The Invisible Voyeur
Steadicam is a brand of camera stabiliser system for motion picture cameras invented by Garret Brown and introduced into the film industry in 1975 by Cinema Products Corporation. Its design is to isolate the camera from the camera operator's movement, keeping the camera motion separate and controllable by a skilled operator.
The Steadicam vest and arm redistributes the camera weight so the operator can move both their hands unrestricted giving the artist the freedom to move the camera frame wherever the narrative takes them. This has had a wide range of different uses across the different genres of media from feature film, TV Commercials and all the way to LIVE broadcast. Steadicam achieves shots once thought impossible from travelling camera upstairs, to quick paced shots, indoors to outdoors, cranes, whip pans, low-mode, and vehicle mounts with the ultimate goal of removing shaky unusable imagery.
The major difference between regular gimbals is the weight capacity, speed and versatility of the Steadicam rig. There is a feeling Steadicam has, that feels natural to the viewer, a very human interpretation to storytelling. The Steadicam along with other major stabilisation systems have been the No.1 invention still used in the creation of motion pictures to date.