June 27, 2025 • 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 today.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everybody. Chuck here with another intro for our summer
movie playlist. Right now, you're about to listen to how
Steadycam Works. This one goes all the way back to
June twenty sixteen. But this was a pretty good one, everybody,
because a steadycam is one of movies great inventions, quite honestly,
first used in some of the early movies like Rocky
(00:21):
and the Shining. We're gonna talk about how it was made,
how it works, and how it works best. So check
it out right now. Welcome to Stuff you should know
from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Charles w Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there. Chuck's wearing a hat,
so it's stubby you should know.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Yeah, he's still still pretty sad. Yeah, are you really sure?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (00:54):
All right, Pete, you know what I'm getting The Josh
is referencing my last chance garage hat that I've talked
way too much about. I'm getting the patch remade as
we speak. WHOA, I actually found one an eBay that
had been sold three months ago, and he's all a
big conspiracy?
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Is that right?
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Now?
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (01:14):
But I found a picture of the patch that I
sent to a patch maker who like can digitally reproduce
this thing.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Nice man.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Well then I got to find in the right hat it's.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Coming back home. Well that's step one. That's a big
step one.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Yeah, I'm getting a few patches and a few hats
this time.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
I think that's a good idea. Yeah, you can name
them one through eight.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Let's see, Chuck, you worked in the film industry previously.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Yeah, so did you technically?
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Yeah, you did more than I did by far. You
worked it in front of and behind the camera.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Did you ever work with a steady cam at all?
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
So, like you've seen these things up close?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
I don't recall Scott or anybody using one.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
We did not have one on our show.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Okay, they're expensive, Okay, but I mean there is some
pretty good equipment on set. It seemed like sure, but
there was no steady cam, right, Nope, Because I was
trying to recall and I could not, for the life
of me remember a moment when there was an awesome
like extendo arm camera with like all of the components
exploded out into different parts of a poll.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
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, why does everyone make fun
of me? Would have all this stuff?
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Oh uh.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Now, we never use one on our TV show for
Science Channel because, like I said, it's pricey to rent.
And this is a bit of a giveaway, but a
person steady cam operator comes with the package, right, with
all the equipment. It's a lot of times their own,
and it's you know, it's pricey, yeah, to pay for
that lady or that dude, right, But.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
The reason it is price is because it's it has
a really good effect. Yeah, and the person who's doing
it really knows what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
I don't know, but just from researching this, it seemed
like they were probably the most skilled trades person on
the set at any given time when they were on
the set. Is that right?
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Well, I think it's just a matter of what skill.
It's just a different skill.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Are they like the highest echelon of camera operators?
Speaker 1 (03:19):
No, it's just different Okay, like a top niner.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Niche Yeah, okay, I got it there.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
But but you don't just wade into steady cam and
start getting work the next day. It does take a
lot of work to master. But like a good dolly,
grip is just as skilled, right, it just pushing that
thing around, But that takes a.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Very non herky jerky Well it's not.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Gonna be herky jerky anyway, but just to hit the marks, right,
and oh I see yeah, I mean all that stuff
takes a great amount of skill.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Well, let's talk about this because Steadycam, you know, when
I came of age, was already invented. It was it
was basically became commercially available the year I was born.
So I don't really know a world prior to Steady Camp.
I've never seen a movie that came out before nineteen
seventy six.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Funny, and I'm just used to it, right, Yeah, 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 basically changed it permanently forever for sure.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Yeah. His name was Garrett Brown. Is Garrett Brown.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Yeah he's still around right.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Yeah, And he he was working for well, he was
working in TV commercials on Sesame Street, in Philadelphia. Yeah,
and he got a little frustrated, as camera people do
pre steady cam with not being able to accomplish certain shots.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Yeah, there's supposedly there were thirty impossible shots that just
based on the equipment of the day, you just couldn't
do right.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Well, and a lot of it had to do with
like rough terrain. Sure, staircases were big one. Yeah, and
the recent these shots were impossible. It's not like you
couldn't lug a camera around up and down 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.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Yeah, and 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
right cause it looked different and people were used to
kind of smoother looking things in mainstream movies at the time.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Yeah, it had like a real frenetic energy to it.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah, which you see all the time now. It's like
a bona fide thing.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
But it wasn't just like picking up the movements of
the camera. It was like telegraphing them as far as
the human brain's concerned, because we take it for granted,
but we have in our own brains a pretty complex system.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
That involves the inner ear coordinating with the movement of
the retina so that it offsets the movement and the
motion and the jarring impact of like just walking.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Like if we didn't have that, we wouldn't be able
to focus on anything while we were moving around.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Yeah, people wouldn't jog. They would get sick and vomit
every time they.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Jog, exactly right, And you certainly wouldn't be able to
read US Magazine while you were jogging or something like that.
The fact that you can, Yeah, it really is. It
really shows how incredibly complex and well developed the system is. Right, Yes,
that's what the steady cam that Garrett Brown created sought
to recreate and he did it. He nailed it, like
(06:34):
on the first time out.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Basically, Yeah, because we mentioned a dolli. That is, people
that know film know this stuff is like pretty rudimentary information,
But a lot of people don't know what a dolli is.
And they see the word dolly grip in the movie.
They just think it sounds funny. But the DOLLI is
how you typically would get a smooth shot. It's just
a big, super super heavy sled with wheels right that
(06:57):
the camera sits on and the camera operator sits on.
And it's either on a very smooth floor, it's on
a piece of track like a little railroad car, and
it pushes along and that's how you get those nice
smooth shots.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
So that's a dolly. The problem with the dolly is
is you can't really lay that track over a rocky
terrain if you're filming on Mars or something like that.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
No, and like you said, you can't push it up
and downstairs. It just had its limitations.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Right, it did. So Garrett Brown said, I'm sick of
these limitations. I'm so tired of being limited by dolly
stupid dollies. I'm going to invent something better. And so
he tinkered around with his what was called the Brown
Stabilizer at first, Yeah, he later renamed the steady Cam. Yeah,
and to show off, like at first he was just
(07:45):
using him in commercials, and he was like, this is
way bigger than just commercials. Yeah, I'm going to make
a sizzle reel, and he made a sizzle reel of
the thirty impossible shots that you just couldn't do before,
and he did it with the steady cam, but he
didn't show how it was done.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Yeah, and you can. He was able to save ten
of those shots 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. Yeah, it's
pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
His wife and his best friend like just doing stuff,
while just doing stuff, like, you know, like one of
them was swimming. You can't run alongside somebody swimming, apparently
was an impossible shot. I'm not quite sure why.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Well, you just couldn't run alongside someone doing anything.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Oh, okay, that's what it was, even with a dolly.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Well, no, you could have. You could have laid dolly
track down the link of a swimming pool.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Shirt, right, That's why I didn't understand that one was
an impossible shot. But to show off, he goes question
he goes around a slide just to kind of show.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Maybe maybe that was the impossibility of it.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
But then his buddy gets out of the pool and
like walking like he pivots around him, and I'm sure
when he put this reel together and he sent it out.
The directors are like, this is magic sorcery.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Well, it was mind blowing, and some people say it
was the first 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?
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Right?
Speaker 1 (09:17):
This Garrett Brown has bestowed upon us.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Yeah, it was a bit of a mic drop as
far as that reel goes.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
And Stanley Kubrick being Stanley Kubrick sent a message to
Garrett 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 a skilled counter intelligence photo
interpreter a fairly clear representation of a man holding a
pole with one hand, with something or other at the
(09:45):
bottom of the pole, which appears to be slowly moving.
All of that is Stanley Kubrickian for, Hey, there's a
shadow in one of your shots of the steady camop.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yeah, which was pretty cool of him to do. Sure,
because I'm sure there were plenty of people in Hollywood
who would have been like Okay, I 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 and went and immediately cut those, yeah,
those I think fourteen seconds out of his reel and
(10:18):
then released the second edition.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
And it looked pretty good. I mean, it's it's rough
compared to today's standard, sure, but the time it was
it was like unbelievable, right.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
It changed everything? Oh yeah. And one of the shots
that he got was his 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
(10:51):
spin around you. And if that shot sounds familiar, it
actually attracted a guy, a director named John what is
the Avilson?
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Yeah, John G. Avelson, who said I.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Like this, I'm going to use it in this little
film I'm directing called Rocky.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
And I didn't get whether or not this was the case,
but did they did? They locate Rocky in Philadelphia because
of those steps. No, because he said, how did you
do that? And where are those steps?
Speaker 1 (11:22):
I don't think so, man, because I wondered that too, like, like,
did he not have a scene written where Rocky just
runs up those steps? Right? I mean Stallone wrote it.
I think they just have to ask him.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Okay, hey, Sly, I was wondering if that was pretty good.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
I answered in that little moment. Someone will have to
interpret that. Great movie though. Man, I rewatched that Rocky. Yeah,
like this year, from beginning to end, just phenomenal movie.
I'm trying to get Emily to watch it.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Has she never seen the original? No, it's its own
thing for sure, Like it's it's much like the sequel.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
No, really, it's a love story for the most part.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
It's a love story and like the triumph of the
Little Guy.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yeah story for sure, Yeah, featuring boxing.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Right, that's exactly right. Yeah, But two and three and
on onward, it's like a totally different thing.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Yeah, but those are good too.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah. They said, let's take your story, take out the
heart and insert cocaine instead.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Insert mister t I don't get the cocaine reference.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Oh, it's just the eighties in Hollywood got hands on sure,
you know what I mean, I gotcha.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Well, But the point is is Garrett Brown created on
this sizzle reel the one of the most iconic shots
in filmmaking history, for sure, and he sent that reel
out and within that year, I believe nineteen seventy six,
three Major Motion Pictures hired him to operate his steady
camp for it. There was Rocky Yep, there was what
(13:03):
was the one about Woody Guthrie.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Bound for Glory? Yeah, I think that one came out first,
So that was the first actual like h and that
one 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.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Yeah, and I think the operation, I think the patent
was still pending until nineteen seventy seven, so I'm sure
he don't play the thing out of everybody closed your
eyes while I shoot this.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
But on Bound for Glory, he was on a crane
even that lowered down, stepped off the crane. So people
had 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.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
In the world, right, there would have been a cut, Yeah,
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.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
One smooth shot, yeah, and then.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
The other one was Marathon Man. So right out of
the blue, this guy who was a commercial director and
made short films for Same Street, changed filmmaking single handedly.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Yeah, and won an Academy Award nineteen seventy eight for
Technical Achievement. I got that patent in seventy seven. And well,
that's it. That's the history of the steadycam.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
That's it. Everybody, good night.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
But we're gonna should we take a break and tell
everyone how this thing works.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Let's do it man, all right, Chuck, So the Steadi Camp.
Do you remember when we did our episode on breathalyzers.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Oh boy, that was a long time ago, and we.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Found out that the breathalyzer is one of the most
complicated machines.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Yeah, on the planet. I kind of hated that one.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Like there were crystals involved somehow I hated that one too,
dark crystals. This is a bit like that, like if
you really dive in the steadycams. Like this article on
how stuff works, does it's labyrinthine talk about the dark crystal? Yeah,
we're talking labyrinth instead.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Yeah. But we're gonna simplify it because you don't need
to break this thing apart and look at every component
like this article does.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
I mean, it really gets involved.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
What you should do is look at a picture of
someone operating one. Yeah, and just because when you look
at it, you go, it all makes a lot more sense.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
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, yeah, which
is what the camera and its components are mounted on. Right.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Yeah, And that arm, I mean just picture yourself wearing
a like a baby Bjorn baby carrier, except for instead
of the baby at your sternum, there's a mechanical arm
coming out.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Like a spring arm lamp.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Yeah, like accordion arm or a spring arm lamp.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Right, and it's virtually the same thing.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Well, yeah, and you guess who made one of these
by himself before they started making them for at home people.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Who? Casey?
Speaker 1 (16:07):
No, who my brother of course? Oh?
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Did he really? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Yeah, my brother made one of these in like the
early nineties.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Did he really?
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Out of door hinges and rubber bands and springs?
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Does he still have it? Is it in the Smithsonian?
Speaker 1 (16:19):
I don't know, it's in the Scotsonian, nice, which is
where all his early mentions.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
With all his pinball machines.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Yeah, but he made one. He basically did the same thing.
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.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
It is, and it worked pretty good. It's virtually the
same thing.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
So the whole point of a steady cam is that
it basically simulates or the arm at least simulates a
human arm right to where it can move around very easily. Yeah,
And it redistributes the weight of the camera, which can
be up to like seventy pounds I imagine probably more.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Yeah, the whole unit is pretty heavy, and it's not
easy to operate, but it hold a wear you out.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
It holds it flessly, and it holds it in place.
This arm does and it does it by using springs.
And you can adjust the tension of the springs by
using a cable and pulley system. Yes, 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.
(17:21):
You can put the camera on top of the sled
so that you get high shots. You can switch it
so it goes on the bottom so you can get
low angle shots.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Yeah. The traditional it's called high mode and low mode.
And high mode is 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 a human, you'd put it in high mode.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Yeah, And the camera itself is broken out into pieces,
which is kind of an ingenious trick that I guess
Garrett Brown came up with himself. I think he did.
And this is the third part the camera sled right.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Yes, the slid is what holds all the equipment.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Right, And it's basically a pole with a little bit
at the top called the stage, and that's where the
camera goes, or it could be at the bottom wherever
the camera is. The camera's mounted to the stage. Yes,
then you get the pole itself and then the I
guess the arm is connected to the pole by a gibble.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
A gimbal.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
A gimbal, that's right. And that's like an old technology.
It's basically something that uses basically a gyroscopic action to
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.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Yeah, it's pretty neat.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
It's super neat. And that's just the one arm that's
connected to the pole. Yes, So you can see how
complicated this thing is. That this guy sat back and
I think in a hotel room somewhere he put it together.
Garrett Brown, the first one. There's just the ingenuity it
took to put this together. It's pretty pretty in depth
as far as inventions go.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Yeah, and there's a little science to it. 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 be still, you want to increase that resistance to
the rotation. And this is determined by a couple of
different things. How much mass there is to the object,
and how far that mass is from its own axis
(19:26):
of rotation. So by spreading the camera out, he basically
took the little cameras come with a monitor now so
you can see what's going on, and a big heavy battery.
He took the monitor off of 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
(19:47):
of gravity from the camera itself.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Yeah, because like with a regular camera where all the
components are in one single unit, that center of gravity's
inside the camera. Yeah, so it's easy to rotate. But
since he exploded it out into 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
(20:11):
pole and manipulates the camera at the center of gravity,
which makes it very easy to balance keep balance.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Yeah, And 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 your finger and lift it up and down.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Right and it just it's balance on your finger because
you're hitting that center of balance.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
That's right, it's the same principle. Yeah. And in fact,
if you took if you took that same broomstick and
cut it off and you just had three feet 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
(20:52):
it would be steadier than if you just had it
in your hand.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
I could see that because of the change of the
center of gravity.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
Change of the center of gravity, and if you put
little counterweight at the bottom, that would make it even
more steady. Yeah, And that's the whole concept of the
steady cam sled. Then attach that to an arm, that
accordion arm, and you're cooking with gas.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
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 just with your hand. Yeah,
it's steady. The 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. Yeah, so that
your movement of you walking just gets lost within the
(21:34):
arm before it ever gets to the camera and could
shake it.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Yeah, like if you did it with a broomstick. Your
arm is the same thing as a steady cam orm right,
except it's better.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
The steady cam arms.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Is better than your human arm, right, yes, exactly.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Pretty neat stuff.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
It is neat stuff.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
And I think that's it for the science man. We
made it through it.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Yeah, I mean it's all got to be very precisely balanced.
You don't just throw the stuff on the pole, willy
nilly no.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
And they point out that the balance of the camera
can actually change during filming, Yeah, just from the film
moving from one end of the camera to the other
as it records.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Well, yeah, in the old days when they use film,
for sure. Nowadays it's just that digital card. Yeah, well
not always.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Quentin Tarantino's camera operators have to deal.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
With this, Yeah, and if you've ever been on a
job with a steady caam, there are a lot of uh,
there's a lot of breaks where I mean you can
adjust him on the fly more now, but I remember
there just being a lot of breaks with a steadycam.
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
(22:39):
it's still a lot of weight to be carrying on
a vest on your chest.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Yeah, and running and moving and doing all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Yeah, it's it's a tough gig.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Like there's a pretty amazing video. Did you watch it
of that Eurovision shot? No, there's a guy from I
think Baylarus singing and they showed they showed him. He's
like they they showed the shot and then they showed
what somebody filming the shot being done and the guy
with the SETI cam wearing the vest rides down the
(23:09):
aisle on a segue.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Is that what he's on?
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Yeah, hops 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, Yeah, wow, that guy deserved a
standing ovation.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
It would have been more impressive had it not like
the subject matter have been more interested in the video
quality but better pretty bad, Like if it was a
Scorsese movie, you'd be like, wow, sure, but it was
this you know, kind of corny. Well, I mean it
looked like an American idol or something.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
It was, but it was American idol. If you took
American idol at its peak and then spread it out
over Eurasia and like it was popular over that that
large of a population, that's what Eurovision is.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
So you want to talk about some of the shots
when we come back after a break.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
Please, Okay, all.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Right, so Chuck. In addition to that Rocky shot and
that Eurovision shot, there are some other very famous shots,
classic shots of all time.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Yeah, that had to.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Do with steady cam. They couldn't have been done without
steady cam.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Well, the Shining is the first one that pops into
most people's minds because, like we said, Kubrick 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 apparently they kind
of battled one another quite a bit on the set
(24:52):
of The Shining, and Garrett Brown later admitted he said
a lot of that was probably what do you call it,
like inventor's pride or something kind of getting in the
way of this like brilliant all tour. So Kubrick already
had his own ideas on how to best use this
thing that this other guy invented. And you know, the
Shinings classic example, those tricycle shots, the famous maze chase
(25:14):
at the end YEP, very iconic in motion picture history.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Yeah, and I mean the the how did they do?
You know how they did that shot behind Danny on
his little big wheel.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
They probably just went into low mode and.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Like walked behind him or yeah, ran down the hall
after him. That's really impressive.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Yeah, So The.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Shining's a big one. Sure, Rocky's a big one. Goodfellows
is another classic example too, classic where Rayleioda and Lorraine
Brocco are going into the Copa Cabana, but they go
through the back yeah, and they're followed like throughout like
the backstairs into the kitchen and then they finally come
out into their table and it's like one uninterrupted, like
(25:55):
five minute shot or something.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
It's amazing, and it's I think when you see the
you're you might see it and not be a discerning
film viewer and just say well that I didn't notice anything,
which is probably good, or you might be a fan
in steady cam and just say, man, that was amazing.
Then you have to step back and look at lighting
and realize that how incredibly hard it is to light
(26:18):
a shot like that that takes place over I don't
know how many hundreds of feet.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
But without seeing the lights in the shot.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
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.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
You know, they were like, wait, what do you want
to do?
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Yeah, it'll be great, don worry about it, stay with me.
You know, he's making another gangster movie.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
No I didn't know that.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Yeah, and it may be like the some folks are saying,
it's like, you know, his last big gangster movie. Yeah,
but it's got de Niro again. Okay, he hadn't worked
with him in a long time. Paccino and Joe pesci
Is coming out of retirement.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
I didn't even know he was retired. I just thought
he wasn't doing stuff anymo. Man, he retired, I didn't
know that.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Yeah, so's he's got the three heavyweights and supposedly Harveycattail.
Of course you got to throw him in there. Sure,
but I'm just like giddy thinking about this.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Yeah, I'm glad he is because his last one was departed, right.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
No, he's made movies since then, like Wolf of Wall Streets, Yeah,
which I thought was great. I know you didn't love it.
I thought it was awesome.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
I thought everything. But what Jack Nicholson did was was
pretty good.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Yeah, like his performance.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
No, I really didn't.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Well, sorry Jack, He'll forgive that, all right, because you
like him as an actor, right, Yeah?
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Okay, uh, who's a git? Come on.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Return of the Jedi nineteen eighty three, the famous speeder
bike chase scene.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
And find the indoor.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Yeah, California's Redwood National Park doubled his indoor and that
was Garrett Brown walking and they sped it up.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Yeah, but and you're just like, wow, who cares. The
reason why it's such an iconic steady cam shot is
because he walked very slowly. Yeah, and when you speed
film up the tiny movements involved their telegraphed, they just
become much more exaggerated.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
So without a setikam, when they sped the film up again,
it would have been just so blurry and just jarring.
It would have been unusable.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
The fact that you can see the trees and stuff,
and even at that high speed, it's all steady cam.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
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. Yeah, and nowadays you can they're all
manner of at home steady cam. You don't have to
do like Myra and build one out of spare parts
and door hinges. No, you can buy one for not
(29:05):
too much. Yeah, you can. You spend one hundred dollars
on a on a decent enough little home steady cam.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
This article says that the steady cam curve, which was
made for GoPros, it was like one hundred bucks.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Yeah. Well those are teeny tiny.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
And there's one for the iPhone called 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.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Yeah, we should have had Casey, our video producer, Casey.
He's in France right now though YE live in the
high life, right he should We should have had Casey
in here just given thumbs up, her thumbs down to
each one of these brands that we mentioned, and I
would trust that is like the gospel truth, right, But
Casey's not here, so we're just gonna say read online reviews.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
I also saw that there's like a lot of gimbal
based drone steady cams. Yeah, they are just not not
that expensive.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
They're changing the game again, sure, 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.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Like the Cisp Monster, the what the Cisp monster? You
remember the alien from Cisp Cereal?
Speaker 1 (30:26):
Do remember Crisp?
Speaker 2 (30:28):
Remember the weird alien?
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Sort of? I didn't eat Cuisp. Wasn't that a Captain
Crunch knock offer. Was it different?
Speaker 2 (30:34):
It was different because they were saucer shaped rather than
square waffle cut.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Gotcha, same thing though, yeah, same thing.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
It was good. It didn't cut the tongue like Captain
Crunch did.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Yeah, the roof of the mouth. I'll suffer through that still.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
And then of course Steady Cam is a name brand,
right do. Yeah, it's made who makes it?
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Tiffin? Tiffin, Now that's what Yeah, I think Tiffin does.
They have a pretty good site, like if you are
at all interested in this, like they've got a great
site and they have all of their Steadycam models with
a real like in depth overview of them and yeah,
pretty uh. I think it's got all their manuals and
everything just right there for you to read.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
Yeah, there's other companies making them. Uh, there's one called
Glidecam and Vara Zoom. Yeah, but you know, Steadycam is
still probably the giant. It's like dollies. There's only two
dolly makers. Well, well there may be more now, but
it's like Chapman and Fisher and each you know, every.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Dolly grip has the dolly makers.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Yeah, the Chapman dollies are Fisher dollies.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
It's kind of like kind of holding Jamison or bush mills. Yeah,
you know, Budweiser cores neither.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
And then Garrett Brown, as if the steady cam wasn't
enough as far as revolutionizing filming goes, he later on
invented something called the skycam, Yeah, which like if you
watch any kind of sporting event now especially, it's especially
useful for football and in football where like there's just
cables above the field and there's cameras hanging down that
(32:08):
are just like doing overhead shots following the action. Like
it's nothing.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
It's pretty neat.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Garrett Brown invented that too.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
I got one more little thing for you. There are
two positions, not high mode. Low mode positions are like
how you're operating the camera. But 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 if the operator is forward and the camera
(32:37):
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.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
I hadn't either. Well, if you want to know more
about steady cams, including a really really fine grain involved
look at the physics of how the steady cam arm works.
You should go type steadycam into the search part HowStuffWorks
dot com. Since I said search parts, time for a
listener mail.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
I'm going to call this 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
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. I
(33:32):
find it disheartening to think that other believers can't find
anything better to do than wait to be offended by
something than jump all over you for it. But based
on your years of experience and careful treatment of the subject,
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. It's also nice just to hear you talk
(33:54):
about things directly related to my beliefs without sneering like
many others. That's nice. Dane in Minnesota.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Yeah, for real thing. If you want to get in
touch with this like Dane did and be a super
cool person, you can tweet to us at s y skpodcast.
You can also follow the behind the scenes action of
Chucks in My Life at s YSK podcast. On Instagram,
you can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
you Should Know for the hurt, and you can send
(34:24):
us an email to Stuff Podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com.
In the meantime, while you're doing all this, hang out
with us at our home on the web Stuff you
Should Know dot com.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
HowStuffWorks dot com.
Hi, everybody. Chuck here with another intro for our summer
movie playlist. Right now, you're about to listen to how
Steadycam Works. This one goes all the way back to
June twenty sixteen. But this was a pretty good one, everybody,
because a steadycam is one of movies great inventions, quite honestly,
first used in some of the early movies like Rocky
(00:21):
and the Shining. We're gonna talk about how it was made,
how it works, and how it works best. So check
it out right now. Welcome to Stuff you should know
from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Charles w Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there. Chuck's wearing a hat,
so it's stubby you should know.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Yeah, he's still still pretty sad. Yeah, are you really sure?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (00:54):
All right, Pete, you know what I'm getting The Josh
is referencing my last chance garage hat that I've talked
way too much about. I'm getting the patch remade as
we speak. WHOA, I actually found one an eBay that
had been sold three months ago, and he's all a
big conspiracy?
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Is that right?
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Now?
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (01:14):
But I found a picture of the patch that I
sent to a patch maker who like can digitally reproduce
this thing.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Nice man.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Well then I got to find in the right hat it's.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Coming back home. Well that's step one. That's a big
step one.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Yeah, I'm getting a few patches and a few hats
this time.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
I think that's a good idea. Yeah, you can name
them one through eight.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Let's see, Chuck, you worked in the film industry previously.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Yeah, so did you technically?
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Yeah, you did more than I did by far. You
worked it in front of and behind the camera.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Did you ever work with a steady cam at all?
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
So, like you've seen these things up close?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
I don't recall Scott or anybody using one.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
We did not have one on our show.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Okay, they're expensive, Okay, but I mean there is some
pretty good equipment on set. It seemed like sure, but
there was no steady cam, right, Nope, Because I was
trying to recall and I could not, for the life
of me remember a moment when there was an awesome
like extendo arm camera with like all of the components
exploded out into different parts of a poll.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
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, why does everyone make fun
of me? Would have all this stuff?
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Oh uh.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Now, we never use one on our TV show for
Science Channel because, like I said, it's pricey to rent.
And this is a bit of a giveaway, but a
person steady cam operator comes with the package, right, with
all the equipment. It's a lot of times their own,
and it's you know, it's pricey, yeah, to pay for
that lady or that dude, right, But.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
The reason it is price is because it's it has
a really good effect. Yeah, and the person who's doing
it really knows what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
I don't know, but just from researching this, it seemed
like they were probably the most skilled trades person on
the set at any given time when they were on
the set. Is that right?
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Well, I think it's just a matter of what skill.
It's just a different skill.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Are they like the highest echelon of camera operators?
Speaker 1 (03:19):
No, it's just different Okay, like a top niner.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Niche Yeah, okay, I got it there.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
But but you don't just wade into steady cam and
start getting work the next day. It does take a
lot of work to master. But like a good dolly,
grip is just as skilled, right, it just pushing that
thing around, But that takes a.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Very non herky jerky Well it's not.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Gonna be herky jerky anyway, but just to hit the marks, right,
and oh I see yeah, I mean all that stuff
takes a great amount of skill.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Well, let's talk about this because Steadycam, you know, when
I came of age, was already invented. It was it
was basically became commercially available the year I was born.
So I don't really know a world prior to Steady Camp.
I've never seen a movie that came out before nineteen
seventy six.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Funny, and I'm just used to it, right, Yeah, 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 basically changed it permanently forever for sure.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Yeah. His name was Garrett Brown. Is Garrett Brown.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Yeah he's still around right.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Yeah, And he he was working for well, he was
working in TV commercials on Sesame Street, in Philadelphia. Yeah,
and he got a little frustrated, as camera people do
pre steady cam with not being able to accomplish certain shots.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Yeah, there's supposedly there were thirty impossible shots that just
based on the equipment of the day, you just couldn't
do right.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Well, and a lot of it had to do with
like rough terrain. Sure, staircases were big one. Yeah, and
the recent these shots were impossible. It's not like you
couldn't lug a camera around up and down 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.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Yeah, and 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
right cause it looked different and people were used to
kind of smoother looking things in mainstream movies at the time.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Yeah, it had like a real frenetic energy to it.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah, which you see all the time now. It's like
a bona fide thing.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
But it wasn't just like picking up the movements of
the camera. It was like telegraphing them as far as
the human brain's concerned, because we take it for granted,
but we have in our own brains a pretty complex system.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
That involves the inner ear coordinating with the movement of
the retina so that it offsets the movement and the
motion and the jarring impact of like just walking.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Like if we didn't have that, we wouldn't be able
to focus on anything while we were moving around.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Yeah, people wouldn't jog. They would get sick and vomit
every time they.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Jog, exactly right, And you certainly wouldn't be able to
read US Magazine while you were jogging or something like that.
The fact that you can, Yeah, it really is. It
really shows how incredibly complex and well developed the system is. Right, Yes,
that's what the steady cam that Garrett Brown created sought
to recreate and he did it. He nailed it, like
(06:34):
on the first time out.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Basically, Yeah, because we mentioned a dolli. That is, people
that know film know this stuff is like pretty rudimentary information,
But a lot of people don't know what a dolli is.
And they see the word dolly grip in the movie.
They just think it sounds funny. But the DOLLI is
how you typically would get a smooth shot. It's just
a big, super super heavy sled with wheels right that
(06:57):
the camera sits on and the camera operator sits on.
And it's either on a very smooth floor, it's on
a piece of track like a little railroad car, and
it pushes along and that's how you get those nice
smooth shots.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
So that's a dolly. The problem with the dolly is
is you can't really lay that track over a rocky
terrain if you're filming on Mars or something like that.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
No, and like you said, you can't push it up
and downstairs. It just had its limitations.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Right, it did. So Garrett Brown said, I'm sick of
these limitations. I'm so tired of being limited by dolly
stupid dollies. I'm going to invent something better. And so
he tinkered around with his what was called the Brown
Stabilizer at first, Yeah, he later renamed the steady Cam. Yeah,
and to show off, like at first he was just
(07:45):
using him in commercials, and he was like, this is
way bigger than just commercials. Yeah, I'm going to make
a sizzle reel, and he made a sizzle reel of
the thirty impossible shots that you just couldn't do before,
and he did it with the steady cam, but he
didn't show how it was done.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Yeah, and you can. He was able to save ten
of those shots 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. Yeah, it's
pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
His wife and his best friend like just doing stuff,
while just doing stuff, like, you know, like one of
them was swimming. You can't run alongside somebody swimming, apparently
was an impossible shot. I'm not quite sure why.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Well, you just couldn't run alongside someone doing anything.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Oh, okay, that's what it was, even with a dolly.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Well, no, you could have. You could have laid dolly
track down the link of a swimming pool.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Shirt, right, That's why I didn't understand that one was
an impossible shot. But to show off, he goes question
he goes around a slide just to kind of show.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Maybe maybe that was the impossibility of it.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
But then his buddy gets out of the pool and
like walking like he pivots around him, and I'm sure
when he put this reel together and he sent it out.
The directors are like, this is magic sorcery.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Well, it was mind blowing, and some people say it
was the first 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?
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Right?
Speaker 1 (09:17):
This Garrett Brown has bestowed upon us.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Yeah, it was a bit of a mic drop as
far as that reel goes.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
And Stanley Kubrick being Stanley Kubrick sent a message to
Garrett 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 a skilled counter intelligence photo
interpreter a fairly clear representation of a man holding a
pole with one hand, with something or other at the
(09:45):
bottom of the pole, which appears to be slowly moving.
All of that is Stanley Kubrickian for, Hey, there's a
shadow in one of your shots of the steady camop.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yeah, which was pretty cool of him to do. Sure,
because I'm sure there were plenty of people in Hollywood
who would have been like Okay, I 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 and went and immediately cut those, yeah,
those I think fourteen seconds out of his reel and
(10:18):
then released the second edition.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
And it looked pretty good. I mean, it's it's rough
compared to today's standard, sure, but the time it was
it was like unbelievable, right.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
It changed everything? Oh yeah. And one of the shots
that he got was his 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
(10:51):
spin around you. And if that shot sounds familiar, it
actually attracted a guy, a director named John what is
the Avilson?
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Yeah, John G. Avelson, who said I.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Like this, I'm going to use it in this little
film I'm directing called Rocky.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
And I didn't get whether or not this was the case,
but did they did? They locate Rocky in Philadelphia because
of those steps. No, because he said, how did you
do that? And where are those steps?
Speaker 1 (11:22):
I don't think so, man, because I wondered that too, like, like,
did he not have a scene written where Rocky just
runs up those steps? Right? I mean Stallone wrote it.
I think they just have to ask him.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Okay, hey, Sly, I was wondering if that was pretty good.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
I answered in that little moment. Someone will have to
interpret that. Great movie though. Man, I rewatched that Rocky. Yeah,
like this year, from beginning to end, just phenomenal movie.
I'm trying to get Emily to watch it.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Has she never seen the original? No, it's its own
thing for sure, Like it's it's much like the sequel.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
No, really, it's a love story for the most part.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
It's a love story and like the triumph of the
Little Guy.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yeah story for sure, Yeah, featuring boxing.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Right, that's exactly right. Yeah, But two and three and
on onward, it's like a totally different thing.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Yeah, but those are good too.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah. They said, let's take your story, take out the
heart and insert cocaine instead.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Insert mister t I don't get the cocaine reference.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Oh, it's just the eighties in Hollywood got hands on sure,
you know what I mean, I gotcha.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Well, But the point is is Garrett Brown created on
this sizzle reel the one of the most iconic shots
in filmmaking history, for sure, and he sent that reel
out and within that year, I believe nineteen seventy six,
three Major Motion Pictures hired him to operate his steady
camp for it. There was Rocky Yep, there was what
(13:03):
was the one about Woody Guthrie.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Bound for Glory? Yeah, I think that one came out first,
So that was the first actual like h and that
one 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.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Yeah, and I think the operation, I think the patent
was still pending until nineteen seventy seven, so I'm sure
he don't play the thing out of everybody closed your
eyes while I shoot this.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
But on Bound for Glory, he was on a crane
even that lowered down, stepped off the crane. So people
had 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.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
In the world, right, there would have been a cut, Yeah,
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.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
One smooth shot, yeah, and then.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
The other one was Marathon Man. So right out of
the blue, this guy who was a commercial director and
made short films for Same Street, changed filmmaking single handedly.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Yeah, and won an Academy Award nineteen seventy eight for
Technical Achievement. I got that patent in seventy seven. And well,
that's it. That's the history of the steadycam.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
That's it. Everybody, good night.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
But we're gonna should we take a break and tell
everyone how this thing works.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Let's do it man, all right, Chuck, So the Steadi Camp.
Do you remember when we did our episode on breathalyzers.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Oh boy, that was a long time ago, and we.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Found out that the breathalyzer is one of the most
complicated machines.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Yeah, on the planet. I kind of hated that one.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Like there were crystals involved somehow I hated that one too,
dark crystals. This is a bit like that, like if
you really dive in the steadycams. Like this article on
how stuff works, does it's labyrinthine talk about the dark crystal? Yeah,
we're talking labyrinth instead.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Yeah. But we're gonna simplify it because you don't need
to break this thing apart and look at every component
like this article does.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
I mean, it really gets involved.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
What you should do is look at a picture of
someone operating one. Yeah, and just because when you look
at it, you go, it all makes a lot more sense.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
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, yeah, which
is what the camera and its components are mounted on. Right.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Yeah, And that arm, I mean just picture yourself wearing
a like a baby Bjorn baby carrier, except for instead
of the baby at your sternum, there's a mechanical arm
coming out.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Like a spring arm lamp.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Yeah, like accordion arm or a spring arm lamp.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Right, and it's virtually the same thing.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Well, yeah, and you guess who made one of these
by himself before they started making them for at home people.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Who? Casey?
Speaker 1 (16:07):
No, who my brother of course? Oh?
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Did he really? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Yeah, my brother made one of these in like the
early nineties.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Did he really?
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Out of door hinges and rubber bands and springs?
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Does he still have it? Is it in the Smithsonian?
Speaker 1 (16:19):
I don't know, it's in the Scotsonian, nice, which is
where all his early mentions.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
With all his pinball machines.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Yeah, but he made one. He basically did the same thing.
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.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
It is, and it worked pretty good. It's virtually the
same thing.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
So the whole point of a steady cam is that
it basically simulates or the arm at least simulates a
human arm right to where it can move around very easily. Yeah,
And it redistributes the weight of the camera, which can
be up to like seventy pounds I imagine probably more.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Yeah, the whole unit is pretty heavy, and it's not
easy to operate, but it hold a wear you out.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
It holds it flessly, and it holds it in place.
This arm does and it does it by using springs.
And you can adjust the tension of the springs by
using a cable and pulley system. Yes, 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.
(17:21):
You can put the camera on top of the sled
so that you get high shots. You can switch it
so it goes on the bottom so you can get
low angle shots.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Yeah. The traditional it's called high mode and low mode.
And high mode is 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 a human, you'd put it in high mode.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Yeah, And the camera itself is broken out into pieces,
which is kind of an ingenious trick that I guess
Garrett Brown came up with himself. I think he did.
And this is the third part the camera sled right.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Yes, the slid is what holds all the equipment.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Right, And it's basically a pole with a little bit
at the top called the stage, and that's where the
camera goes, or it could be at the bottom wherever
the camera is. The camera's mounted to the stage. Yes,
then you get the pole itself and then the I
guess the arm is connected to the pole by a gibble.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
A gimbal.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
A gimbal, that's right. And that's like an old technology.
It's basically something that uses basically a gyroscopic action to
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.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Yeah, it's pretty neat.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
It's super neat. And that's just the one arm that's
connected to the pole. Yes, So you can see how
complicated this thing is. That this guy sat back and
I think in a hotel room somewhere he put it together.
Garrett Brown, the first one. There's just the ingenuity it
took to put this together. It's pretty pretty in depth
as far as inventions go.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Yeah, and there's a little science to it. 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 be still, you want to increase that resistance to
the rotation. And this is determined by a couple of
different things. How much mass there is to the object,
and how far that mass is from its own axis
(19:26):
of rotation. So by spreading the camera out, he basically
took the little cameras come with a monitor now so
you can see what's going on, and a big heavy battery.
He took the monitor off of 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
(19:47):
of gravity from the camera itself.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Yeah, because like with a regular camera where all the
components are in one single unit, that center of gravity's
inside the camera. Yeah, so it's easy to rotate. But
since he exploded it out into 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
(20:11):
pole and manipulates the camera at the center of gravity,
which makes it very easy to balance keep balance.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Yeah, And 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 your finger and lift it up and down.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Right and it just it's balance on your finger because
you're hitting that center of balance.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
That's right, it's the same principle. Yeah. And in fact,
if you took if you took that same broomstick and
cut it off and you just had three feet 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
(20:52):
it would be steadier than if you just had it
in your hand.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
I could see that because of the change of the
center of gravity.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
Change of the center of gravity, and if you put
little counterweight at the bottom, that would make it even
more steady. Yeah, And that's the whole concept of the
steady cam sled. Then attach that to an arm, that
accordion arm, and you're cooking with gas.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
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 just with your hand. Yeah,
it's steady. The 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. Yeah, so that
your movement of you walking just gets lost within the
(21:34):
arm before it ever gets to the camera and could
shake it.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Yeah, like if you did it with a broomstick. Your
arm is the same thing as a steady cam orm right,
except it's better.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
The steady cam arms.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Is better than your human arm, right, yes, exactly.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Pretty neat stuff.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
It is neat stuff.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
And I think that's it for the science man. We
made it through it.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Yeah, I mean it's all got to be very precisely balanced.
You don't just throw the stuff on the pole, willy
nilly no.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
And they point out that the balance of the camera
can actually change during filming, Yeah, just from the film
moving from one end of the camera to the other
as it records.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Well, yeah, in the old days when they use film,
for sure. Nowadays it's just that digital card. Yeah, well
not always.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Quentin Tarantino's camera operators have to deal.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
With this, Yeah, and if you've ever been on a
job with a steady caam, there are a lot of uh,
there's a lot of breaks where I mean you can
adjust him on the fly more now, but I remember
there just being a lot of breaks with a steadycam.
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
(22:39):
it's still a lot of weight to be carrying on
a vest on your chest.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Yeah, and running and moving and doing all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Yeah, it's it's a tough gig.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Like there's a pretty amazing video. Did you watch it
of that Eurovision shot? No, there's a guy from I
think Baylarus singing and they showed they showed him. He's
like they they showed the shot and then they showed
what somebody filming the shot being done and the guy
with the SETI cam wearing the vest rides down the
(23:09):
aisle on a segue.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Is that what he's on?
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Yeah, hops 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, Yeah, wow, that guy deserved a
standing ovation.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
It would have been more impressive had it not like
the subject matter have been more interested in the video
quality but better pretty bad, Like if it was a
Scorsese movie, you'd be like, wow, sure, but it was
this you know, kind of corny. Well, I mean it
looked like an American idol or something.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
It was, but it was American idol. If you took
American idol at its peak and then spread it out
over Eurasia and like it was popular over that that
large of a population, that's what Eurovision is.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
So you want to talk about some of the shots
when we come back after a break.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
Please, Okay, all.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Right, so Chuck. In addition to that Rocky shot and
that Eurovision shot, there are some other very famous shots,
classic shots of all time.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Yeah, that had to.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Do with steady cam. They couldn't have been done without
steady cam.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Well, the Shining is the first one that pops into
most people's minds because, like we said, Kubrick 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 apparently they kind
of battled one another quite a bit on the set
(24:52):
of The Shining, and Garrett Brown later admitted he said
a lot of that was probably what do you call it,
like inventor's pride or something kind of getting in the
way of this like brilliant all tour. So Kubrick already
had his own ideas on how to best use this
thing that this other guy invented. And you know, the
Shinings classic example, those tricycle shots, the famous maze chase
(25:14):
at the end YEP, very iconic in motion picture history.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Yeah, and I mean the the how did they do?
You know how they did that shot behind Danny on
his little big wheel.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
They probably just went into low mode and.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Like walked behind him or yeah, ran down the hall
after him. That's really impressive.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Yeah, So The.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Shining's a big one. Sure, Rocky's a big one. Goodfellows
is another classic example too, classic where Rayleioda and Lorraine
Brocco are going into the Copa Cabana, but they go
through the back yeah, and they're followed like throughout like
the backstairs into the kitchen and then they finally come
out into their table and it's like one uninterrupted, like
(25:55):
five minute shot or something.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
It's amazing, and it's I think when you see the
you're you might see it and not be a discerning
film viewer and just say well that I didn't notice anything,
which is probably good, or you might be a fan
in steady cam and just say, man, that was amazing.
Then you have to step back and look at lighting
and realize that how incredibly hard it is to light
(26:18):
a shot like that that takes place over I don't
know how many hundreds of feet.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
But without seeing the lights in the shot.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
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.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
You know, they were like, wait, what do you want
to do?
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Yeah, it'll be great, don worry about it, stay with me.
You know, he's making another gangster movie.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
No I didn't know that.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Yeah, and it may be like the some folks are saying,
it's like, you know, his last big gangster movie. Yeah,
but it's got de Niro again. Okay, he hadn't worked
with him in a long time. Paccino and Joe pesci
Is coming out of retirement.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
I didn't even know he was retired. I just thought
he wasn't doing stuff anymo. Man, he retired, I didn't
know that.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Yeah, so's he's got the three heavyweights and supposedly Harveycattail.
Of course you got to throw him in there. Sure,
but I'm just like giddy thinking about this.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Yeah, I'm glad he is because his last one was departed, right.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
No, he's made movies since then, like Wolf of Wall Streets, Yeah,
which I thought was great. I know you didn't love it.
I thought it was awesome.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
I thought everything. But what Jack Nicholson did was was
pretty good.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Yeah, like his performance.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
No, I really didn't.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Well, sorry Jack, He'll forgive that, all right, because you
like him as an actor, right, Yeah?
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Okay, uh, who's a git? Come on.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Return of the Jedi nineteen eighty three, the famous speeder
bike chase scene.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
And find the indoor.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Yeah, California's Redwood National Park doubled his indoor and that
was Garrett Brown walking and they sped it up.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Yeah, but and you're just like, wow, who cares. The
reason why it's such an iconic steady cam shot is
because he walked very slowly. Yeah, and when you speed
film up the tiny movements involved their telegraphed, they just
become much more exaggerated.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
So without a setikam, when they sped the film up again,
it would have been just so blurry and just jarring.
It would have been unusable.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
The fact that you can see the trees and stuff,
and even at that high speed, it's all steady cam.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
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. Yeah, and nowadays you can they're all
manner of at home steady cam. You don't have to
do like Myra and build one out of spare parts
and door hinges. No, you can buy one for not
(29:05):
too much. Yeah, you can. You spend one hundred dollars
on a on a decent enough little home steady cam.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
This article says that the steady cam curve, which was
made for GoPros, it was like one hundred bucks.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Yeah. Well those are teeny tiny.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
And there's one for the iPhone called 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.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Yeah, we should have had Casey, our video producer, Casey.
He's in France right now though YE live in the
high life, right he should We should have had Casey
in here just given thumbs up, her thumbs down to
each one of these brands that we mentioned, and I
would trust that is like the gospel truth, right, But
Casey's not here, so we're just gonna say read online reviews.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
I also saw that there's like a lot of gimbal
based drone steady cams. Yeah, they are just not not
that expensive.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
They're changing the game again, sure, 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.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Like the Cisp Monster, the what the Cisp monster? You
remember the alien from Cisp Cereal?
Speaker 1 (30:26):
Do remember Crisp?
Speaker 2 (30:28):
Remember the weird alien?
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Sort of? I didn't eat Cuisp. Wasn't that a Captain
Crunch knock offer. Was it different?
Speaker 2 (30:34):
It was different because they were saucer shaped rather than
square waffle cut.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Gotcha, same thing though, yeah, same thing.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
It was good. It didn't cut the tongue like Captain
Crunch did.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Yeah, the roof of the mouth. I'll suffer through that still.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
And then of course Steady Cam is a name brand,
right do. Yeah, it's made who makes it?
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Tiffin? Tiffin, Now that's what Yeah, I think Tiffin does.
They have a pretty good site, like if you are
at all interested in this, like they've got a great
site and they have all of their Steadycam models with
a real like in depth overview of them and yeah,
pretty uh. I think it's got all their manuals and
everything just right there for you to read.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
Yeah, there's other companies making them. Uh, there's one called
Glidecam and Vara Zoom. Yeah, but you know, Steadycam is
still probably the giant. It's like dollies. There's only two
dolly makers. Well, well there may be more now, but
it's like Chapman and Fisher and each you know, every.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Dolly grip has the dolly makers.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Yeah, the Chapman dollies are Fisher dollies.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
It's kind of like kind of holding Jamison or bush mills. Yeah,
you know, Budweiser cores neither.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
And then Garrett Brown, as if the steady cam wasn't
enough as far as revolutionizing filming goes, he later on
invented something called the skycam, Yeah, which like if you
watch any kind of sporting event now especially, it's especially
useful for football and in football where like there's just
cables above the field and there's cameras hanging down that
(32:08):
are just like doing overhead shots following the action. Like
it's nothing.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
It's pretty neat.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Garrett Brown invented that too.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
I got one more little thing for you. There are
two positions, not high mode. Low mode positions are like
how you're operating the camera. But 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 if the operator is forward and the camera
(32:37):
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.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
I hadn't either. Well, if you want to know more
about steady cams, including a really really fine grain involved
look at the physics of how the steady cam arm works.
You should go type steadycam into the search part HowStuffWorks
dot com. Since I said search parts, time for a
listener mail.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
I'm going to call this 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
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. I
(33:32):
find it disheartening to think that other believers can't find
anything better to do than wait to be offended by
something than jump all over you for it. But based
on your years of experience and careful treatment of the subject,
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. It's also nice just to hear you talk
(33:54):
about things directly related to my beliefs without sneering like
many others. That's nice. Dane in Minnesota.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Yeah, for real thing. If you want to get in
touch with this like Dane did and be a super
cool person, you can tweet to us at s y skpodcast.
You can also follow the behind the scenes action of
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you can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
you Should Know for the hurt, and you can send
(34:24):
us an email to Stuff Podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com.
In the meantime, while you're doing all this, hang out
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Should Know dot com.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
HowStuffWorks dot com.
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