AudioMedia - December 2008 - (Page 58) video guide A Sound Pro’s Guide To Video Camera Support & Movement Part 2 KEVIN HILTON takes a last look at the freedoms and advances in picture that camera hardware has meant for the film industry. T he moving camera has become an integral part of film and programme making, creating atmospheres, tension, pace and moods on screen, and stirring emotions within the audience. With camera movement an established part of the filmmaking lexicon, Directors and Directors of Photography (DoPs) have used increasingly sophisticated technology to mount ever more elaborate moves, but the fundamental principles behind all this remain the same. The early colour cameras were massive, but had to be to accommodate the AAA stock, consisting of three strips of film for each primary colour. Black and white cameras were hardly miniature and in all cases, Directors had to rely on the ingenuity of their grips (the technicians in charge of equipment and scenery) to build specialist support gear as there was not as much purpose-built hardware available commercially as there is now. SOUND PRO'S VIDEO GLOSSARY Canting This is when a camera is angled wildly away from the usual vertical and horizontal axis of a picture frame, so the subject appears to falling to one side. This is achieved by simply moving the camera on its pedestal head but the effect is dramatic. Canting is often used to convey disturbed thoughts in the mind of a character or presages someone’s downfall, as it does for Orson Welles’ Harry Lime in The Third Man ( ). It also has a wild and wacky side, being a regular motif in the campy ’s TV version of Batman. This camera move was once commonly known as a Dutch angle, but as many old slang terms involving the Netherlands are derogatory in nature (Dutch auction, to go Dutch), canting is now the preferred term. The evolution of cameras has given as much freedom to filmmakers as the various stands and supports now on the market. A major breakthrough was Eastman Colour, which uses only one strip of film through the camera and led to smaller housings. Film stocks got faster, allowing more location shooting in low light situations and this, combined with the right support hardware, changed the way films are made; Scorsese’s Taxi Driver ( ) as we know it today might have looked very different without these advances. Many DoPs are certain that the new digital cameras, such as the Panavision Genesis and Arri D- , are the next liberating step. Af ter getting more horizontal movement thanks to dollies and tracking, filmmakers looked at the vertical for ever more dramatic angles. The hydraulic lift on most pedestals gives a fair amount of height in a move known as pedding. This allows the field of vision to be raised or lowered while maintaining a steady, level picture but only goes so far. The high rise equivalent of both pedding and the dolly is the crane shot, achieved by using a big camera trolley fitted with an extending arm or boom. Some cranes support just the camera and are remotely controlled by either mechanical or electronic means; others have a platform large enough for the Camera Operator, the Camera Assistant, and sometimes the Director, as well as the camera. The first crane developed for movie making is widely regarded as the one used on the backstage melodrama Broadway. This reputedly massive construction was designed by the film’s Director, Hungarian-born Pál Fejös, who had experimented with other forms of camera movement in the earlier Lonesome ( ). Since then, craning shots have been used to great effect in films of all styles and genres, from early horror in Bride of Frankenstein ( ) to the almost experimental work done by Gregg Toland for Orson Welles’ D imensional R esource Citizen Kane ( ) and coming right up to date with the all-action high shots for Quantum of Solace. Cranes range in size from fixed units with a relatively low height capability to larger models that can reach -feet and above. The basic design is the same: the camera mounting or platform at one end of the pivoted boom, with counter-balance weights at the other. Among the leading manufacturers of cranes to the film industry are Super Technocranes and Technocrane; JL Fisher, noted for its microphone booms, produces pedestals and dollies, with many of the latter being able to support a jib for high shots. Small cranes are known as Tulips, and the Jimmy Jib company manufacturers a range of smaller arms fitted either to a tripod or a dolly. Somewhat confusingly cranes are occasionally known in film business slang as ‘whirlies’, which is a little too close to the old nickname for helicopters, ‘whirlybird’. The helicopter plays a part in filmmaking when an even higher angle shot is needed, or to track cars moving below. Ordinary movement introduces enough judder and shaking into a shot but putting a camera on any kind of aircraft increases that considerably. A number of stabilization systems are available to take the shake out of heli-shots, many using gyro technology. The leading designers of these systems are Wescam, Flir Ultra Media, Bob Netmann, and Cineflex. Another way to get a sense of flight but without the great expense or danger of actually getting into a helicopter is to use a flown wire-mounted camera. In the most fundamental form of this system the camera rig is suspended between four wires in a studio or other space. These are connected to winches controlled by a computer programmed to recognise, and so avoid, areas of the set where actors or scenery will be. Back on the ground filmmakers and equipment designers have striven to make the view from a camera look as much like a human’s perspective as possible. Having the operator hand-hold, often using a special frame, the camera comes close to this. The technique was used more for documentaries and news in the early days of film and TV but drama has co-opted it, to the point where the shaky style of camera and finding focus, zooming in and out before settling on a shot, is now commonplace in both genres. Cinematographer Gilbert Taylor developed his technique for handheld cameras through working on the wartime drama-documentary Journey Together (1946) before using it for The Dam Busters (1955), Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove, and A Hard Day’s Night (both 1964). The trick, he says, is not to hold the camera still but to let it ‘breathe’ with you, to move with it. An outstanding example of hand-held camera work is I Am Cuba, the 1964 > Handheld O ptions 58 AUDIO MEDIA DECEMBER 2008
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