(TS) The Steadicam and "The Shining" - GARRETT BROWN |American Cinematographer | Date ?

From: American Cinematographer

Title: The Steadicam and "The Shining" - GARRETT BROWN

To date it cannot be said with complete conviction that the Steadicam has
revolutionized the way films are shot. (Maybe it really should have
slowly-moving parts underneath!) However, it certainly had a considerable effect
on the way THE SHINING was shot. Many of Kubrick's tremendously convoluted sets
were designed with the Steadicam's possibilities in mind and were not,
therefore, necessarily provided with either flyaway walls or dolly-smooth
floors. One set in particular, the giant Hedge Maze, could not have been
photographed as Kubrick intended by any other means.

I worked on THE SHINING in England at the EMI Studios in Borehamwood for the
better part of a year. I had daily opportunities to test the Steadicam and my
operating against the most meticulous possible requirements as to framing
accuracy, the ability to hit marks and precision repeatability. I began the
picture with years of Steadicam use behind me and with the assumption that I
could do with it whatever anyone could reasonably demand. I realized by the
afternoon of the first day's work that here was a whole new ball game, and that
the word "reasonable" was not in Kubrick's lexicon.

Opening day at the Steadicam Olympics consisted of thirty-or-so takes of an
elaborate traveling shot in the lobby set, interspersed with ballockings for the
air conditioning man (because it was 110 degrees in the artificial daylight
produced by 700,000 watts of light outside the windows) and complaints about the
quality of the remote TV image.

Although I had provided a crude video transmitter so that Kubrick could get an
idea of the framing, I quickly realized that when Stanley said the crosshairs
were to be on someone's left nostril, that no other nostril would do. And I
further realized that the crudeness of the transmitted image simply prolonged
the arguments as to the location of the dread cross-hairs. Had I known on that
first day that we would still be debating questions of framing a year later,
long after the air-conditioning worked, I might have wished to become an
air-conditioning man or a caterer...

THE SETS

I first met Stanley Kubrick during FILM 77 in London when Ed DiGiulio, president
of Cinema Products Corporation, and I took the latest model out to Borehamwood
to demonstrate it. At this time, THE SHINING was in its early pre-production
stages. Stanley had engaged Roy Walker to design the sets, and we provided them
with some food for thought by going over the various maneuvers that were then
possible and, at Kubrick's request, demonstrating the accuracy with which one
could hit marks in order to pull focus in the neighborhood of T/1.4.

Throughout the following summer there were sporadic early morning phone calls
from Kubrick and preliminary arrangements were made for my services, ostensibly
to commence in December of 1978. In fact, the start date had been put back well
into the spring when I was notified that I had won the Bert Easey Technical
Award of the BSC. I decided to fly from Los Angeles to London to accept the
award in person and to show Stanley some of our latest wrinkles. Cinema Products
had just constructed the prototype of the new "Universal II-raised monitor"
Steadicam and we had also devised the means to suspend the 35BL from the
Steadicam platform, thereby permitting a whole new range of lens heights from
about 18 inches to waist high. Kubrick seemed particularly pleased with the
possibilities for low-lens shooting.

This time I was taken for a quick tour of the sets, including the monumental
exterior set of the Overlook Hotel and the vast and intricate "Colorado Lounge"
set with its interconnected corridors, stairs, and rooms on two levels. My
excitement mounted as we progressed around corner after corner, each unexpected
turn offering further possibilities for the Steadicam. Originally we had decided
that I would rent some of the more exotic equipment to Kubrick and just come to
England briefly to train an operator. However, as we continued, I became
convinced that here was a unique opportunity for me. Kubrick wasn't just talking
of stunt shots and staircases. He would use the Steadicam as it was intended to
be used - as a tool which can help get the lens where it's wanted in space and
time without the classic limitations of the dolly and crane.

The kitchen set was enormous, with aisles winding between stoves and storage
racks. The apartment sets were beautifully narrow. Suite 237 was elegant and
ominous. The Overlook Hotel itself became a maze; absurdly oversized quarters
for the players, yet ultimately claustrophobic. Here were fabulous sets for the
moving camera; we could travel unobtrusively from space to space or lurk in the
shadows with a menacing presence.

I guess I wanted to be there myself because Kubrick is, let's face it, The Man.
He is the one director working who commands absolute authority over his project
from conception to release print. The ultimate technologist, but more, his
technology serves a larger vision which is uniquely his own. He is a film-maker
in the most pure sense of the word. I learned a great deal about the making of
movies from simply being on hand for the stupefying number of discussions which
sought to improve one aspect or another of the production.

During the year of production which followed, the science of air-conditioning
was reinvented and you can be certain that just about every other branch of
human learning was at least reexamined insofar as it touched upon the doings in
Borehamwood. Laboratory science, lighting, lenses, and the logistics of lunch -
all were scrutinized daily. For example, the offending video transmitter was
soon replaced by adapting Ron Collins' AC-operated unit into a much smaller DC
version (which has been a mainstay of my Steadicam services ever since). I was
determined to remain unencumbered by wires, so the propagation of the signal
became the next drama.

Although Stanley knows an astonishing amount about an astonishing number of
things, his grasp of antenna theory is weak. He is, however, a formidable
opponent in an argument - with or without the facts - so some bizarre theorems
were actually tested and a disturbing number of them actually worked. By
switching to various antennas hidden behind the walls, we were finally able to
provide Stanley with acceptable remote wireless video nearly anywhere within his
sets. To annoy him we would indicate the forest of TV antennas aimed at the
studio from suburban Borehamwood and imply that the TV signal was escaping the
sound stage and being watched by a gaggle of "Monty Python" women every morning:
"Ooooh, poor Mr Brown!... That take seemed perfectly good to me!"
Somewhat later, our imitation ladies got even more sophisticated:
"Ooh, must be the 24mm Distagon!, see how it's vignetting in the viewfinder!"
The infant science of the Steadicam advanced during the year. With the expert
assistance of Mick Mason and Harold Payne of Elstree Camera Hire, we constructed
a number of new mounts to adapt the Steadicam to various wheeled conveyances.
After one ride on the converted skateboard and one push on the custom
sackbarrel, both went into the "Bin of Whims" never to be seen again. However,
Ron Ford's elaborate motion picture wheelchair proved more enduring. We made the
first prototype of the "Garfield Bracket" to adapt the Steadicam arm to a
Mitchell mount on the wheelchair. This was also useful on the Elemack and we
later made use of the Elemack leveling-head on the wheelchair.
On the theory that one should ride whenever possible in order to concentrate on
operating and forget navigating, I promoted every opportunity to use the chair.
In a number of instances it was the only way to get the lens right down to floor
level.

I think that useful progress was made in the area of operating technique. I had
a chance to refine my own abilities in the most direct possible way. By
repetition! (With playback!) Stanley made a number of useful observations and
speculations about the interaction of the human body with machine such as this.
Just how good can it possibly be? How close to the exact repeatability of a
dolly shot? More than most filmmakers he knows the limitations of the dolly, and
when it was necessary to have phenomenally good track, he rebuilt an entire
300-foot plywood roadway three times to get it smoother. During one difficult
shot, Kubrick said gloomily that the Steadicam would probably get the credit for
all the dolly moves in the picture anyway!

Although he would admit that I could produce a printable take by any reasonable
standard within the first few tries, Stanley would seldom respond with anything
but derision until about take 14. He did not appear to be comfortable until we
were well beyond take 20. Since the editing was to occur entirely after the
filming of the production, he wanted at least two and preferably three perfect
takes on each scene. Basically this was fine with me. Although most retakes were
for other reasons, I could see a gradual improvement in my operating with each
playback. I learned the route like a dancer learns a difficult piece of
choreography and I could relegate more and more of the navigating to my
subconscious and attend to the rhythm of the shot. To be fair, Kubrick later
admitted that in selecting takes he went for performance every time and that
many were technically indistinguishable. (He has been known to mutter, upon
sitting through twenty identical passes in the lunchtime screenings, "Damn
crosshairs, they get me every time!")

THE "TWO-HANDED" TECHNIQUE
Throughout the production I worked on what we now call the "two-handed
technique". I found that if one hand strongly holds the Steadicam arm and is
used to control its position and its height, the other hand is able to pan and
tilt the handle with almost no unintentional motion in the shot. Whereas before
the act of booming up or down would always seem to degrade slightly the
steadiness of the image, now one can maintain the camera at any boom height and
yet not influence the pan or tilt axis at all. This understanding has been the
key to holding the beginning or end position of a shot so still that one must
examine the frame line carefully in order to find any "float" at all. Kubrick
was often able to use the head or tail of a Steadicam shot as his master for at
least a portion of a dialogue scene. Even if I got caught in an awkward position
because of an unexpectedly quick stop in the action Kubrick would count the
beads of sweat, cast a practiced eye on the twitching of a calf muscle and wait
until he judged that discs were about to fly like frisbees before he would
quietly call "cut".

THE 35BL

In the beginning I was somewhat apprehensive about shooting an entire picture
with the 35BL on the Steadicam, not to mention that it was for Kubrick. It did
not prove to be as difficult as expected. My style of operating is fairly
relaxed anyway, and with the chance to put the camera down and watch a replay on
each take, one could continue indefinitely or until the next tea and bacon-roll
arrived. Unfortunately there was a new MacDonalds nearby, so the evening break
went through that phase, much to the disgust of the English crew. (The BL does
become somewhat more burdensome with a full cargo of Big Mac's on board.)
One advantage of the 35BL is its mass. It's about 10 pounds heavier than the
Arri IIc, but it allows a noticeably quieter frame. Also the BL is less affected
by gusts of wind. All in all, I came to prefer it to the Arri IIc for general
shooting.

CLOSE QUARTERS
From the beginning, Kubrick intended to shoot within some of the more
constricted sets without flying out walls as often as usual. Since he wished to
use wide lenses, in particular the Cooke 18mm, he used the capability of the
Steadicam to rapidly boom up and down to avoid distorting the sets. As someone
approached and passed the camera we held the proper head-room by changing the
height of the lens rather than tilting and risking the keystoning of the
verticals on the set. Throughout the shooting I kept an additional spirit level
mounted fore-and-aft on the Steadicam so that I could keep an eye on the tilt
axis.

The Steadicam can reverse its direction rapidly and without any visible bump in
the shot so one can back into a doorway or alcove and push out again as the
actors pass by camera. In addition, since there are no geared-head handles in
the way and no need for an operator's eye on the viewfinder, one can pass the
camera within an inch of walls or door frames. The combination makes a
formidable tool for shooting in tight location spaces. Of course, John Alcott
was left with the lighting problems that result from this kind of freedom.
However, I never heard him complain and he always managed to solve these
difficulties in his usual imperturbable way. John personally flew in flags and
dealt with some of the camera shadow problems that arise when you are seeing 360
degrees around a room.

In the Torrance apartment in Boulder, I had a shot bringing Wendy and the doctor
back along the corridor from the bedroom, backing around in a curve, booming up,
then way down as they sat on the sofa, finally holding still for 1/2 page of
dialogue. There is nothing about this shot that would attract the undue
attention of the audience, however the lens is just where Stanley wanted it
throughout. This is exactly the kind of shooting that I am most interested in. I
have an increasing reluctance to suggest to a director that I might be able to
smoothly jump out of the window and land shooting. It may be a sign of getting
older or perhaps it just represents the maturing of my taste for the moving
camera.

In the Kitchen set, one of the best shots for the Steadicam in the picture
involved backing up ahead of Scatman Crothers (Halloran, the chef), Shelley
Duvall (Wendy) and Danny Lloyd (Danny) as the three take a winding path through
rows of immense restaurant machines and huge stoves and racks of dishware. Even
if there had been room to wheel a dolly along this path, the camera would have
been required to stay more or less centered, which would have meant some very
sudden pans as the camera's axis swung around corners. In my case I took the
least disturbing "line", like a race driver going through turns, and so the
result has an unearthly tranquility about it which seems to best fit the
requirements of that particular scene. In short, with the Steadicam, one can
choose to pivot on any axis: far ahead of the lens, the nodal point of the lens,
the filmplane, or some point far aft of the camera. In the case of this shot, I
was able to pivot my camera around an imaginary point halfway between me and the
actors, and prevent violent swings from side-to-side as we made the turns.
In Jack and Wendy's winter quarters in the Overlook, there were many spectacular
opportunities for the Steadicam as the various players passed through the
entrance hallway. For example, as we followed Wendy leaving the apartment, she
would descend the three stairs just before the door and the camera would boom
smoothly down in sync with her move. Then, as she passed through the door, I
would boom up to negate the fact that I was now descending the same stairs, and
then squeeze the matte box through the door just as it was closing. On several
occasions I preceded Jack (Jack Nicholson) or Danny through the door and made
the above maneuver in reverse. Obviously it is important that the camera doesn't
make an unmotivated dip or rise just before or after the actor gets to the
stairs. It feels better if the camera can be disembodied and not required to
climb stairs itself! Other shots that stick in my mind: the-over-the-shoulder on
Jack as he climbs the stairs above the lobby to find Halloran, the very
believable moving P.O.V.'s as Jack or Danny enter room 237.

SPECIAL MOUNTS
One of the most talked-about shots in the picture is the eerie tracking sequence
which follows Danny as he pedals at high speed through corridor after corridor
on his plastic "Big Wheel". The sound track explodes with noise when the wheel
is on wooden flooring and is abruptly silent as it crosses over carpet. We
needed to have the lens just a few inches from the floor and to travel rapidly
just behind or ahead of the bike.

I tried it on foot and found that I was too winded after an entire three-minute
take to even describe what sort of last rites I would prefer. Also, at those
speeds I couldn't get the lens much lower than about 18 inches from the floor.
We decided to mount the Steadicam arm on the Ron Ford wheelchair prototype that
Stanley helped design years before and still had on hand.

This is a very useful gadget. It can be properly steered in either direction
with a simple set-up change, and the seat can be mounted low or high depending
on the requirements of the shot. We arranged it so that rigging pipes could be
fastened anywhere on the frame, and Dennis (Winkle) Lewis, our very able grip,
constructed an adapter for the Elemack head. The Steadicam arm was fastened to
the Mitchell mount, and I could sit on the chair and easily trim the leveling
head to remove any imbalance in the "float" of the Steadicam.

With Stanley's BL in the underslung mode we were now prepared to fly the camera
smoothly over carpet or floor at high speed and with a lens height of anything
down to one inch. The results, as can be seen, were spectacular. In addition,
the whole rig wasn't so massive that it would be dangerous if the little boy
made a wrong turn and we had to stop suddenly. Of course, we immediately
constructed a platform so that the sound man and our ace focus-puller, Doug
Milsome, could ride on the back.

Now the entire contraption got to be quite difficult on the high speed corners.
Dennis had to enlist relays of runners to get us around the course. Finally we
had an explosive tire blow-out and the chair "plummered in", barely avoiding a
serious crash. Afterward we switched to solid tires and carried no more than two
people.

Stanley contemplated this arrangement and decided that the chair should have a
super-accurate speedometer, and while we're at it so should the Moviola dolly
and the Elemack. Then we could precisely repeat the speed of any traveling shot,
etc. (More control over a capricious universe!) I was afraid that I would be
lumbered with some kind of outboard wheel to precisely regulate my own speed, so
I was happy that nothing came of this particular idea. (Although I would have
enjoyed knowing how many miles I didn't run because I had the wheelchair rig!)
We used this set-up frequently in the weeks to come. In the fall I took a leave
of absence for a month due to a prior commitment to shoot on ROCKY II. An
English operator named Ray Andrew very capably took over for me on this occasion
and several others when I was required to commute back and forth from England to
the U.S. Ray made a shot from the wheelchair in which the lens is one inch above
the floor, moving slowly beside Jack's head as he is being dragged toward the
larder by Wendy. We also used the wheelchair with the lens at normal height to
shoot a number of ordinary tracking shots through the corridors. The wheelchair
was particularly useful when the camera had to move very slowly. If we needed to
crab we mounted the arm on the Elemack dolly or the Moviola.
The operating technique in the chair also involves two hands: one for the arm,
and one for the handle. You can easily jib over to the left and right, as well
as boom up and down to compensate for slight variations in the course. We used
this ability again to straighten out the camera's path and cut corners in order
to make these shots easier to watch. The only tricky aspect of shooting from the
chair is that starts and stops tend to be dramatic. It is a little like carrying
a full punch bowl in a decelerating rickshaw!

WIRELESS FOCUS AND IRIS PULLING
I brought to England the first prototype of Cinema Products' sensational
3-channel wireless servo-lens-control, and Doug Milsome appeared to enjoy using
it. He has a marvelous eye and something like a physicist's knowledge of optics.
I don't think that we shot a soft frame in all the time I was on THE SHINING. He
made up focus and iris strips on the servo-control for all the lenses. A
surprising percentage of my shots on the picture involved iris pulls. We would
commonly dial anything from 1/3 to 1½ stop changes and the results were
undetectable on screen. Since we were often rushing through narrow spaces
Milsome had to train his eye to pull focus from positions other than just abeam
of the lens. We would get tangled in fantastic shifting choreographies and a
wrong turn would find Doug outside the studio front gate, still gamely dialing
the servo!

Kubrick has a fanatical concern for the sharpness of his negative. He
resurrected the "harp test" for his lenses and then went beyond that to invent a
bizarre variation on the harp test which positions one focus chart every inch
for fifteen feet out from the lens.
The cameras were steady-tested nearly every week, and the dailies projectors
(which belonged to Kubrick) were frequently torn down and rebuilt to cure
unsteadiness due to wear. In addition, we shot with matte-perf film and our
prints were made on the one and only captive printer at Rank that seemed to
produce steady prints!

THE MAZE
The giant Hedge Maze set must be one of the most intriguing creations in the
history of motion pictures. It must also be one of the most pernicious sets ever
to work on. And folks, every frame was shot with the Steadicam. In its benign
"summer" form, the Maze was constructed on the old MGM lot outdoors at
Borehamwood.

It was beautiful. The "hedges" consisted of pine boughs stapled to plywood
forms. It was lined with gravel paths, and contained a center section (although
built to one side of the set) which was wider than the rest. It was exceedingly
difficult to find one's way in or out without reference to the map which
accompanied each call sheet. Most of the crew got lost at various times and it
wasn't much use to call out "Stanley" as his laughter seemed to come from
everywhere! It was amusing to be lost carrying nothing more than a
walkie-talkie. It was positively hilarious if you happened to be wearing the
Steadicam.

We determined by testing that the 9.8mm Kinoptik looked best, and that the ideal
lens height was about 24 inches. This combination permitted a tremendous sense
of speed and gave the correct appearance of height to the walls. The distortion
was negligible when the camera was held level fore-and-aft. Much of the shooting
consisted of fluid moves ahead of or behind Wendy and Danny as they learn their
way through the Maze. Some of the best moments came as we followed them right
into a dead end and back out again in one whirling move. I also made some
tripod-type shots in the center of the maze since it would have been
time-consuming to lug in the equipment to make a conventional shot.
Stanley mostly remained seated at the video screen, and we sent a wireless image
from my camera out to an antenna on a ladder and thence to the recorder. For the
first time I found the ritual of playback a burden, since I had to walk all the
way out of the maze and back. We had made an early attempt to leave certain
passages open to the outside. However, we found that we were constantly getting
disoriented and a terrific shot would inadvertently wind up staring out one of
the holes.

I discovered at this time that young Danny Lloyd weighed exactly as much as the
camera, so we made a chair out of webbing and he would yell with delight as he
swooped along riding suspended from the Steadicam arm. (I was sorry that I
hadn't thought of that one before my own son weighed as much as a BNC!)
The maze was then struck and reerected on stage 1 at the EMI Studios. Roy
Walker's men proceeded to "snow" it in with two feet of dendritic dairy salt and
Styrofoam snow crusted on the pine boughs. The quartz outdoor-type lights were
turned on and a dense oil-smoke atmosphere was pumped in for eight hours a day.
Now the maze became an unpleasant place in which to work. It was hot, corrosive
and a difficult spot in which to breathe. The speed of the shots stepped up,
since everything now happened at nearly a run. To lighten the load we switched
to the Arri IIc from Joe Dunton Cameras and constructed a special underslung
cage for it.

The "snow' was difficult to run on. I constantly had a fill light clattering
around my legs, and I had to navigate by the sound of muffled curses ahead as
the lighting and focus-pulling intrepids fell over one another in the salt. I
think that the most difficult shots on the entire picture for me were the 50mm
close-ups traveling ahead of Jack or Danny at high speed. Milsome deserves a lot
of credit for keeping on his feet and keeping them sharp.
For a special shot of the boy's running feet which required a lens height of
three inches we made up a copy of my earliest "Steadicam": no arm, just camera,
battery and magazine, connected in a balanced arrangement so I could run along
"hand-held" with the lens right on the deck.
In the beginning we wore gas masks of various vintages. However, I found that I
couldn't get enough air to support the exertion of getting from one end of the
Maze to the other. We never measured the linear distance from the entrance to
the center, but I am sure it was a hell of a long way. This was the only time on
the picture that I sometimes had to call a halt to the shooting until I could
get enough breath to move again.

Stanley, meanwhile, watched the deteriorating video pictures from outside the
set, like a wrathful Neilson family suddenly given absolute power over the
programming. The faster we had to move, the worse it got. I sometimes thought
wistfully of breaking an ankle in the salt. It required enormous force to pull
the camera around the turns and a degree of luck to find the right path while
essentially looking backward. In addition, we were all acutely aware of the
danger of fire and how difficult it would be to get out of the maze if the
lights went out, with real smoke and burning Styrofoam - a genuine nightmare!
The footage, however, looked sensational and the sequence is tremendous in the
picture, so it is all, as they say, worthwhile. Some of the best stuff was
slow-moving. As Danny backs up stepping in his own footprints to fool Jack, I
had to back up ahead of him also in bis footprints! To accomplish this I had to
wear special stilts with Danny-shoes nailed to the bottom so I wouldn't make the
footprints any bigger!

As it turned out, there were very few stair-climbing shots in the picture. Ray
Andrew shot one which worked extremely well as Wendy backs up the stairs
swinging a baseball bat at Jack.
I made a "stairs" shot which is my all-time favorite. We are moving ahead of
Wendy up three flights of stairs, starting rapidly, and smoothly slowing down
until we are just barely moving ahead of her as she comes upon Harry Derwent and
his strange doggy companion doing the unspeakable! A fabulous shot, despite the
fact that we did it 36 times - multiplied by three flights equals climbing the
Empire State Building with camera...

When I finally saw it on the silver screen I was glad to have made the climb, if
for no other reason than... "Because it was there!"