, think I kind of get the
idea of what this was, because there was no suggestion
whatsoever of what what Garrett Brown had used to get
these shots except in those shadows. So he went eat
(10:10):
and went and immediately cut those those I think fourteen
seconds out of his reel and then released the second
edition and it looked pretty good. I mean it's it's
rough compared to today's standard. Sure, but in the time
it was it was like unbelievable. It changed everything. Um.
And one of the shots that he got was his
(10:31):
wife Ellen. He said, dear, why don't you put on
your most seventies bell bottoms you can find? And I'm
going to run up behind you as you run up
the steps to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and maybe
when you get to the top, you can raise your
hands in triumph and I will spin around you. And
then if that shot sounds familiar. Uh. It actually attracted
(10:54):
a guy, a director named Um John What is the
evil Son? Yeah, John Um, who said I like this,
I'm going to use it in this little film I'm
directing called Rocky. Yeah. And I didn't get whether or
not this was the case. But did they Um? Did
they locate Rocky in Philadelphia because of those steps? No?
(11:15):
Because he said, how did you do that? And? Um,
where are those steps. I don't think so, man, because
I wondered that too, Like, uh, like, did he not
have a scene written where Rocky just runs up those steps?
I mean Stallone wrote it. Um, I think they just
have to ask him. Hey, Sly, I was wondering if
(11:36):
that was pretty good, I answered in that little moment,
someone will have to interpret that. Great movie though, Man,
I rewatched that. Yeah, like this year, from beginning to end,
just phenomenal movie. I'm trying to get Emily to watch it.
She never seen the original. No, it's its own thing
for sure. Like it's not, it's not really it's a
(12:00):
story for the most part. It's a love story and like, um,
the triumph of the little Guy story for sure, Yeah,
featuring boxing, Right, that's exactly right. But two and three
and on onward, it's like a totally different thing. Yeah,
but those are good too. Yeah, they said, let's take
your story, take out the heart, and insert cocaine instead
(12:20):
insert Mr T. I don't get the cocaine reference. Well,
it's just the eighties in Hollywood got hands on, you
know what I mean. Uh, yeah, that's a good question, though,
I wonder about that. If he surely they didn't remake
it for Philadelphia just for that well. But the point
is is Garrett Brown created on this sizzle reel the
(12:44):
one of the most iconic shots in filmmaking history for sure,
and he sent that real out and within that year,
I believe six three major motion pictures hired him to
operate his steadicamp for it. Um, there was Rocky, there
was um what was the one about what you Gut
Thrie Bound for Glory? Yeah, I think that one came
(13:05):
out first, So that was the first actual like uh
and that one, uh, the steady came up was Garrett Brown,
I think for all these because he was the only
guy that knew how. He got a lot of work
early on. Yeah, and I think I think the paton
was still pending until ninety seven, so I'm sure the
thing out of the side everybody closed your eyes while
I shoot this. But on Bound for Glory, he was
(13:26):
on a crane even that lowered down, stepped off the crane,
so people have seen crane shots, but then for the
crane to go down, down, down, and then all of
a sudden start following this guy, everyone was like, what
in the world, right? There would have been a cut
after the crane stopped and then before you know, they
would have cut and he would have gotten a position
and then started up again. This is one smooth shot.
(13:47):
One smooth shot. Yeah, and then the other one was
Marathon Man. So right out of the blue, this guy
who was a commercial director and made short films for
Sesame Street changed filmmaking like single handedly. Yeah, and one
an Academy award, uh for technical achievement. I got that
patent in seventy seven. And um, well that's it. That's
(14:09):
the history of the steadicam. That's it. Everybody, good night,
But we're gonna should we take a break and tell
everyone how this thing works. Let's do it man, alright, Chuck,
(14:34):
So the Steady Camp. Do you remember when we did
our episode on breathalyzers. Oh boy, that was a long
time ago, and we found out that the breathalyzer is
one of the most complicated machines. Yeah, on the planet.
I kind of hated that one, like there were there
were crystals involved somehow. I hated that one too, dark
crystals or um. This is a bit like that, like
(14:55):
if you really dive into city camps, like this article
on how stuff works does it's it's it's labyrinthine talk
about the dark crystal. Yeah, we're talking labyrinth instead. Yeah,
but we're gonna simplify it because, uh, you don't need
to break this thing apart and look at every component
like this article does. I mean, it really gets involved.
What you should do is look at a picture of
(15:16):
someone operating one and just because when you look at it,
you go, it all makes a lot more sense, right,
And there's really just three main parts to the whole thing.
There's a vest, there's an arm that's attached to the vest,
and then the other end of the arm is attached
to what's called the sled, which is what the camera
and um it's components are mounted on. Right, Yeah, and
(15:37):
that arm it um, I mean, just pick your picture
yourself wearing a uh like a baby beyorn baby carrier,
except for instead of the baby at your stern um,
there's a mechanical arm coming out like a spring arm lamp. Yeah,
like accordion arm or spring arm lamp. Right, and it's
virtually the same thing. Well, yeah, and you guess who
(15:58):
made one of these by himself before they started making
them for at home people. Who? Casey who? My brother
of course? Oh did he really. Yeah. Yeah. My brother
made one of these in like the early nineties out
of door hinges and rubber bands and springs. Does he
still have it? Is it in the Smithsonian? I don't know.
It's in the scottsn Ian, which is where all mentioned
(16:21):
with all his pinball machines. Yeah, but he made one.
He basically did the same thing. He he looked at
it and looked at these uh swing arm lamps and
accordion arm lamps, and it's like, well, it's the same thing.
I'll just make a version of that. It is, and
it worked pretty good. It's virtually the same thing. Yeah.
So the whole point of a steady camp is that
it basically simulates or the arm at least simulates a
(16:42):
human arm right to where it can move around very easily. Yeah. Um.
And it redistributes the weight of the camera, which can
be up to like seventy pounds I imagine probably more. Yeah,
the whole unit is pretty heavy and it's not easy
to operate, but a wary out it holds it effortlessly,
and it holds it in place. This arm does and
it does it by using springs, and you can adjust
(17:03):
the tension of the springs by using a cable and
pulley system so that it offsets the balance of the
camera and holds it in space in front of the
camera operator basically so that they can move it effortlessly
up down to the side. Um, you can put the
camera on top of the sled so that you get
high shots. You can switch it so it goes on
(17:23):
the bottom so you can get low angle shots. Yeah,
the traditional it's called high mode and low mode, and
high mode is uh, it doesn't mean it's high. It
just means it's on the top of the unit. And
then low mode is when it's on the bottom. So
if you wanted to film a mouse running across the floor,
you would put it in low mode. Right, if you
want to film human you put it in high mode.
And the camera itself is broken out into pieces, which
(17:46):
is kind of an ingenious trick that I guess Garrett
Brown came up with himself. I think he did. Um.
And this is the this is the third part. The
camera sled. Right. Yes, the sled is what holds all
the right and it's basically a pole with a little
bit at the top called the stage, and that's where
(18:07):
the camera goes or it could be at the bottom
wherever the camera is. The camera's mounted to the stage.
Then you get the pole itself and then the I
guess the arm is connected to the pole by a
a gibble gimbal, A gimble, that's right. And it's like
an old technology. It's basically something that uses basically a
(18:27):
gyroscopic action to um take the movement of whatever is
seeking to move, whatever you want to hold still, and
getting rid of it. Like everything around it moves except
for the thing that you want to hold still. It's
pretty neat, it's super neat. And that's just the one
arm that's connected to the pole. So you can see
how complicated this thing is. That this guy sat back
(18:49):
and I think in a hotel room somewhere you put
it together, Garrett Brown, the first one. There's just the
ingenuity it took to to put this together. It's pretty
pretty in depth as far as inventions go. Yeah, and
there's a little science to it. There's there's something called
moment of inertia. It's basically how much that camera is
resistant to rotation. So if you want the camera to
(19:11):
be still, you want to increase that resistance to the rotation.
And this is determined by a couple of different things, uh,
how much mass there is to the object, and how
far that mass is from the uh from its own
axis of rotation. So by spreading the camera out, he
basically took the little you know, cameras come with a
monitor now so you can see what's going on in
a big heavy battery. He took the monitor off of
(19:33):
the camera. He took the battery off of the camera
and redistributed that up and down the pole. So what
he ended up doing was spreading out that mass, which
takes away the center of gravity from the camera itself. Yeah,
Because like with a regular camera where all the components
are in one single unit, that center of gravity is
inside the camera, so it's easy to rotate. But since
(19:55):
he exploded it out into its various components, he made
that center of gravity land somewhere on the pole, right,
and the gimbal attaches to the pole just above the
center of gravity, so that the camera operator holds the
pole and manipulates the camera at the center of gravity,
which makes it very easy to balance keep. Yeah, and
(20:15):
they do a good job in this article. If you'd like,
just take a broomstick and you find that center of
gravity with your finger. You can hold it with with
your finger and lift it up and down right, and
it's it's just it's balanced on your finger because you're
hitting that center of balance. That's right. It's the same principle. Um.
And in fact, if you took, uh, if you took
that same broomstick and cut it off and you just
(20:36):
had three ft of broomstick and just took your SLR
camera and screwed that broomstick into the bottom of your
camera instead of a tripod, that would function. You could
walk around with that and it would be steadier than
if you just had it in your hand. I could
see that because of the change of the center of
change of the center of gravity. And if you put
(20:57):
a little counterweight at the bottom, it would make it
even more steady. And that's the whole concept of the
steadicam sled. Then attached that to an arm, that that
accordion arm and you're cooking with gas. Yeah, because you
were saying like, if you walk around with just the
pole holding or the broomstick, cut off broomstick and you're
holding it um just with your hand, it's steady. The
(21:19):
point of the arm is it's taking your hand out
of the equation and replacing it with something that can
isolate movement even more so that your movement of you
walking just gets lost within the arm before it ever
gets to the camera and could shake it. Yeah, like
if you did it with a broomstick. Your arm is
the same thing as a stead camera, right, except it's
better if the steadicam arms is better than your human arm, right, yes, exactly.
(21:43):
Pretty neat stuff. It is neat stuff. Um, and I
think that's it for the science man. We made it through. Yeah,
I mean, it's all got to be very precisely balanced. Um,
you don't just throw the stuff on the pole willy
nilly though, And they point out that the balance of
the camera can actually change during film, just from the
film moving from one end to the camera to the
(22:04):
other as as it records. Right. Well, yeah, in the
old days when they use film, sure, nowadays it's just
that digital card. Yeah, well not always quain Tarantino's camera
operators have to deal with this. Yeah, And if you've
ever been on a job with a steadicam, there are
a lot of uh, there's a lot of breaks where
I mean you can adjust them on the fly more now,
but I remember there just being a lot of breaks
(22:24):
with a steadicam up would say hold on, you know,
I need five minutes, and they go over and they
have a little stand that they put it on to
take because you know, it takes the weight off to
a certain degree, but it's still a lot of weight
to be carrying on a vest on your chest, um
and running and moving and doing all sorts of stuff. Yeah,
it's it's it's it's a tough gig. Like there's a
(22:45):
pretty amazing video did you watch it of that Eurovision shot.
There's a guy from I think Belarus singing and they
showed they showed him like he's like they they showed
the shot and then they showed it somebody filming the
shot being done, and the guy with the seticam wearing
the vest rides down the aisle on a um segue.
(23:09):
Is that what he's on? Yeah, pops off, runs up
this ramp and then starts circling around the guy who's singing,
and it's a pretty amazing thing. It's a great shot.
But then when you see how it's done, Wow, that
guy deserved a standing ovation. It would have been more
impressive hit it not like the subject matter have been
more interesting in the video quality been better, pretty pretty bad.
(23:31):
Like if it was a Scorsese movie, you would be
like wow, But it was just, you know, kind of corny. Well,
I mean it looked like an American idol or something
it was, but it was American idol. If you took
American idol at its peak and then spread it out
over Eurasia and and like it was popular over that
that large of a population. That's what your O vision is.
(23:54):
That's right. So you want to talk about some of
the shots when we come back after a break, please, okay, alright,
(24:17):
So chuck, Um. In addition to that Rocky shot and
that Eurovision shot, there are some other very famous shots,
classic shots of all time. Uh yeah, that had to
do with steadycam. It couldn't have been done with without
steady cam. Well, The Shining is the first one that
pops into most people's minds because, like we said, Kubrick
(24:38):
was a big fan of this invention and immediately started
talks with Garrett Brown on how to help him out
with this movie, The Shining, that he was making. And um,
apparently they kind of battled one another quite a bit
on the side of the Shining, and Garrett Brown later
admitted he said a lot of that was probably what
do you call it, like inventors pride or something kind
(25:00):
of getting in the way of this like brilliant all tour.
So um, Kubrick already had his own ideas on how
to best use this thing that this other guy invented. Um,
and you know the shining classic example, those tricycle shots,
the famous maze chase at the end, uh, very iconic
in motion picture history. And UM, I mean the the
(25:23):
how did they do? You know how they did that
that shot behind Danny and his a little big wheel.
They probably just went into low mode and uh like
walked behind him or I ran down the hall after him.
That's really impressive. So the Shining is a big one. Sure,
Rocky is a big one. Good Fellas is another classic
example to classic UM where Rayliota and Lorraine Brocko are
(25:44):
going into the Cope cabana, but they go through the
back and they're followed like throughout like the backstairs into
the kitchen and then they finally come out into their
table and UM, it's like one uninterrupted like five minute
shot or something. It's amazing and it's um I think
when you see this, you're you might see it and
not be a discerning film you were and just say
(26:06):
well that I didn't notice anything, which is probably good. Um,
or you might be a fan of steady cam and
just say, man, that was amazing. Uh. Then you have
to step back and look at lighting and realize that
how incredibly hard it is to light a shot like
that that takes place over I don't know how many
hundreds of feet but without seeing the lights in the shot.
(26:27):
Well that or just consistent lighting and having it look good.
I mean that's just usually you light for like a
room or something, or a hallway, but to light all
those different rooms and hallways and just incredibly I can't
imagine how long it took to set that shot. You know,
they were like, wait, what do you want to do? Yeah,
it would be great. Do'torry about stay with me. Uh.
(26:48):
You know he's making another gangster movie. No, I didn't
know that. Yeah, and it may be like the some
folks are saying it's like, you know, his last Big
Gangs your movie. Yeah, but it's got de Niro again. Uh.
He had worked with him in a long time. UM
Pacino and Joe Pesci is coming out of retirement. I
(27:09):
didn't even know he was retired. I just thought he
wasn't doing stuff anyway. Man, he retired. Yeah, so he's
he's got the three heavy weights and supposedly Harvey cut Tail.
Of course you gotta throw him in there. But I'm
just like giddy thinking about this. Yeah, I'm glad he
is because his last one was departed, right. No, he's
made movies since then, like Wolf of Wall Street, Yeah,
(27:31):
which I thought was great. I know you didn't love it.
I thought it was awesome. I thought everything. But what
Jack Nicholson did was was pretty good. Yeah, like his performance, No,
I really didn't. Well, sorry, Jack, He'll forgive that because
you like him as an actor, right yeah, okay, Uh,
(27:51):
come on Return of the Jedi, the famous um Faeder
bike chase scene and uh the indoor. Yeah, California's Redwood
National Park doubled his indoor and that was Garrett Brown,
uh walking and they sped it up. Yeah, but and
(28:14):
then you're just like, wow, who cares. The reason why
it's such an iconic steadicam shot is because he walked
very slowly, and when you speed film up the tiny
movements involved their telegraphed, they just become much more exaggerated.
So without a steadicam when they sped the film up again,
it would have been just so blurry and just jarring.
(28:35):
It would have been unusable. Yeah, the fact that you
can see the trees and stuff, and even at that
high speed, it's all steadicam. Yeah, and people, I think
it's just so easy to take it for granted now
in movies when you see these shots. But to pioneer
these these things and this equipment was remarkable. Uh, and
nowadays you can they're all manner of at home steady cam.
(29:00):
You don't have to do like my brother and build
one out of spare parts and door hinges. You can
buy one for not too much. You can. He's spent
a hundred dollars on a on a decent enough little
home steady cam. The this article says that the steadicam curve,
which was made for go pros, it was like a
(29:21):
hundred bucks. Yeah, well those are teeny tiny. And there's
one for um the iPhone called um, what's it called,
the Smoothie. That one is like it's like, I think
even less than a hundred bucks, and it's just like
a handheld camera stabilizer that works pretty well from what
I can gather. Yeah, we should have had Casey, our
video producer, Casey. He's in France right now though, Live
(29:42):
in the High Life. Should we should have had Casey
in here. Just given thumbs upper thumbs down to each
one of these brands that we mentioned, and I would
trust that is like the gospel truth. But Casey's not here,
so we're just gonna say read online reviews. I also
saw that there's like a lot of um gimbal based
(30:04):
drone steady camps. Yeah, they are just not not that expensive.
They're changing the game again because then you can do
a shot where you follow someone by the swimming pool
and then fly up into outer space with them if
you want, in one continuous motion, like the Quisp Monster.
What the Quisp monster? You remember the alien from Quisp Cereal?
(30:27):
Do remember Quisp? Remember the weird alien sort of at
an eat Quisp? Wasn't that a Captain crunch knock offer.
It was a different It was different because they were
saucer shaped rather than square waffle cut got you same
thing though, yeah, same thing. It was good. It didn't
cut the tongue like Captain crunch did oh yeah, the
roof of the mouth. I'll suffer through that still. Uh.
(30:51):
And then of course, uh, steady Cam is a name brand, right, Yeah,
it's made who makes it? Tiffin? Tiffin, Now that's what. Yeah,
I think I think Tiffin does. They have a pretty
good site, like if you alright all interested in this,
like they've got a great site and they have all
of their Steadicam models with a real like in depth
(31:11):
overview of them and yeah pretty Uh. I think it's
got all their manuals and everything just right there for
you to read. Yeah, there's other companies making them. There's
one called Glidecam in Vera Zoom. Yeah, but you know,
Steadicam is still probably the giant. It's like dollies. There's
only two dolly makers well or there maybe more now,
but it's like Chapman and Fisher and each you know,
(31:32):
every dolly grip has the dolly makers. Yeah, Chapman Dollies
or Fisher Dollies. It's kind of like Jamison or bush Mills,
you know, adviser or course neither uh and then um
Garrett Brown as if the steady Cam wasn't enough as
far as revolutionizing filming goes. He later on invented something
(31:53):
called the skycam, yeah, which like if you watch any
kind of sporting event now especially it's especially useful for
football in in football, um where like it's there's just
cables above the field and there's cameras hanging down that
are just like doing overhead shots following the action. Like
it's nothing. It's pretty neat. Garrett Brown invented that too.
(32:15):
I got one more little thing for you. Uh. There
are two positions, uh not high mode. Low mode positions
are like how you're operating the camera, but uh, if
you are pointing forward as the operator and your camera
is pointing forward, you're just walking. It's called missionary no.
And then if you are uh if the operators forward
(32:37):
and the camera is backward, they call that don juan.
So leave it to film set goons to think of
sexual names for sex it up camera positions, don Juan, Yeah,
I never heard of that one. I hadn't either. Well,
if you want to know more about steady camps, including
a really really fine grain involved look the physics of
(33:01):
how the steady cam arm works, you should go type
steady cam into the search part how stuff works dot Com.
Since I said search part its time for a listener mail.
I'm gonna call this, uh encouragement from a Christian listener. Okay,
hey guys, I was listening to the Easter Show and
was compelled right in. As a Christian, I've always appreciated
(33:22):
how you make a solid effort to not rail on
the church too hard. I found it humorous and simultaneously
sad when you felt you had to tiptoe around the
pagan traditions that have been integrated with the resurrection. UH
find it disheartening to think that other believers can't find
anything better to do than wait to be offended by
something then jump all over you for it. But based
on your years of experience and careful treatment of the subject,
(33:44):
it must be the case a lot of the time. Personally,
I just want to say, I can't think of anything
you've ever said to offend me. I think you've done
a stand up job with sensitive subjects like satanic panic
in particular. Uh. It's also nice just to hear you
talk about things directly related to my beliefs without sneering
like many others will. That's nice. Dane in Minnesota. Yeah,
(34:04):
for real, thing, if you want to get in touch
of this like Dane did and be a super cool person.
Um lay it on us, Send us an email to
stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should
Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts
my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(34:25):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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