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