Charles Papert

http://makingoficons.com/ I enjoyed this a lot conceptually. Great idea, fun execution. I do have curiosities about the use of the AR here and whether it introduced a certain amount of "restlessness" into the frame as every time it was rotated (as can be seen in the behind-the-scenes video), the stability seemed to suffer. Seems to me like it could have all been done in low-mode with a step-on dolly wheeled in at the end to raise the operator up to the final lens height. Perhaps it was "easier" to achieve with the AR, but did the tool compromise the end product?

I used it more as a hauler in the Steadicam days. Now I sometimes use it as a monitoring station cart. The shelves are aluminum and fold up so the top one doesnt have much weight bearing capacity, but the bottom one being braced against the support of the cart structure is quite solid. It's an interesting design that has many pros and cons. Mostly, it takes up minimal space in a vehicle.

Hi Jens: I don't think I'm selling mine but want to put in a recommendation for the Kartmaster (think the current model is HD500). It collapses down quite small but expands out to the size of a junior magliner--you can even get lightweight shelves for it. It's heavy, but solid. I've had mine for 20 years or so, it's going strong.

Is the new zoom branded Alura or something else, Eric? Any info on it out there? I hadn't heard of it until now.

All day long today my FSI 24" reference monitor was blanking out after the AD yelled "action" into his walkie from a few feet away. Wouldn't have been the end of the world except that I happened to be using it to monitor while operating the Technocrane (courtesy our ol' pal Doc and Active Remote, plug plug). Not easy to operate a remote head shot without a monitor.

Somewhere around 91 or 92 I was at my friend's graphics studio and in came a series of faxes from Ted: his computer drawings of the PRO which I think were used for the first manual. As each page came out of the fax machine my jaw dropped as I gazed upon that machine for the first time. If I can find I will scan and post.

Everything looks good but...2 frames latency.

Eric--if one is considering pans, tilts and rolls being executed purely from the gimbal (i.e. excluding the idea of compensating laterally via booming and sidestepping), wouldn't the only possible nodal move be a pan, if the focal point is directly above the gimbal? Wouldn't tilts and rolls have to involve an arc since there is always going to be distance between the gimbal and focal point?

I hear the GVU5 is set to make a comeback.

Paging Paul Gardner...

Excellent typo, old bean.

Joseph: One of the things that I see quite a bit of in your footage is headroom issues. Most newer operators struggle with consistent headroom or chopping off heads, but in your case there are many examples of excess headroom without much visible attempt to correct, which suggests that you need to focus on your sense of composition which Victor touched on above. As far as the line dances not working for you, I would suggest that your footage indicates otherwise. Making up shots that have lots of moving parts (multiple actors, complex combinations of moves) is a fantastic practice tool, and you are very lucky to have patient actors who will let you do 10 takes! But, you have to learn to walk before you can run, and the basic building blocks of Steadicam are best learned in small chunks and repeated over and over until they become muscle memory. It's like playing scales when you learn an instrument; it's boring and repetitious but it forms the basis for the good stuff to come. An example is the shot at :51 or so. Panning with the actor as he passes you is a particular exercise in reining in the inertia so the rig remains level (which didn't quite happen), and then you start pulling back at :58. As soon as this happens, there is no adjustment to headroom which just grows and grows, to the point where the victim breaks the bottom of the frame. Maintaining headroom as the camera drives in or pulls away from a subject is one of the classic line dance exercises, learning how and when to use boom vs tilt to achieve this. You can use an actor or simply tape an outline of a person at the end of the hall (or heck, prop up your roommate's blow-up doll), and walk towards then away from them keeping a close eye on headroom. Do it over and over, at different speeds (as slow as possible is an oft-overlooked way to practice and is immensely helpful for subtle footwork and finger control). Don't let yourself get bored until you can nail it every time, because that means you need to keep doing it. The next time you come up on a shot like the good old stabbing-in-a-hallway, your brain will know to activate that little chunk of knowledge. Before I leave that one shot, there is a subtlety that goes beyond the technical and that is thinking about the interplay of the moving camera with the blocking of the actors. A good Steadicam operator will make suggestions and tweak the action to make the shot sing. At :55, you reveal the chap with the bat but he is instantly blocked by the first guy, then the camera sort of meanders in, comes to a stop and somewhat arbitrarily starts pulling away. There are many ways to fix this and the fun of operating Steadicam is coming up with the most interesting one. This may not be it but off the top of my head: when you pan Guy #1 around, have him favor the wall to his right so that you can keep the most distance between you during the pan and also this allows you to land over Guy #1's left shoulder as you complete the pan. They both rush at each other, but you maintain the same speed which allows the frame to widen a little for the grapple. Make sure they favor opposite walls so as not to block each other. As they come to a stop you are still moving, so you are effectively now pushing in on the Vulcan neck pinch or whatever #1 is doing to #2, giving it emphasis. When #2 starts to drop in the frame, you tilt down with him which gives you a great opportunity to bury coming to a stop and reversing direction to a pull back, gradually widening as #2 drops lower and lower which brings #1 back into the frame. Nicely done! Again, there are many ways to sell this same piece of action but the goal is to draw the viewer's eye to the action in an interesting, fluid and logical way, rather than just arbitrarily moving around with people just for movement's sake. Keep at it--and yes, go take that workshop. But in the meantime, don't foresake the exercises, they really make a difference.

the key word is CAN be easily fixed in post--the question is, WILL it be. Hands up here who have been promised as such when the keeper take is announced and you let them know there's a wobble? And then you see the finished piece and the wobble is intact?

Yes Flemming, that makes perfect sense. The bummer of that is that you have to make the assembly capable of managing the tallest or most top heavy camera and everything else has to be shifted upwards to re-center, so more likely than not you are pushing many cameras that much further from the gimbal. Time to revisit Lyn's original concept of putting the roll axis behind the camera...?

I'm sure as hell no physics expert but it seems that if the arcs are the proper radius, the camera would roll around its center of gravity and thus it shouldn't affect the balance of the rig. The tricky part is that cameras can have widely varying relationships of height to CG so a one-size-fits-all arc would be difficult. If someone else can chime on this who knows the actual science, please do.

Ha, just spent half an hour thinking about just that today. What makes more sense than a roll cage is a section of a roll cage, i.e. a short arc that would eliminate, say, 5% of roll error. Package it up nice and tidy with a power cable and on/off switch and build it to sandwich between dovetail and camera (bonus points if the top of it can grab onto the various manufacturer's dovetails, so it is a quick-add accessory for shots that require it). Theoretically you could do a separate shorter length version that would weigh less for more experienced operators as their roll correction would need to be less than a novice. It should have minimal weight but it would raise the gimbal by a nominal amount. More elegant would be to build it into the rig, a la the Tiffen tilt head, with the ability to switch it on and off if needed (and a mechanical clamp lock to eliminate vibration when not in use). A lot of experienced operators would hate it, of course, because a) they pride themselves on their horizon never being a problem and b) it levels the playing field, literally and figuratively. The fact is that nearly all operators come up against a situation where a little bobble can come through now and again, so it wouldn't be the worst thing to have ready to go in a case. And the fact is that stabilization whether on set or in post is here to stay and only going to become more widespread, so might as well go with it.

Courtesy of the Steadicam Guild, check out this fantastic article Garrett wrote for the old Steadicam newsletter about the patent wars: http://www.steadicamoperators.org/files/v2n1june89.pdf

Yes to Symbiosis. Incidentally, while I'm not a regular dealer for Decimator anymore, I may be putting in an order shortly, so if anyone needs any of their products in the US, please let me know.

I still have a bunch of "crap" to sell off. List has been updated. Some things gone, other things added. Take it away! Pictures, prices etc at http://www.charlespapert.net/gearsale/splash.html STEADICAM COMPONENTS Flyer Vest Delrin socket block Old PRO post mounts Model 1/2/3/3a arm pin PRO1 mounting parts for feet West Docking Bracket DB2 FIZ receiver mount PRO recorder plate (MiniDV) STEADICAM PLATES Panavision offset plate Slotted baseplate 7 lb weight plate STEADICAM ELECTRONICS Byro 3w video transmitter Seitz frameline generator Model 3 recorder mount STEADICAM WIDGETS Brass LCD weight U-bolts for Garfield mounts Model 1 post weights Monitor mount adaptor CAMERA BRACKETS Hill right angle mount Hill Moviecam spud Hill Panavision Bracket CABLES Preston run cables PRO/XCS 4 pin to Hirose Timecode cables PRO-Arri power cable dual link BNC jumper PRO recorder cable Modulus to Arri RS cable Jupiter brand jacks MISC Dynawave/Camos SD system Chrosziel side wings for matte box Long BNC antenna (modulus) Motorola headsets SD monitoring grab bag

What do you mean by that, Alan? Amimon provided the chipset for the previous generation products like the Camwave, Boxx Meridien etc.--they were fully involved in the pro video market.

Dave, Alec...can't believe we are discussing "Whiskey in me Tea" here (because I don't think there is anything in there that should be celebrated on a Steadicam level)...of all the... Anyway yeah, I did direct it and shoot it and do Steadicam on it because that seemed perfectly normal to me twenty years ago. Ah the energy of youth. That Youtube version is so shitty (don't know who put it up), I should post a clean one. That was a crazy shoot. We timed the final part to be shot just when the club next door let out so we would have the largest crowd possible. All of the extras in the bar had been drinking all day, so cumulatively that was a mob of drunk freaks that we were trying to corral. Somehow it worked out. Alec, I have your behind the scenes stuff on VHS, watched it a few years ago, so glad to have that.

How cool is THAT?! (except, uh, for the stealing-from-GB's patent part). Fun to see Panavision in the 70's! Would that have been Tarzana? The final feature I operated in 2009 was for the estimable John Carpenter, for whom this tests were presumably mounted. He hadn't directed a feature in over 10 years at that point. He referred to my rig as the Panaglide for a week or two (I even pulled a Teddy and wrote out "Super Panaglide" in my best approximation of the PanaFont and stuck it to the monitor) until I finally felt compelled to point out that the device he was referring to was long dead and gone. It was pretty great to work for a director who created part of the vocabulary that we still use today.

I suppose it could be confusing--Decimator Design used to be called Redbyte Design, so they are one and the same. The Decimator 2 is arguably most popular. Has anyone had experience with the Blackmagic Heavy Duty converter?

http://www.charlespapert.net/gearsale/dual_bnc_jumper.html

I dreamed of this very thing for years, did plenty of doodles on napkins but never got around to making one. Congrats! Great tool.