10-11-06

core / life master / 2006 / october / 10/11/06 (10/11/06)
steadicam inventor garret brown and moving camera
cinidigital
– hi,
– here are some notes from cinidigital conference
– rex turns out to be the DP for the water photography from jaws.
– before the workshop, I asked myself – what’s it (the movement) doing for the story, the moment, the emotion?
– i reminded myself of the three areas of investigation – camera, writing and acting
– to steve, didn’t send
— i noticed that someone cashed a check recently, so that means you are ALIVE! praise be. and so i sniff the winds for your scent, my whiskers twitch with the breeze of your breath, a wraith stirs the flowing fabric which wraps us all.
— call or write!
— d
– that made me think of steve and the acting workshop he used to attend. maybe i’d like to get into a workshop too.
– while watching the moving camera reel, I wrote the following after seeing a very clumsy looking scene in a jungle where the camera was far behind the action which sped ahead of it
– no “lumbering” meaning “slower than the action”. the camera shouldn’t be this lumbering monster, unless it’s supposed to be. in that shot, the camera was a person moving with less urgency than the actors ahead of it, it became a random presence (imperious leader, injured comrade, lumbering steadicam operator) rather than a complement to the action, or an enhancement to the action. unless in context it was the sort of character we just named
– garrett – why is it satisfying to move the camera? suddenly everything has depth
– motion parallax! interposition! his friend driving with only one eye, things in motion offer more information. the movie screen is a single big eye.
– maybe i’ll write to garret and say hi, talk about cognition
– 2d medium becomes 3d, flat to spatial
– garret likes the moment they start and stop moving, the change of state
– explain the space, involve in the space, size of the space, (dan – 4, 5, 6… etc.)
– a storytelling shot or the view of some creature, some character
– i thought of a scene where the camera ducks behind a wall just as the character eyes are coming up, over and over again just before eye contact with the camera. it’s a being that can’t be seen, is elusive. the story of the city, never meeting anyone’s eye. think of koyanisquatsi, the poeple looking at the camera
– moves and stops with the action (like dance performance)
– the shot in shining of jack nicholsen entering the hotel, the shot changes qualities, function, sweeping through categories
– there’s the “rules” for static shots
– movement offers new compositional opportunities
– carlitos way, al pachino
– pole stays in place, i’m late movement stops
– don’t defy the laws of physics – spiderman and king kong, birds flying into saramons lair, boring until we see chris plumber
– so real and agile but where is the storytelling, too facile
– stopping and starting
– suggest a quality of motion, whip pan POV
www.garrettcam.com/movingcamera
– hands free segway
– segwaynyc.com
– timing, design of the movement etc vs anarchy and synchronisicity, planning vs improv
like kai said, more expensive equipment means less risk taking

nothing is always true, except this statement