BUILDING THE STEADICAM

This entry was posted on 9/3/2006 9:57 PM and is filed under Pre-Production.

Quite a few years ago, I was fascinated by the original Brown design Steadicam. Whoever remembers seeing Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" for the first time was blown away by the long, unbroken Steadicam shots in that film. It's one of my favorite movies because its a great example of directing complex aesthetics using a minimalistic style. If you've never seen it, rent it. It's a great film.

At any rate, I've always wanted to own and operate a Steadicam - until I found out I could never afford one. Between semesters teaching film at LTU, I drove my father to the "Joe Factor" store in Burbank. Joe Factor is a mecca for surplus military and aerospace components in Los Angeles where you can buy every conceivable piece of engineering hardware that's built to military specifications for pennies on the dollar.

While I was there, I found eight jet control surface actuator rods, beautifully milled out of magnesium alloy and finished to military specs that would lend themselves well to being turned into a Steadicam arm. At $2.35 each, I grabbed all eight and used some scrap aluminum my father had in the junk drawer in the studio workshop.

It took me 20 hours of drilling, sawing, filing and twisting screwdrivers but in the end, I had a fully operational Steadicam that I designed from a single still photo from the Steadicam advertisement behind the front cover of my American Cinematograoher magazine as my only reference. I had to study that one damn photo for hours, trying to glean how the cables in the suspension arms were rigged.

Right away, I discovered that it was going to take a while to get the hang of it so I practiced with it a lot. Fully loaded, it gets heavier the longer you wear it because of the weight swinging out in front of you. That's why the longer I wear it, you'll see me leaning back further and further like I'm in a hurricane or something. You're not supposed to wear a Steadicam for much more than an hour or two because of the strain on the back muscles but making this film, I've had to get used to wearing it for entire shoot days. it's made out of mil-spec materials, I can blast it clean with a garden hose without worrying about corrosion.

If you look at my design, you'll notice that the vest merely provides the hardpoint on the human body where the suspension arm is attached. The suspension arm does one thing, it buffers vertical motion so I can run and still get steady looking shots you can't get by hand.

The gimble at the end of the suspension arm provides a free swinging gimbal so the weight of the counter weight maintains a level camera. But the moment you add and centrifugal force, like running around a corner, the counterweight will still sway the camera. That also applies to walking anything but a straight line when you want to swing the camera around for a swish pan. That makes it something of a chore to get used to operating it proficiently.

Otherwise, I've already done some great shots running backwards with the camera, hopping up and down from platforms and trotting after actors all in the same shot. It's a great piece of equipment that I'm really thrilled to have at my complete disposal for making this film.

I gave up catching big fish like that to own and operate my home-built Steadicam that I'm now using to make this movie in Arizona and that's not a bad trade off.

If you would like to learn more about building Steadicams, check out the topic in my GUIDE BOOK For Guerrilla Filmmakers.

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