The Steadicam® Operator's Handbook

Foreword

by Garrett Brown

Ancient history

In the winter of 1965,1 spent 3 months in the Philadelphia Free Library, reading my way through 30 shelf-feet of old movie books. That spring, for an even thousand dollars, I bought a truckload of antique equipment from a bankrupt local producer. Two young friends helped improvise a “sound stage” in a barn, and we were in business — a comically threadbare 1940's— style film studio — just as the real movie world was headed out on location!

There, on that rough plank floor, were stands of Bardwell & MacAllister lights with ridged Fresnel lenses and a weary Mole-Richardson mike boom, and a massive, dirt-encrusted Fearless-Panoram dolly; plus racks of scrims and nets, cables and stage-boxes, a jig-sawed kookalorus ...