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If you had access to one, do you think you'd tend to favour it over dolly shots?
I was having a rummage in the University's storeroom last week, and stumbled on a Steadicam JR. I had a play this afternoon and let's just say I can see why The Shining uses one so much, Kubrick must have been like a dog with two... tails. Even without reading the manual I was getting pretty good follow shots straight away!
I understand we have some dollies too, but I have yet to play with one of those.
My producer and production company partner built himself one from some plans he obtained. There was a pretty shallow learning curve for a while, but he got the hang of it, and it works decently well. I really prefer it to dolly stuff, just by versatility alone.
It all depends on the quality of your operator, fortunately mine has been first class.
Steadicams are complicated (and expensive) pieces of equipment and only someone qualified who has done the short courses should wear the harness- it's possible to achieve a lot of structura damage to ones self when someone doesn't know how to use it.
Sure for high street consumer cameras a steadicam Jr. or other small fry equivalent probably isn't going to do much harm, but getting into DVCAM, 16mm and beyond you DO need a pro operator or at least someone who is qualified.
I love steadicam- God bless Garrett Brown! [img]biggrin.gif[/img]
Location > time < budget = dolly or steadi...
side note:
Personally, I find laying dolly track a pain!
<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ January 31, 2005 12:24 PM: Message edited by: Spunkey1pestic ]</font>
which uni do you go to curtinparloe?
Im definelty a track and dolly man myself, if i used a stedicam, i would probably use it just for quick movement between set ups rather than go for any long trackign shots,
a film i worked on last year, had some fantastic stedi cam shots but, in my opinion it was used for the sake of having a stedicam and its a bit of a overkill,
cranes are nice too.
Ha! I'd like to see that thing take my 4kg Bolex.
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Bend like a reed.
Re. The poor man's steadicam. I've found a similar effect is possible by mounting the camera on the tripod with the legs closed and then picking the whole thing up (holding it in a similar way to those shots on the poor man website alink above). You need a very strong arm though. Now tha's a real poor man's steadicam.
Justin M - I called a friend 5 min ago and he told me the same thing except he was talking about some tripod with just one leg [img]graemlins/wonder.gif[/img]