SYSK’s Summer Movie Playlist: How Steadicams Work

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1:05Hi everybody, Chuck here with another intro for our summer movie playlist. Right now you're about to listen to How Steadicam Works. This one goes all the way back to June 2016. But this was a pretty good one everybody because the Steadicam is one of movies' great inventions, quite honestly. First used in some of the early movies like Rocky and The Shining. We're going to 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.com.

1:44Hey, 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 Stuff You Should Know. Yeah. Still pretty sad. Yeah. Are you really? Sure. Oh. 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 on eBay that had been sold three months ago. And it's all a big conspiracy. Is that right? No. No. Not really. But I found a picture of the patch that I sent to a patch maker who can digitally reproduce this thing.

2:25Nice, man. Well, that's great. But then I got to find the right hat. It's coming back home. Well, that's step one. That's a big step one. Yeah, I'm getting a few patches and a few hats this time. I think that's a good idea. Yeah. You can name them one through eight. That's right. Let's see, Chuck. You worked in the film industry previously. Yeah, so did you technically. Yeah. You did more than I did by far. You worked in front of and behind the camera. That's right. Did you ever work with a Steadicam at all? Yeah. So you've seen these things up close? Yep. I don't recall Scott or anybody using one.

3:02We did not have one on our show. Okay. They're expensive. Okay. But I mean, there was some pretty good equipment on set, it seemed like to me. But there was no Steadicam, right? Nope. Because I was trying to recall, and I could not for the life of me remember a moment when and there was an awesome extendo arm camera with all of the components exploded out into different parts of a pole. That didn't happen, because he would've walked in and said, what's that? Right. And everyone would've laughed, and you would've been like, why does everyone make fun of me just because I don't know all this stuff?

3:31I'll be in my dressing room. No, 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, Steadicam operator, comes with the package, with all the equipment. It's a lot of times their own, and it's pricey to pay for that lady or that dude. Right. But the reason it is pricey is because it has a really good effect, and the person who's doing it really knows what they're doing. Yeah. 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.

4:17Is that right? Well, I think it's just a matter of what skill. It's just a different skill. Are they like the highest echelon of camera operators? No, it's just different. Okay. Like a top notch. They're niche. Yeah. Okay, I got it then. But you don't just wade into Steadicam 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 at just pushing that thing around. But that takes a very... Non-herky-jerky. Well, it's not going to be herky-jerky anyway, but just to hit the marks right. Oh, I see. Yeah, I mean, all that stuff takes a great amount of skill.

4:52Well, let's talk about this, because Steadicam, when I came of age, was already invented. It basically became commercially available the year I was born. So I don't really know a world prior to Steadicam. I've never seen a movie that came out before 1976. Funny. and I'm just used to it, right? Yeah. But it's interesting to look back and see that 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. Yeah. His name was Garrett Brown. It is Garrett Brown. Yeah, he's still around, right?

5:32Yeah. And 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-SteadyCam, with not being able to accomplish certain shots. Yeah, supposedly there were 30 impossible shots that just based on the equipment of the day, you just couldn't do, right? Yeah. And a lot of it had to do with rough terrain. Sure. Staircases were a big one. Yeah. And the reason 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 it would be unusable.

6:18Yeah, and this was in a day before. I mean, there were shaky cam shots, and Cassavetes and all these early indie filmmakers did a lot of avant-garde handheld stuff, but it was known as avant-garde. Right. Because it looked different, and people were used to kind of smoother looking things in mainstream movies at the time. Yeah, it had a real frenetic energy to it. Yeah, which you see all the time now. It's like a bona fide thing. And it wasn't just 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 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 just walking.

7:10If we didn't have that, we wouldn't be able to focus on anything while we were moving around. Yeah, people wouldn't jog. They would get sick and vomit every time they jog. Exactly right. You certainly wouldn't be able to read Us Magazine while you were jogging or something like that. The fact that you can, it really shows how incredibly complex and well-developed the system is, right? Yes. that's what the steadicam that Garrett Brown created sought to recreate and he did it, he nailed it on the first time out basically we mentioned a dolly people that know film know this stuff is pretty rudimentary information but a lot of people don't know what a dolly is and they see the word dolly grip in a movie they just think it sounds funny but the dolly is how you typically would get a smooth shot it's just a big super super heavy sled with wheels that the camera sits on, and the camera operator sits on, and it's either on a very smooth floor or 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.

8:14Right. So that's a dolly. The problem with a dolly is you can't really lay that track over a rocky terrain if you're filming on Mars or something like that. No, and like you said, you can't push it up and down stairs. It just had its limitations. Right, it did. So Garrett Brown said, I'm sick of these limitations. I'm so tired of being limited by dollies, stupid dollies. I'm going to invent something better. And so he tinkered around with his, what was called the Brown stabilizer at first. Yeah. Which he later renamed to the Steadicam. Yeah. And to show off, like at first he was just using them in commercials.

8:51And 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 30 impossible shots that you just couldn't do before and he did it with the Steadicam but he didn't show how it was done. Yeah, and you can, he was able to save 10 of those shots and digitize them and a couple of years ago he finally released online 10 of those so you can actually go see this original reel. Yeah, it's pretty cool. His wife and his best friend just doing stuff. Just doing stuff. One of them was swimming. You can't run alongside somebody swimming, apparently, was an impossible shot.

9:30I'm not quite sure why. Well, you just couldn't run alongside someone doing anything. Oh, okay, that's what it was? Yeah. Even with a dolly? Well, no, you could have laid dolly track down the length of a swimming pool, sure. Right, that's why I didn't understand that one was an impossible shot. But to show off, he goes around a slide just to kind of show, just to drive it home. Maybe that was the impossibility of it. But then his buddy gets out of the pool and 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? Well, it was mind-blowing.

10:09And 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 this Garrett Brown has bestowed upon us? Yeah, it was a bit of a mic drop as far as that reel goes. And Stanley Kubrick, being Stanley Kubrick, sent a message to Garrett Brown that said, if you are really concerned about protecting its design before you fully patent it, I suggest you delete the two occasions on the reel where the shadow on the ground gives the skilled counterintelligence photo interpreter a fairly clear representation of a man holding a pole with one hand with something or other at the bottom of the pole which appears to be slowly moving.

10:53all of that is Stanley Kubrickian for, hey, there's a shadow in one of your shots. Right. Of the Steadicam mop. 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 Garrett Brown had used to get these shots except in those shadows. So he went, eek, and immediately cut those, those, I think, 14 seconds out of his reel and then release the second edition. And it looked pretty good. I mean, it's rough compared to today's standard.

11:29Sure, but I mean - But for the time, it was unbelievable. Right, 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 70s bell-bottoms you can find, and I'm going to run up behind you as you run up the steps to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. and maybe when you get to the top, you can raise your hands in triumph, and I will spin around you. And if that shot sounds familiar, it actually attracted a guy, a director named John, what is it, Avildson? Yeah, John G. Avildson. Who said, I like this, I'm going to use it in this little film I'm directing called Rocky.

12:12Yeah. And I didn't get whether or not this was the case, but did they locate Rocky in Philadelphia because of those steps? No. Because he said, how did you do that and where are those steps? I don't think so, man, because I wondered that too. Did he not have a scene written where Rocky just runs up those steps? Right. I mean, Stallone wrote it. Right. I think they added that. We'll just have to ask him. Okay. Hey, Sly. I was wondering if you could do it. That was pretty good. I answered in that little moment. Someone will have to interpret that. Great movie, though, man. I re-watched that. Rocky?

12:54Yeah, like this year from beginning to end. Just phenomenal movie. Yeah. I'm trying to get Emily to watch it. Has she never seen the original? No. It's its own thing, for sure. It's not much like the sequels. It's not a boxing movie, really. It's a love story, for the most part. It's a love story and the triumph of the little guy story, for sure. Featuring boxing. Right. That's exactly right. But two and three and onward, it's like a totally different thing. Yeah, but those are good, too. Yeah, they said, let's take your story, take out the heart, and insert cocaine instead. Insert Mr. T. I don't get the cocaine reference.

13:33Well, it's just the 80s and Hollywood got their hands on it. Oh, okay, sure. You know what I mean? I gotcha. Yeah, that's a good question, though. I wonder about that. Surely they didn't remake it for Philadelphia just for that. Well, but the point is, is Garrett Brown created on this sizzle reel the one of the most iconic shots in filmmaking history. For sure. And he sent that reel out. And within that year, I believe. Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally. And I'm Hurricane DeBowlo. It's a new year. And on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health. Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know and how messy it can all be.

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16:2676, three major motion pictures hired him to operate his Steadicam for it. There was Rocky. Yep. There was, what was the one about Woody Guthrie? Bound for Glory. Yeah. I think that one came out first, so that was the first actual, like, and that one, the Steadicam app 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 as the operator. I think the patent was still pending until 1977, so I'm sure he didn't let that thing out of his side. Everybody close your eyes while I shoot this. But on Bound for Glory, he was on a crane even that lowered down, stepped off the crane.

17:05So 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 in the world? Right, there would have been a cut after the crane stopped, and then before they would have cut, and he would have gotten in position and then started up again. This is one smooth shot. One smooth shot. Yeah, and then the other one was Marathon Man. Yeah, another great movie. So just right out of the blue, this guy who is a commercial director and made short films for Sesame Street changed filmmaking single-handedly. Yeah, and won an Academy Award in 1978 for Technical Achievement.

17:37Got that patent in 77. And, well, that's it. That's the history of the Steadicam. That's it, everybody. Good night. But we're going to, should we take a break and tell everyone how this thing works? Let's do it, man.

18:07All right, Chuck. So the study camp, do you remember when we did our episode on breathalyzers? Oh boy, that was a long time ago. And we found out that the breathalyzer is one of the most complicated machines on the planet. I kind of hated that one. Like there were crystals involved somehow. I hated that one too. Dark crystals. There were. This is a bit like that. Like if you really dive into Steadicams like this article on HowStuffWorks does, it's labyrinthine. Talk about the dark crystal. Yeah. We're talking labyrinth instead. Yeah, but we're going to simplify it because you don't need to break this thing apart and look at every component like this article does.

18:47I mean, it really gets involved. What you should do is look at a picture of someone operating one. Yeah. Because when you look at it, it all makes a lot more sense. Right, and there's really just three main parts to the whole thing. There's a vest, there's an arm that's attached to the vest, and then the other end of the arm is attached to what's called the sled. Yeah. Which is what the camera and its components are mounted on, right? Yeah, and that arm, I mean, just picture yourself wearing a Baby Bjorn baby carrier, except for instead of the baby at your sternum, there's a mechanical arm coming out.

19:25Like a spring arm lamp. Yeah, like an accordion arm or a spring arm lamp. Right, and it's virtually the same thing. Well, yeah, and guess who made one of these? Who? by himself before they started making them for at-home people. Who? Casey? No. Who? My brother, of course. Oh, did he really? Yeah. Yeah, my brother made one of these in the early 90s. Did he really? Out of door hinges and rubber bands and springs. Does he still have it? Is it in the Smithsonian? I don't know. It's in the Scottsonian, which is where all his early inventions. With all his pinball machines? Yeah, but he made one. He basically did the same thing.

19:59He looked at it and looked at these swing arm lamps and accordion arm lamps. It's like, well, it's the same thing. I'll just make a version of that. And it worked pretty good. It's virtually the same thing. Yeah. So the whole point of a Steadicam 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 70 pounds. I imagine probably more. Yeah. The whole unit is pretty heavy, and it's not easy to operate. But it'll wear you out. It holds it effortlessly, and it holds it in place.

20:33This 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 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. 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. 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.

21:14If you wanted to film a human, you'd put it in high mode. 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? Yes. The sled is what holds all the equipment. Right. And it's basically a pole with a little bit at the top called the stage. Yeah. And that's where the camera goes. Or it could be at the bottom, wherever the camera is. Sure. The camera is mounted to the stage. Yes. Then you get the pole itself. And then I guess the arm is connected to the pole by a gimbal?

21:55A gimbal. 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. Yeah. Like everything around it moves except for the thing that you want to hold still. Yeah, it's pretty neat. 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. This guy sat back and I think in a hotel room somewhere he put it together, Garrett Brown the first one. Just the ingenuity it took to put this together, it's pretty in-depth as far as inventions go.

22:36Yeah, 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 of rotation. So by spreading the camera out, he basically took the little, you know, cameras come with a monitor now so you can see what's going on. Right. And a big heavy battery. Yeah. He took the monitor off of the camera.

23:08He took the battery off of the camera and redistributed that up and down the pole. Uh-huh. So what he ended up doing was spreading out that mass, which takes away the center of gravity from the camera itself. Yeah, because like with a regular camera where all the components are in one single unit, that center of gravity is inside the camera. Yeah. So it's easy to rotate. But since he exploded it out into its various components, he made that center of gravity land somewhere on the pole. Right. And the gimbal attaches to the pole just above the center of gravity so that the camera operator holds the pole and manipulates the camera at the center of gravity, which makes it very easy to balance, keep balance.

23:49Yeah, and they do a good job in this article. if you 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. Right, and it's balanced on your finger because you're hitting that center of balance. That's right. It's the same principle. Yeah. And in fact, 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 it would be steadier than if you just had it in your hand.

24:26I could see that because of the change of the center of gravity. Change of the center of gravity, and if you put a little counterweight at the bottom, it would make it even more steady. And that's the whole concept of the Steadicam sled. Then attach that to an arm, that accordion arm, and you're cooking with gas. Yeah, because you were saying if you walk around with just the pole holding, or the broomstick, like cut off broomstick, and you're holding it just with your hand, 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, so that your movement of you walking just gets lost within the arm before it ever gets to the camera and could shake it.

25:08Yeah, like if you did it with a broomstick, your arm is the same thing as the Steadicam arm. Right, except it's better. The Steadicam arm is. Is better than your human arm. Right, exactly. Pretty neat stuff. It is neat stuff. And I think that's it for the science, man. We made it through it. 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, 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, right? Well, yeah, in the old days when they used film, for sure.