Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Speaker 2: Charles w Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there. Chuck's wearing a hat,
Speaker 2: so it stuff you should know. Yeah, still still pretty sad?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Are you really sure?
Speaker 2: All right, Pete?
Speaker 1: You know what I'm getting? The Josh is referencing my
Speaker 1: last chance garage hat that I've talked way too much about.
Speaker 1: I'm getting the patch remade as we speak. Whoa, I actually.
Speaker 3: Found one an eBay that had been sold three months ago,
Speaker 3: and he's all a big conspiracy.
Speaker 2: Is that right? No?
Speaker 1: Okay, but I found.
Speaker 3: A picture of the patch that I sent to a
Speaker 3: patchmaker who like, can digitally reproduce this thing?
Speaker 2: Nice man.
Speaker 1: Well, then I got to find in the right hat.
Speaker 2: It's coming back home. Well that's step one. That's a
Speaker 2: big step one.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm getting a few patches and a few hats
Speaker 1: this time.
Speaker 2: I think that's a good idea. Yeah, you can name
Speaker 2: them one through eight.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: Let's see, Chuck, you worked in the film industry previously.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so did you? Technically?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you did more than I did by far. You
Speaker 2: worked it in front of and behind the camera.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: Did you ever work with a steady cam at all?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: So like you've seen these things up close?
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: I don't recall Scott or anybody using one.
Speaker 1: We did not have one on our show.
Speaker 2: Okay, they're expensive, Okay, but I mean there's some pretty
Speaker 2: good equipment on set. It seemed like sure, but there
Speaker 2: was no steady cam right, Nope, because I was trying
Speaker 2: to recall and I could not, for the life of
Speaker 2: me remember a moment when there was an awesome like
Speaker 2: extendo arm camera with like all of the components exploded
Speaker 2: out into different parts of a polly that.
Speaker 1: Didn't hapen because he would have walked in and said,
Speaker 1: what's that? Right? And everyone would have laughed, and you
Speaker 1: would have been like, why does everyone make fun of me?
Speaker 1: Would all this stuff? Now?
Speaker 3: We never is one on our TV show for Science
Speaker 3: Chowl because, like I said, it's pricey to rent, and
Speaker 3: this is a bit of a giveaway, but a person
Speaker 3: steadycam operator comes with the package, right, with all the equipment.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of times their own, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's pricey, yeah, to pay for that lady or that dude.
Speaker 2: Right, But the reason it is price is because it's
Speaker 2: it has a really good effect. Yeah, and the person
Speaker 2: who's doing it really knows what they're doing. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know, but just from researching this, it seemed like
Speaker 2: they were probably the most skilled trades person on the
Speaker 2: set at any given time when they were on the set.
Speaker 2: Is that right?
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's just a matter of what skill.
Speaker 1: It's just a different skill.
Speaker 2: Are they like the highest echelon of camera operators.
Speaker 1: No, it's just different.
Speaker 2: Okay, like a top niche Yeah, okay, I got it.
Speaker 3: But but you don't just wade into steadycam and start
Speaker 3: getting worked the next day. It does take a lot
Speaker 3: of work to master. But like a good dolly grip
Speaker 3: is just as skilled, right at just pushing that thing around,
Speaker 3: But that takes.
Speaker 2: A very non herky jerky Well it's not.
Speaker 3: Gonna heirckey jerky anyway, but just to hit the marks
Speaker 3: right and oh I see yeah, I mean all that
Speaker 3: stuff takes a great amount of skill.
Speaker 2: Well, let's talk about this because STEADI camp, you know,
Speaker 2: when I came of age, was already invented. It was
Speaker 2: it was basically became commercially available the year I was born,
Speaker 2: So I don't really know a world prior to STEADI Camp.
Speaker 2: I've never seen a movie that came out before nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy six. Funny, and I'm just used to it, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: but it's interesting to look back and see that there
Speaker 2: actually is a point in time where this one dude
Speaker 2: who was actually kind of an outsider of the movie
Speaker 2: business basically changed it permanently forever for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: His name was Garrett Brown. Is Garrett Brown.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's still around right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: And he was working for well, he was working in
Speaker 3: TV commercials on Sesame Street in Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he.
Speaker 3: Got a little frustrated, as camera people do pre steady CAM,
Speaker 3: with not being able to accomplish certain shots.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's supposedly there were thirty impossible shots that just
Speaker 2: based on the equipment of the day, you just couldn't
Speaker 2: do right.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and a lot of it had to do with
Speaker 2: like rough terrain. Sure, staircases were a big one. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and the recent these shots were impossible. It's not like
Speaker 2: you couldn't lug a camera around up and down the stairs,
Speaker 2: but the movement that the camera recorded would be so
Speaker 2: jarring that it would render the film like that it
Speaker 2: would be unusable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this was in a day before I mean
Speaker 3: there were shaky cam shots and like Cassavettis and all
Speaker 3: these early indie filmmakers did a lot of like avant
Speaker 3: garde handheld stuff, but it was known as avant garde
Speaker 3: right cause it looked different and people were used to
Speaker 3: kind of smoother looking things in mainstream movies at the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it had like a real phrenetic energy to it, Yeah,
Speaker 2: which you see all the time now.
Speaker 1: It's like a bona fide thing.
Speaker 2: But it wasn't just like picking up the movements of
Speaker 2: the camera. It was like telegraphing them as far as
Speaker 2: the human brain's concerned, because we take it for granted,
Speaker 2: but we have in our own brains a pretty complex
Speaker 2: system that involves the inner ear coordinating with the movement
Speaker 2: of the retina so that it offsets the movement and
Speaker 2: the motion and the jarring impact of like just walking. Like,
Speaker 2: if we didn't have that, we wouldn't be able to
Speaker 2: focus on anything while we were moving around.
Speaker 3: Yeah, people wouldn't jog, They would get sick and vomit
Speaker 3: every time they.
Speaker 2: Job exactly right, and you certainly wouldn't be able to
Speaker 2: read US magazine while you were jogging or something like that.
Speaker 2: The fact that you can it really is, it really
Speaker 2: shows how incredibly complex and well developed the system is. Right. Yes,
Speaker 2: that's what the steady cam that Garrett Brown created sought
Speaker 2: to recreate and he did it. He nailed it like
Speaker 2: on the first time out. Basically.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because we mentioned a dolly.
Speaker 3: That is people that know film know this stuff is
Speaker 3: like pretty rudimentary information. But a lot of people don't
Speaker 3: know what a dolly is. And they see the word
Speaker 3: dolly grip in a movie, they just think it sounds funny.
Speaker 3: But the dolly is how you typically would get a
Speaker 3: smooth shot. It's just a big, super super heavy sled
Speaker 3: with wheels that the camera sits on and the camera
Speaker 3: operator sits on, and it's either on a very smooth floor,
Speaker 3: it's on a piece of track.
Speaker 1: Like a little railroad car.
Speaker 3: And it pushes along and that's how you get those
Speaker 3: nice smooth shots.
Speaker 2: So that's a dolly. The problem with the dolly is
Speaker 2: is you can't really lay that track over a rocky
Speaker 2: terrain if you're filming on Mars or something like that.
Speaker 3: No, and like you said, you can't push it up
Speaker 3: and downstairs. It just had its limitations, right, it did.
Speaker 2: So Garrett Brown said, I'm sick of these limitations. I'm
Speaker 2: so tired of being limited by Dolly, stupid Dolly. I'm
Speaker 2: going to invent something better. And so he tinkered around
Speaker 2: with his what was called the Brown Stabilizer at first, Yeah,
Speaker 2: which he later renamed the steady Cam. Yeah, and to
Speaker 2: show off, like at first he was just using him
Speaker 2: in commercials, and he was like, this is way bigger
Speaker 2: than just commercials. Yeah, I'm going to make a sizzle reel.
Speaker 2: And he made a sizzle reel of the thirty impossible
Speaker 2: shots that you just couldn't do before, and he did
Speaker 2: it with the steady cam, but he didn't show how
Speaker 2: it was done.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you can.
Speaker 3: He was able to save ten of those shots and
Speaker 3: digitize them, and a couple of years ago he finally
Speaker 3: released online ten of those so you can actually go
Speaker 3: see this original reel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: His wife and his best friend like just doing stuff,
Speaker 2: while just doing stuff, like you know, like one of
Speaker 2: them was swimming. You can't run alongside somebody swimming apparently
Speaker 2: was an impossible shot. I'm not quite sure why.
Speaker 1: Well, you just couldn't run alongside someone doing anything.
Speaker 2: Oh, okay, that's what it was.
Speaker 1: Even with a.
Speaker 3: Dolly Well, no, you could have. You could have laid
Speaker 3: dolly track down the length of a swimming pool shirt.
Speaker 2: Right, That's why I didn't understand that one was an
Speaker 2: impossible shot. But to show off, he goes question, he
Speaker 2: goes around a slide.
Speaker 3: Just to kind of show maybe maybe that was the
Speaker 3: impossibility of it.
Speaker 2: But then his buddy gets out of the pool and
Speaker 2: like walking like he pivots around him. And I'm sure
Speaker 2: when he put this reel together and he sent it out,
Speaker 2: the directors are like, this is magic sorcery.
Speaker 1: Well, it was mind blowing.
Speaker 3: And some people say it was the first viral video
Speaker 3: because it was shared around Hollywood literally in a matter
Speaker 3: of days. Everybody in Hollywood was saying what in the world,
Speaker 3: Like you said, what is this sorcery?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: This Garrett Brown has bestowed upon us?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's It was a bit of a mic drop
Speaker 2: as far as that reel goes.
Speaker 3: And Stanley Kubrick being Stanley Kubrick sent a message to
Speaker 3: Garrett Brown that said, if you are really concerned about
Speaker 3: protecting its design before you fully patent it, I suggest
Speaker 3: you delete the two occasions on the reel where the
Speaker 3: shadow on the ground gives the skilled counter intelligence photo
Speaker 3: interpreter a fairly clear representation of a man holding a
Speaker 3: pole with one hand, with something or other at the
Speaker 3: bottom of the pole, which appears to.
Speaker 1: Be slowly moving.
Speaker 3: All of that is Stanley Kubrickian for Hey, there's a
Speaker 3: shadow in one of your shots.
Speaker 1: Of the steady.
Speaker 2: Camopea, which is pretty cool of him to do. Sure,
Speaker 2: because I'm sure there were plenty of people in Hollywood
Speaker 2: who would have been like, Okay, I think I kind
Speaker 2: of get the idea of what this was, because there
Speaker 2: was no suggestion whatsoever of what Garrett Brown had used
Speaker 2: to get these shots except in those shadows. So he
Speaker 2: went and went and immediately cut those, yeah, those I
Speaker 2: think fourteen seconds out of his reel, and then released
Speaker 2: the second edition.
Speaker 1: And it looked pretty good.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's rough compared to today's standard, sure, but
Speaker 3: for the time it was like unbelievable, right.
Speaker 2: It changed everything. Oh yeah, and one of the shots
Speaker 2: that he got was his wife Ellen. He said, dear,
Speaker 2: why don't you put on your most seventies bell bottoms
Speaker 2: you can find and I'm going to run up behind you.
Speaker 2: Is you run up the steps to the Philadelphia Museum
Speaker 2: of Art, And maybe when you get to the top,
Speaker 2: you can raise your hands in triumph and I will
Speaker 2: spin around you. And if that shot sounds familiar, it
Speaker 2: actually attracted a guy, a director named John what is
Speaker 2: it avilds Son?
Speaker 1: Yeah, John G.
Speaker 2: Avelson, who said, I like this, I'm going to use
Speaker 2: it in this little film I'm directing called Rocky.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I didn't get whether or not this was the case.
Speaker 2: But did they Did they locate Rocky in Philadelphia because
Speaker 2: of those steps?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: Because he said, how did you do that? And where
Speaker 2: are those steps?
Speaker 3: I don't think so, man, because I wondered that too,
Speaker 3: like like, did he not have a scene written where
Speaker 3: Rocky just runs up those steps?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: I mean Stallone wrote it. I think they al just
Speaker 1: have to ask him.
Speaker 2: Okay, hey, Sly, I was wondering if you yeah, that
Speaker 2: was pretty good.
Speaker 3: I answered in that little moment. Someone will have to
Speaker 3: interpret that. Great movie though.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 3: I rewatched that Yeah, like this year from beginning to end,
Speaker 3: just phenomenal movie.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get Emily to watch it.
Speaker 2: Has she never seen the original.
Speaker 1: No, it's its own thing for sure.
Speaker 2: Like it's not it's a boxing movies.
Speaker 1: Really, it's a love story for the most part.
Speaker 2: It's a love story and like the triumph of the
Speaker 2: little guy. Yeah story for sure, Yeah, featuring boxing, right,
Speaker 2: that's exactly right. Yeah, But two and three and on
Speaker 2: on word it's like a totally different thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but those were good too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they said, let's take your story, take out the
Speaker 2: heart and insert cocaine.
Speaker 1: Instead, insert mister t. I don't get the cocaine reference.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's just the eighties and Hollywood got hands on sure,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I gotcha.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, that's a good question, though, I wonder about
Speaker 3: that if he surely didn't remake it for Philadelphia just for.
Speaker 2: That well, But the point is is Garrett Brown created
Speaker 2: on this sizzle reel, the one of the most iconic
Speaker 2: shots in filmmaking history, for sure, and he sent that
Speaker 2: reel out and within that year, I believe nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 2: three Major Motion Pictures hired him to operate his steady
Speaker 2: camp for it. There was Rocky yep, there was what
Speaker 2: was the one about Woody.
Speaker 1: Guthrie Bound for Glory?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that one came out first, so that
Speaker 3: was the first actual like h and that one the
Speaker 3: steady camop was Garrett Brown, I think for all these huh,
Speaker 3: because he was the only guy that knew, he got
Speaker 3: a lot of work early on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think I think the patent was still
Speaker 2: pending until nineteen seventy seven, so I'm sure he'p the
Speaker 2: thing out of everybody closed your eyes while I shoot this.
Speaker 3: But on Bound for Glory, he was on a crane
Speaker 3: even that lowered down, stepped off the crane, so people
Speaker 3: had seen crane shots, but then for the crane to
Speaker 3: go down, down, down, and then all of a sudden
Speaker 3: start following this guy, everyone was like what in the
Speaker 3: word right?
Speaker 2: There would have been a cut, yeah, after the crane stopped,
Speaker 2: and then before you know, they would cut and he
Speaker 2: would have gotten a position and then started up again.
Speaker 2: This is one smooth shot.
Speaker 1: One smooth shot yeah.
Speaker 2: And then the other one was Marathon Man, So.
Speaker 1: Another great right out of the blue.
Speaker 2: This guy who was a commercial director and made short
Speaker 2: films for Sestame Street changed filmmaking like single handedly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and won an Academy Award nineteen seventy eight for
Speaker 3: Technical achievement, got that patent in seventy seven, and.
Speaker 1: Well, that's it. That's the history of the steady.
Speaker 2: Gam that's it. Everyboding good night.
Speaker 3: But we're gonna should we take a break and tell
Speaker 3: everyone how this thing works.
Speaker 2: Let's do it man, all right, Chuck? So the STUDI CAAMP.
Speaker 2: Do you remember when we did our episode on breathalyzers.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, that was a long time ago, and we.
Speaker 2: Found out that the breathalyzer is one of the most
Speaker 2: complicated machines. Yeah, on the planet.
Speaker 1: I kind of hated that one.
Speaker 2: Like there were crystals involved somehow. I hated that one too,
Speaker 2: dark crystals. This is a bit like that, Like if
Speaker 2: you really dive into steticams, like this article on how
Speaker 2: stuff works does it's it's it's labyrinthine talk about the
Speaker 2: dark crystal. Yeah, we're talking labyrinth instead.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But we're gonna simplify it because you don't need to
Speaker 3: break this thing apart and look at every component like
Speaker 3: this article does.
Speaker 2: I mean it really gets involved.
Speaker 3: What you should do is look at a picture of
Speaker 3: someone operating one. Yeah, and just because when you look
Speaker 3: at it, you go it all makes a lot more sense.
Speaker 2: Right, And there's really just three main parts to the
Speaker 2: whole thing. There's a vest, there's an arm that's attached
Speaker 2: to the vest, and then the other end of the
Speaker 2: arm is attached to what's called the sled, yeah, which
Speaker 2: is what the camera and its components are mounted on. Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that arm, I mean just picture yourself wearing
Speaker 3: a like a baby Bjorn baby carrier, except for instead
Speaker 3: of the baby at your sternum, there's a mechanical arm
Speaker 3: coming out.
Speaker 2: Like a spring arm lamp.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like accordion arm or a spring arm lamp.
Speaker 2: Right, And it's virtually the same thing.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and guess who made one of these by
Speaker 3: himself before they started making them for at home people.
Speaker 2: Who? Casey? Who?
Speaker 1: My brother? Of course?
Speaker 2: Oh? Did he really? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, my brother made one of these in like the
Speaker 3: early nineties out of door hinges and rubber bands and springs.
Speaker 2: Does he still have it? Is it in the Smithsonian?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's in the Scotsonian, which is where all his early mentions.
Speaker 2: With all his pinball machines.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he made one. He basically did the same thing.
Speaker 3: He looked at it and looked at these swing arm lamps, right,
Speaker 3: and accordion arm lamps, and it's like, well, it's the
Speaker 3: same thing.
Speaker 1: I'll just make a version of that.
Speaker 2: It is, and it worked pretty good. It's virtually the
Speaker 2: same thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the whole point of a steady cam is that
Speaker 2: it basically stimulates or the arm at least simulates a
Speaker 2: human arm right to where it can move around very easily. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And it redistributes the weight of the camera, which can
Speaker 2: be up to like seventy pounds I imagine probably more.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the whole unit is pretty heavy, and it's not
Speaker 3: easy to operate.
Speaker 1: But it'll hold a wear you out.
Speaker 2: It holds it effortlessly, and it holds it in place.
Speaker 2: This arm does and it does it by using springs.
Speaker 2: And you can adjust the tension of the springs by
Speaker 2: using a cable and pulley system. Yes, so that it
Speaker 2: offsets the balance of the camera and holds it in
Speaker 2: space in front of the camera operator basically so that
Speaker 2: they can move it effortlessly up down to the side.
Speaker 2: You can put the camera on top of the sled
Speaker 2: so that you get high shots. You can switch it
Speaker 2: so it goes on the bottom so you can get
Speaker 2: low angle shots.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The traditional it's called high mode and low mode and
Speaker 3: high mode is it doesn't mean it's high, it just
Speaker 3: means it's on the top.
Speaker 1: Of the unit.
Speaker 3: And then low mode is when it's on the bottom.
Speaker 3: So if you wanted to film a mouse running across
Speaker 3: the floor, you would put.
Speaker 1: It in low mode, right. If you want to film
Speaker 1: a human, you put it in high mode.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the camera itself is broken out into pieces,
Speaker 2: which is kind of an ingenious trick that I guess
Speaker 2: Garrett Brown came up with himself. I think he did.
Speaker 2: And this is the third part. The camera slid right.
Speaker 1: Yes, the slid is what holds all the equipment.
Speaker 2: Right, And it's basically a pole with a little bit
Speaker 2: at the top called the stage. Yeah, and that's where
Speaker 2: the camera goes, or it could be at the bottom
Speaker 2: wherever the camera is. The camera's mounted to the stage.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: Then you get the pole itself and then the I
Speaker 2: guess the arm is connected to the pole by a gibble,
Speaker 2: a gimbal. A gimbal, that's right. And it's like an
Speaker 2: old technology. It's basically sure something that uses base gyroscopic
Speaker 2: action to take the movement of whatever is seeking to move,
Speaker 2: whatever you want to hold still and getting rid of
Speaker 2: it Yeah, like everything around it moves except for the
Speaker 2: thing that you want to hold still.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty neat.
Speaker 2: It's super neat. And that's just the one arm that's
Speaker 2: connected to the pole. Yes, So you can see how
Speaker 2: complicated this thing is. That this guy sat back and
Speaker 2: I think in a hotel room somewhere he put it together.
Speaker 2: Garrett Brown, the first one. There's just the ingenuity it
Speaker 2: took to put this together. It's pretty pretty in depth
Speaker 2: as far as inventions go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's a little science to it. There's something
Speaker 3: called moment of inertia. It's basically how much that camera
Speaker 3: is resistant to rotation. So if you want the camera
Speaker 3: to be still, you want to increase that resistance to
Speaker 3: the rotation. And this is determined by a couple of
Speaker 3: different things. How much mass there is to the object,
Speaker 3: and how far that mass is the from its own
Speaker 3: axis of rotation. So by spreading the camera out, he
Speaker 3: basically took the cameras come with a monitor now, so
Speaker 3: you can see what's going on in a big heavy battery.
Speaker 3: He took the monitor off of the camera, He took
Speaker 3: the battery off of the camera and redistributed that up
Speaker 3: and down the pole. So what he ended up doing
Speaker 3: was spreading out that mass, which takes away the center
Speaker 3: of gravity from the camera itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because like with a regular camera, where all the
Speaker 2: components are in one single unit, that center of gravity
Speaker 2: is inside the camera. Yeah, so it's easy to rotate.
Speaker 2: But since he exploded it out into its various components,
Speaker 2: he made that center of gravity land somewhere on the pole, right,
Speaker 2: and the gimbal attaches to the pole just above the
Speaker 2: center of gravity, so that the camera operator holds the
Speaker 2: pole and manipulates the camera at the center of gravity,
Speaker 2: which makes it very easy to balance keep balance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And they do a good job in this article.
Speaker 3: If you'd like, just take a broomstick and you find
Speaker 3: that center of gravity with your finger. You can hold
Speaker 3: it with your finger and lift it up and down.
Speaker 2: Right, and it just it's balanced on your finger be
Speaker 2: you're hitting that center of balance.
Speaker 1: That's right. It's the same principle. Yeah. And in fact,
Speaker 1: if you took.
Speaker 3: If you took that same broomstick and cut it off
Speaker 3: and you just had three feet of broomstick and just
Speaker 3: took your SLR camera and screwed that broomstick into the
Speaker 3: bottom of your camera, instead of a.
Speaker 1: Tripod that would function.
Speaker 3: You could walk around with that and it would be
Speaker 3: steadier than if you just had it in your hand.
Speaker 2: I could see that because of the change of the
Speaker 2: center of gravity.
Speaker 3: Change of the center of gravity, and if you put
Speaker 3: a little counterweight at the bottom, it would make it
Speaker 3: even more steady. And that's the whole concept of the
Speaker 3: steady cam sled. Then attach that to an arm, that
Speaker 3: accordion arm, and you're cooking with gas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because you were saying, like if you walk around
Speaker 2: with just the pole holding or the broomstick, cut off
Speaker 2: broomstick and you're holding it just with your hand, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's steady. The point of the arm is it's taking
Speaker 2: your hand out of the equation and replacing it with
Speaker 2: something that can isolate movement even more. Yeah, so that
Speaker 2: your movement of you walking just gets lost within the
Speaker 2: arm before it ever gets to the camera and could
Speaker 2: shake it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like if you did it with a broomstick. Your
Speaker 3: arm is the same thing as a steady camra.
Speaker 2: Right, it's better if the steadycam arms.
Speaker 1: Is better than your human arm, right, yes, exactly.
Speaker 2: Pretty neat stuff. It is neat stuff, And I think
Speaker 2: that's it for the science man. We made it through it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's all got to be very precisely balanced.
Speaker 3: You don't just throw the stuff on the pole, willy
Speaker 3: nilly no.
Speaker 2: And they point out that the balance of the camera
Speaker 2: can actually change during filming. Yeah, just from the film
Speaker 2: moving from one end to the camera to the other
Speaker 2: as it records.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, in the old days when they use film, sure,
Speaker 3: nowadays it's just that digital card.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well not always.
Speaker 2: Quinn Tarantino's camera operators have to deal with this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And if you've ever been on a job with
Speaker 3: a steady cam, there are a lot of there's a
Speaker 3: lot of breaks where I mean you can adjust them
Speaker 3: on the fly more now, but I remember there just
Speaker 3: being a lot of breaks with a steadycam. Up would
Speaker 3: say hold on, you know, I need five minutes, and
Speaker 3: they go over and they have a little stand that
Speaker 3: they put it on to take because you know, it
Speaker 3: takes the weight off to a certain degree, but it's
Speaker 3: still a lot of weight to be.
Speaker 1: Carrying on a vest on your chest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and running and moving and doing all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a tough gig.
Speaker 2: Like there's a pretty amazing video. Did you watch it
Speaker 2: of that Eurovision shot. No, there's a guy from I
Speaker 2: think Baylarus singing and they shot they showed him like
Speaker 2: he's like they they showed the shot and then they
Speaker 2: showed what somebody filming the shot being done. And the
Speaker 2: guy with the SAIDI cam wearing the vest rides down
Speaker 2: the aisle on a segue.
Speaker 1: Is that what he's on?
Speaker 2: Yeah, hops off, runs up this ramp and then starts
Speaker 2: circling around the guy who's singing, And it's a pretty
Speaker 2: amazing thing. It's a great shot. But then when you
Speaker 2: see how it's done, Yeah, wow, that guy deserved a
Speaker 2: standing ovation.
Speaker 3: It would have been more impressive hit it not like
Speaker 3: the subject matter have been more interested in the video quality,
Speaker 3: but better pretty bad, Like if it was a Scorsese movie,
Speaker 3: you'd be like, wow, sure, but it was this you know,
Speaker 3: kind of corny. Well, I mean it looked like an
Speaker 3: American idol or.
Speaker 2: Something it was, but it was American idol. If you
Speaker 2: took American idol at its peak and then spread it
Speaker 2: out over Eurasia and like it was popular over that
Speaker 2: that large of a population, that's what Eurovision is.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: So you want to talk about some of the shots
Speaker 2: when we come back after a break please, okay, all right,
Speaker 2: so Chuck. In addition to that Rocky shot and that
Speaker 2: Eurovision shot, there are some other very famous shots, classic
Speaker 2: shots of all time. Yeah, that had to do with
Speaker 2: steady cam. It couldn't have been done without steady cam.
Speaker 3: Well, The Shining is the first one that pops into
Speaker 3: most people's minds because, like we said, Kubrick was a
Speaker 3: big fan of this invention and immediately started talks with
Speaker 3: Garrett Brown on how to help him out with this movie,
Speaker 3: The Shining, that he was making. And apparently they kind
Speaker 3: of battled one another quite a bit on the set
Speaker 3: of The Shining, and Garrett Brown later admitted he said
Speaker 3: a lot of that was probably what do you call it,
Speaker 3: like inventor's pride or something kind of getting in the
Speaker 3: way of this like brilliant all tour. So Kubrick already
Speaker 3: had his own ideas on how to best use this
Speaker 3: thing that this other guy invented. And you know the Shining,
Speaker 3: classic example, those tricycle shots, the famous maze chase.
Speaker 1: At the end, very iconic in motion picture history.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean the how did they do? You know,
Speaker 2: how they did that shot? Behind Danny and his little
Speaker 2: big one.
Speaker 1: They probably just went into low mode and.
Speaker 2: Like walked behind him or yeah, ran down the.
Speaker 1: Hall after him.
Speaker 2: That's really impressive. Yeah, so the shining's a big one. Sure,
Speaker 2: Rocky's a big one. Good Fellows is another classic example, too,
Speaker 2: classic where Rayleioda and Lorraine Brocco are going into the
Speaker 2: Copa Cabana, but they go through the back yeah, and
Speaker 2: they're followed like throughout like the backstairs into the kitchen,
Speaker 2: and then they finally come out into their table and
Speaker 2: it's like one uninterrupted, like five minute shot or something.
Speaker 3: It's amazing, and it's I think when you see this,
Speaker 3: you're you might see it and not be a discerning
Speaker 3: film viewer and just say, well that I didn't notice
Speaker 3: anything right, which is probably good. Yeah, Or you might
Speaker 3: be a fan and steady cam and just say, man,
Speaker 3: that was amazing. U. Then you have to step back
Speaker 3: and look at lighting and realize that how incredibly hard
Speaker 3: it is to light a shot like that that takes
Speaker 3: place over I don't know how many hundreds of feet.
Speaker 2: Well without seeing the lights in the shot.
Speaker 3: Well that or just consistent lighting and having it look good.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's just Usually you light for like a
Speaker 3: room or something, or a hallway, but to light all
Speaker 3: those different rooms and hallways and just incredibly, I can't
Speaker 3: imagine how long it took to set that up.
Speaker 2: You know, they were like, wait, what do you want
Speaker 2: to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it'll be great, worry about it, stay with me.
Speaker 1: You know, he's making another gangster movie.
Speaker 2: No, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it may be like the.
Speaker 3: Some folks are saying, it's like, you know, his last
Speaker 3: big gangster movie, but it's got de Niro again. He
Speaker 3: had worked with him in a long time. Paccino and
Speaker 3: Joe pesci Is coming out of retirement.
Speaker 2: I didn't even know he was retired. I just thought
Speaker 2: he wasn't doing stuff anymo.
Speaker 1: Man, he retired.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so's he's got the three heavyweights and supposedly Harvey Cattail.
Speaker 3: Of course you got to throw him in there. Sure,
Speaker 3: But I'm just like giddy thinking about this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm glad he is because his last one was departed.
Speaker 2: Right now.
Speaker 3: He's made movies since then, like Wolf of Wall Street Gangster, Yeah,
Speaker 3: which I thought was great.
Speaker 1: I know you didn't love it. I thought it was awesome.
Speaker 2: I thought everything. But what Jack Nicholson did was pretty good.
Speaker 1: Yeah you didn't like his performance?
Speaker 2: No, I really didn't. Well, sorry Jack, He'll.
Speaker 3: Forgive that all right, because you like him as an actor, right, Yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: does it gets come on Return of the Jedi nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty three, the famous speeder bike chase scene and the indoor. Yeah,
Speaker 3: California's Redwood National Park doubled his indoor and that was
Speaker 3: Garrett Brown walking and they sped it up.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But and then you're just like, wow, who cares.
Speaker 2: The reason why it's such an iconic steady cam shot
Speaker 2: is because he walked very slowly. Yeah, and when you
Speaker 2: speed film up the tiny movements involved they're telegraphed, they
Speaker 2: just become much more exaggerated.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So without a setikam when they sped the film up again,
Speaker 2: it would have been just so blurry and just jarring.
Speaker 2: It would have been unusable.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The fact that you can see the trees and stuff,
Speaker 2: and even at that high speed, it's all steady cam.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and people, I think it's just so easy to
Speaker 3: take it for granted now in movies when you see
Speaker 3: these shots. But to pioneer these these things and this
Speaker 3: equipment was remarkable. Yeah, and nowadays you can. They're all
Speaker 3: manner of at home steady cam. You don't have to
Speaker 3: do like my brother and build one out of spare
Speaker 3: parts and door hinges.
Speaker 1: No, you can buy one.
Speaker 2: For not too much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can.
Speaker 3: You spend one hundred dollars, Yeah, on a decent enough
Speaker 3: little home steady cam.
Speaker 2: This article says that the steady cam curve, which was
Speaker 2: made for GoPros, it was like one hundred bucks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well those are teeny tiny.
Speaker 2: And there's one for the iPhone called what's it called
Speaker 2: the Smoothie. That one is like it's like, I think
Speaker 2: even less than one hundred bucks, and it's just like
Speaker 2: a handheld camera stabilizer that works pretty well from what
Speaker 2: I can gather.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we should have had Casey, our video producer Casey.
Speaker 3: He's in France right now though, live in the High.
Speaker 1: Life, right you should We should have had.
Speaker 3: Casey in here just given thumbs up her thumbs down
Speaker 3: to each one of these brands of the mentioned and I.
Speaker 1: Would trust that is like the gospel truth.
Speaker 3: But Casey's not here, so we're just gonna say read
Speaker 3: online reviews.
Speaker 2: I also saw that there's like a lot of gimbal
Speaker 2: based drone steady cams. Yeah that are just not that expensive.
Speaker 1: Well, amazing they're changing the game again, sure, because then
Speaker 1: you can.
Speaker 3: Do a shot where you follow someone by the swimming
Speaker 3: pool and then fly up into outer space with them
Speaker 3: if you want, in one continuous motion.
Speaker 2: Like the Cisp monster, the what the Cisp monster? You
Speaker 2: remember the alien from Crisp Cereal? Uh?
Speaker 1: I do remember Quisp?
Speaker 2: Remember the weird alien?
Speaker 1: Sort of? I didn't eat Quisp. Wasn't that a Captain
Speaker 1: Crunch knock offer? Was it different?
Speaker 2: It was different because they were saucer shaped rather than
Speaker 2: square waffle cut gotcha? Same thing though, Yeah, same thing.
Speaker 2: It was good. It didn't cut the tongue like Captain
Speaker 2: Crunch did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the roof of the mouth. I'll suffer through that still.
Speaker 3: Uh. And then of course Steatikam is a name brand,
Speaker 3: right Seeing Eye Dog.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's made Uh who makes it?
Speaker 2: Tiffin?
Speaker 1: Tiffin?
Speaker 2: Now that's what Yeah, I think I think Tiffin does.
Speaker 2: They have a pretty good site, like if you are
Speaker 2: at all interested in this, like, they've got a great
Speaker 2: site and they have all of their steadycam models with
Speaker 2: a real like in depth overview of them and yeah, pretty. Uh.
Speaker 2: I think it's got all their manuals and everything just
Speaker 2: right there for you to read.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's other companies making them. There's one called Glidecam
Speaker 3: Embara Zoom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, Steadikam is still probably the giant.
Speaker 1: It's like Dolly's.
Speaker 3: There's only two Dolly Makers, well, or there may be
Speaker 3: more now, but it's like Chapman and Fisher and each
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: Every Dolly grip has the Dolly Makers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Chapman dollies are Fisher dollies kind of like kind
Speaker 1: of holding.
Speaker 2: Jamison or bush mills, you know, Foodweiser cores neither. And
Speaker 2: then Garrett Brown, as if the steady cam wasn't enough
Speaker 2: as far as revolutionizing filming goes, he later on invented
Speaker 2: something called the skycam, Yeah, which like if you watch
Speaker 2: any kind of sporting event now especially it's especially useful
Speaker 2: for football. In football, where like it's there's just cables
Speaker 2: above the field and there's cameras hanging down that are
Speaker 2: just like doing overhead shots following the action.
Speaker 1: Like it's nothing, it's pretty neat.
Speaker 2: Garrett Brown invented that too.
Speaker 3: I got one more little thing for you. There are
Speaker 3: two positions not high mode low mode positions are like
Speaker 3: how you're operating the camera. But if you are pointing
Speaker 3: for it as an operator and your camera is pointing forward,
Speaker 3: you're just walking.
Speaker 1: It's called missionary no.
Speaker 3: And then if you are if the operator is forward
Speaker 3: and the camera is backward, they call that don Juan.
Speaker 3: So leave it to film set goons to think of
Speaker 3: sexual names for sex it up camera positions.
Speaker 2: Don Juan, Yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Never heard of that one.
Speaker 2: I hadn't either. Well, if you want to know more
Speaker 2: about steady cams, including a really really fine grain involved
Speaker 2: look at the physics of how the steady cam arm works,
Speaker 2: you should go type steadycam into the search part HowStuffWorks
Speaker 2: dot Com. Since I said search parts signed for the
Speaker 2: listener mail.
Speaker 1: I'm going to call this encouragement from a Christian listener.
Speaker 3: Okay, Hey guys, I was listening to the Easter Show
Speaker 3: and was compelled right in. As a Christian, I've always
Speaker 3: appreciated how you make a solid effort to not rail
Speaker 3: on the church too hard. I found it humorous and
Speaker 3: simultaneously sad when you felt you had to tiptoe around
Speaker 3: the pagan traditions that have been integrated with the resurrection.
Speaker 3: Find it disheartening to think that other believers can't find
Speaker 3: anything better to do than wait to be offended by
Speaker 3: something than jump all over you for it.
Speaker 1: But based on your years of experience and careful.
Speaker 3: Treatment of the subject, it must be the case a
Speaker 3: lot of the time. Personally, I just want to say,
Speaker 3: I can't think of anything you've ever said to offend me.
Speaker 3: I think you've done a stand up job with sensitive
Speaker 3: subjects like satanic panic in particular. It's also nice just
Speaker 3: to hear you talk about things directly related to my
Speaker 3: beliefs without sneering like many others will.
Speaker 1: That's nice Dane in Minnesota.
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