I'll report here on the video, once I get it, but I would probably have bought it if it were in Chinese. There's so little out there for self teaching, I can't be fussy. It's not like it's the Indicam video or some other video to choose from. However, all I've heard about this vid has been very positive.

!!Warning: OT from here on!!

It brings up an interesting point I've wrestled with for a few weeks: The idea, repeated endlessly by the best authorities, that you must take a workshop to get good.

Great. Well, my nearest workshops, in MA and ME, are about a 4 hour drive each way. And they're 2 - 5 days each. And it's a 4 or 6 hour drive each way just to see high-end video equipment. This is just a tradeoff of living in a rural area.

Problem is, much as I'd love to go to a workshop or B&H Photo, I have more work now than ever, and clients who want to see steady progress on their projects. I'm also a one man show, so I can't have an assistant cover for me.

This is why I took the chance that I could teach myself to become fairly proficient. If it doesn't work out, I'll sell the equipment and consider any money lost to be the cost of my education.

I guess you gotta do what you gotta do, given the limitations in your life.

Philip, last October I packed my family in the car and drove for 10 hrs to Melbourne for a teeny holiday and I fitted in a 2 day Steadicam Flyer workshop with Phil Balsdon. It was money well spent, I learnt skills that I never would have picked up by myself an had a lot of fun. There is so much to learn in the art of Steadicam. Apart from Phil I also got to meet other Steadicam greats Luis Puli and Rusty Geller. Photos of the workshop here: http://www.steadi-onfilms.com.au/steadicam_workshops.html

I want to go to a workshop, and hope to before too long. I have no doubt of the value. I once took a tap dancing workshop -- a real challenge for me -- and I know it was all about the teacher's coaching as I worked on the moves.

I just need to get a project or two off my plate first.

I think the quality of this video is what was hanging me up a bit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW4Qm9mpuSc

I think the artistic quality and overall feel of the look had me hooked.

Thank you for the lengthy reply. I think what sold me was the return policy that you guys offer, not to mention the bang for the buck factor. You seem like a great businessman and I truly look forward to doing business with Indicam in the next few months, can't wait actually. With the dual upgrade I will be able to adjust the rig for low angle shots, correct? Also, do you have monitors and monitor mounts available for the rig?

I say it really is quite nice to be able to talk to you here on my favorite forum. The guys here at dvinfo truly are worthy of praise for keeping this site up and running, not to mention under control!

Thanks,
Ryan

Ryan,

Thanks for the link. It had some good assorted shots and lots of them. If you can find some very slow moving shots you can tell how good the operator is as those moves are tuff to get smooth.

Both the Indicam and the Glidecam are capable of nice smooth floating shots. We shine in the ease of set-up, boom range, and options.

I was wondering about the Indicam clip you were talking about. Can you let me know which one it is please?

A bottom mounted monitor can be adapted and I can give you the best place we have found to buy one should you want to (http://www.nebtek.com/). We drilled into the post at the top and bottom and rounted a video cable inside. We then bought an external monitor, mount, and battery adaptor from them and tried it out. It worked fine but we still like the built in monitor better. I know the XL series of cameras don't have a side mount monitor but we used the viewfinder on the camera with the eye piece off when we tried it out.

The "Stabilizer Basics" video shows our poor-man's low mode. Normally the lowest you can get in normal operation is as far as your arm can reach down which is about waist height. We do have a poor-man's low mode clip on our Flash Video page that we did just for fun. (http://www.indicam.com/media/Flash/flvplayer.html)

We too are very grateful to the guys who run this forum - Chris Hurd, Mikko and the rest. They spend a lot of their valuable time letting us exchange ideas etc. while keeping some semblance of organization.

BIG THANKS to you all.

Tery
Indicam

Hey Terry,

The video on the site that I was referring to was the sneak and scare vid. Shortly after the operator walks down onto the grass, while following the kids I was paying close attention to the backgroud and it is very apparent that the operator is walking behind them. I have come to the realization though that these stabilization units are great tools if the operator knows how to properly operate them.

I am not saying that the camera operator that did sneak and scare was of poor quality, he probably just wasn't paying attention to the background, but rather focusing on the talent, which is what he was supposed to be doing. The pilot seems like the way to go, and please understand that I have been being brutally picky in my decision making. After all, I will be purchasing a piece of equipment that comes close to the cost of my camera.

Thanks again Terry and I really look forward to doing business with you here in the next few months.

Ryan,

I'm crushed! I was the operator and I thought I did a pretty good job for a manufacturer. I should have found a professional for the demo but I wanted to show a number of different moves-not just straight forward. There was a slight bobble on the deck when I was leading the subjects and went from the Missionary position to a Don Juan. Charles P. said that was a common thing though especially with a ligjht rig. He was the one who said I should frame all three kids as the scene progressed. I did so to the best of my ability with the time I had to put it together.

You have to remember that we are using a light system and don't have the mass of the larger and heavier rigs. The XL2 should do well because of it's weight.

I'm still practicing! I'll work on my control hand more (actually less if you know what I mean).

Tery
Indicam

Them that can...do. Them that can't...manufacture.

Don't get down on yourself now Terry! I guarantee the footage is better than I could do. I have never even touched a stabilizer unit. For the record, I think the video is actually done very well. I thought the shot coming off the deck was pretty impresive, I know that one couldn't have been easy.

Like I said before... I am just being overly critical in my decision making process. After I purchase my rig I'll post some footage so you can give me some grief, if not laugh your rear off. I'm pretty tall, so it should be interesting to see how fluid I can make the movements.

After I purchase my rig I'll post some footage so you can give me some grief, if not laugh your rear off.

Hey, a new diet secret...watching Ryan's first video.

All seriousness aside though, you are actually right about the video. It needs a little help but it is good even if I have to say so myself. By the way, the ground wasn't grass but very uneven dirt.

You might want to look into the training video we offer so you can get a headstart on learning. Knowledge is power.

Tery
Indicam

I think Terry did a nice job with this shot, especially, as he says, he's in the business of making stabilizers, not operating them. It certainly shows off the gear as the shot appears as smooth as any stabilizer out there.

If I was to critique the shot purely as a shot, I would give the following notes (again, this is not what Terry should have done, more like what I would suggest as a fix on a subsequent take if I had been there.

The beginning is good. As the camera comes closer to the subject, the headroom should come down a little earlier; it's OK by the time the camera stops but a bit high in the middle. I would have kept wrapping around the two kids to get closer to their eyeline (i.e. continue further to the right), decelerating as I came around to a very slow drift to give them time to find their prey. One reason to do this is that this would allow a cut to a shot of their prey so we know what they are looking at, which could be done as a straight point-of-view, or an over-the-shoulder as needed.

Being all the way around the front of them changes the shot a bit in that as they start to move, we would be tracking them more in a profile with them heading left, but that's OK; we could then accelerate smoothly and end up still in front of them leading them down the ramp.

Regarding the Don Juan switch, I would do it as I was coming around the kids on the initial approach. Bit hard to describe, but picture that you are walking forwards, pointing forwards at the beginning of the shot, and as you approach the kids you allow the camera to pan left but you keep your body pointed straight ahead. By the time you come to your stop in front of the kids, the camera has turned itself into the Don Juan position and you are set to make your next move without having to make a switch in the middle of your walk, which is what hung you up a bit there Terry--it's a really tough place you picked to do that, what with the kids being so small in frame and all.

Myself, I would have stayed in Missionary position the whole time rather making the switch into Don Juan, and simply backed down the ramp. But if there was a compelling reason to make the switch; if the ramp were stairs for instance--many ops will still back down stairs, I've never liked it personally.

Overall it's a bit odd to have pulled back so far when the girl finally spots her prey. Probably it would have been more effective to have had them find her earlier, less looking around, and have the camera move with them (as described above).

I think the ramp descension and eventual switch back to Missionary was really well executed and the framing is great as the two kids are making their initial approach to the 3rd kid, with them on the left side of frame. Unfortunately as they get into the final straightaway, the distance between the camera and the two kids increases, and the result is that the last approach is center-punched (the two kids are just left of center and the 3rd is just right of center), also known as stacked (subjects mushed together in the middle of the frame--very common when shooting over-the-shoulder shots and the person in the foregrounds leans a bit, minimizing the space inbetween the two--the opposite of this would be spread, where the subjects are too far apart in the frame). The simple fix for this would have been for the camera to accelerate a little bit to maintain the initial distance and slide to the right, which would have kept us closer to the 2 kids and given a bit of separation between them and the 3rd kid. Possibly this composition is what Ryan didn't like about this section of the shot...?

Finally, it might have been nice if just as the 2 kids were approaching their prey and holding out their hands, we sped up past them (just catching their hands tapping the little girl) so we could be tight on her reaction. This would increase the tension for the "scare" moment and give the little girl a nice close-up to play her surprise. You could then cut back to the other two kids from her perspective for their subsequent reaction and catching the ball, or perhaps as she backs herself away from her closeup into a medium shot and throw the ball, we could whip pan back to the other two as the ball flies through the air and land in time to see them catch it. This would require the older kids to cheat themselves back as soon as they are off camera to allow us to find them in the proper size (they would be too close to camera otherwise). A great example of this sort of thing is in the Grand Central chase in "Carlito's Way" (http://steadishots.org/shots_detail.cfm?shotID=121), when Larry McConkey's camera follows Pacino as he looks over the balcony down to the central concourse and then whips back to a shot of Pacino; he moved himself back probably five feet while he was off-camera so that when we re-find him, he is the proper distance for the size of shot that is desired (obviously Larry could not have backed himself off the balcony into space to achieve the same thing, although if anyone could do it, it would have been Larry).

That shot is one of the Steadicam legends incidentally, and anyone who has had the interest (and patience) to make it through this post and hasn't studied that shot would be well advised to do so now! Many of the things discussed here are implemented there, most notably the way that Larry slides Pacino around left to right in the frame throughout the shot in a completed planned way--there are so many compositional choices when tracking a single character in a 2:35 frame and this shot absolutely kills at this.

These sorts of things will be discussed in my upcoming video on advanced Steadicam techniques...that's a half-joke for Terry's benefit, who finally gave up on urging me to do the video I promised to make several years ago and made his own (smart man)! The other half of the joke is that I am still thinking about making this video, where I would share lots of the tips and techniques used in the "bigtime" Steadi-world that can be incorporated into small-format stabilizer work, which I think would make a great companion to the Indicam video as a follow-up for those who have the basics down and really want to give their shots that "Hollywood" polish. It's in the hopper, but no promises on a timeline yet!

This is why CP is a DP (Charles Papert is a Director of Photography).

Gee, I just wanted to show various shots that our rig could do and how smooth they could be. I've seen many demos that show just the operator moving forward at the same pace and I wanted to show a series of moves.

I guess I'll now have to redo the whole "Sneak and Scare" thing to make it more interesting. I will also need a more dramatic piece of music. As you can tell, this was quick and dirty. Next time it will be slow and clean.

Actually Charles I'm glad you did this critique as someday I hope to shoot a film and thinking about how the shots should go is something a real good DP does well. I'm just a baby with a foot in my mouth.

Please do make your training video as there is no one that I have found who can explain the steadicam business as well as you. This isn't flattery - just fact! Your training video to me would be a "What to do now that you have learned how to operate a steadicam system". I'd be first in line to buy it.

I watched the "Carlito's Way" clip and I would never have known about the steps backwards in order to get the proper framing and size. Thanks so much for including that in you comments.

Your friend,

Tery
Indicam

No need to redo the shot Terry, as I said it shows off the stabilizer perfectly well in that the shots are smooth, steady and free of jitter.

The reality is, as I think you and I have talked about in the past, is that many people who are looking to buy stabilizers feel very strongly about viewing footage shot with that stabilizer so that they can evaluate part of their decision on that. But the fact is that given a certain level of mechanical competence in a given rig, the rest is entirely up to the operator. And as I have also said before, a great operator can achieve better results with a mediocre rig than a mediocre operator with a great rig. I would also go as far to say that the most telling type of shot that could be viewed as a demo of a given rig would be the most subtle, such as very slow moving shots with delicate pans and tilts, with a foreground element such as a fence right alongside the lens so that one can more easily see the smoothness of the particular arm in use (a rougher-riding arm will show a "pogo"-type appearance, swelling up and down like a wave). Again, user experience will be able to overcome a certain amount of this effect with a lesser system, but certainly this is one of the sticky points (literally and figuratively) with many inexpensive stabilizers, and why the Tiffen arms are head and shoulders above all others in this class because of the patented technology they use in their arms which isolates the operator's footsteps far better than those that use springs attached to a fixed point.

As far as the ideas I brought up in the previous post, those are very much the type of thinking that is part of the Steadicam (and conventional operator) mentality--certainly a DP will have things to say about framing and shot design but a good operator will have plenty of ideas and be going through this thought process at all times. Framing is obviously well within the domain of operating, but in addition having an understanding of the complete scene and all of the coverage (different shots) that are being planned by the director and DP means that the operator can make decisions based on this, or even discuss or show alternatives to their bosses. In a more indie setting where the operator and DP are one person (or sometimes the director, DP and operator are one person!) this may be a moot point, but even at the highest level of filmmaking, the operator's input in matters of shot design is usually encouraged and expected.

With Steadicam, given the amount of freedom to move in so many axes and make so many choices based on this, what really separates a competent operator from a great one has little to do with the mechanical nature of "taming the beast"--after one has gotten the knack of keep the horizon level and controlling the inertia of the system, it becomes all about where the lens needs to be to best tell the story of the shot at any given moment, and this is where the true fun lies.

Tery,
I am quite interested in purchasing your Indicam and had my first of probably a few questions:

What does the "single upgraded system" actually mean? How does the product differ? The standard PILOT system is said to hold up to 11 lbs. My Canon XL2 is 8 lbs. at the most. I know its only $200 and change for the upgrade, but do I really need it?

Thanks,
Jon

Charles,

Could you evaluate a video I did to show the difference between a non-gimbal rig and a full gimbal rig?

http://www.indicam.com/media/Flash/flvplayer.html (The last clip)

I used a sled where you hold on to the post directly as there is no gimbal. I won't mention the brand but there are a number of similar ones out there and they work pretty good for the shots they are intended for.

I then did the same shots using the Indicam PILOT sled handheld (as the shots were fairly short and I didn't need the support system). The camera was a Sony Z1U and it was in full telephoto. I'm not looking for comments on framing as I know it was off but my intention was to show in an exaggerated way the movement you can't get rid of without having a 3-axis gimbal. I did my best to make both shots as steady as possible.

I would like to know if there were a lot of parallax errors as seen through your experienced eyes. Any other comments will be appreciated of course.

Thanks,

Tery

===================================================

Jon,

The single upgraded arm should have a different name as it sounds like it is a single articulated arm and it isn't. All our arms are dual articulated.

Because we use a hybrid-arm with different thicknesses of aluminum (see website- http://www.indicam.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=category&sectionid=3&id=24&Itemid=48) the lower arm holds more weight and acts a bit differently than the upper arm. They both work together well though. This is similar to the human arm.

Anyway, with the single upgrade you can have two springs attached to the lower arm if needed to hold more total weight. Our up-and-coming "double upgraded arm" can have two springs on each of the lower and upper arms.

One other nice thing about the double upgraded arm is that the user can have it set for two different camera weights if both cameras are light enough that they don't need the strength of both extra springs at the same time. An example would be The Canon GL2 and the Sony Z1U. A different example is demo'd on our Flash Video page: http://www.indicam.com/media/Flash/flvplayer.html (second to the last clip) We use a JR and an Indicam PILOT sled with the same arm in less than one minute. It was a quick video.

With regards to your main question Jon...You would need the arm with the single upgrade as the XL2 along with the sled weigh is more than our standard arm can support. The standard arm holds up to eleven pounds total (camera and sled-the sled weighing about 5 pounds by itself).

Sorry for being so long winded but I wanted to clarify the whole single, double thing.

Tery
Indicam

Hey guys,
Just sent Tery the funds for his magic floating Indicam PILOT and the essential DVD. I only hope it's magic and floats for me.
I'll shoot some trial stuff right after I assemble it and etc. and post it - hopefully it won't be too long.
And for those possible buyers out there, the only thing I discovered late was that I will be in need of a sturdy mic stand to balance the thing. Shouldn't be much. Off to Ebay!
-Jon

Jon,

Your system is in the mail.

To clarify, you don't need a mic stand to balance the sled but it makes it much easier. I also tell everyone if they use a mic stand to make sure it's the sturdy wide-base model with three long fold out legs and also to sand bag or weigh it down somehow so it won't tip over. Murphy's Law you know.

A light stand also works with the upper telescoping part removed so that it will fit the sled handle. They are of course much more stable but also much more expensive.

Tery
Indicam