Garrett Brown
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Future Vision
Not long ago, I was lucky enough to be seated at lunch alongside Garrett Brown, the 74-year-old Oscar-winning inventor of the Steadicam. We were at the 2014 Locarno Film Festival, where Brown was being honored with the Vision Award. I’m not sure exactly how I ended up at the table, but also seated there was Fabrice Aragno, the young cinematographer responsible for the optical assault of Jean-Luc Godard’s 3-D punk masterpiece Goodbye to Language. It seemed appropriate to have the two side by side. Having operated the camera for Woody Allen, Sidney Lumet, Sidney Pollock, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese and […]
by Paul Dallas on Jan 18, 2017 -
How They Pulled Off Creed’s Two Biggest Shots: A-Camera Operator Ben Semanoff
There are few moments in cinema as iconic as Rocky Balboa bounding up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, with Steadicam inventor Garrett Brown galloping alongside him off-screen. The technology for Brown’s camera stabilization system was new enough at the time that the seminal shot required a crew member to sprint behind Brown with two car batteries attached to the camera via jumper cables in order for the rig to function in the cold Philly winter. Creed, an expansion of the Rocky universe from Fruitvale Station director Ryan Coogler, offers a barometer for the Steadicam’s evolution with its […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Mar 14, 2016 -
Steadicam Operator Larry McConkey on Filming the Goodfellas Copacabana Tracking Shot and The Early Days of Steadicam
The Copa Shot: It’s one of the few shots in the history of cinema readily identifiable by name, instantly conjuring the image of Goodfellas gangster Ray Liotta leading Lorraine Bracco – and by extension the audience – through the back entrance of New York’s legendary Copacabana nightclub, as Steadicam operator Larry McConkey glides along behind them. How long did one of film’s most famed tracking shots take to pull off? It was in the can before lunch — which isn’t to say it was easy. With a 25th Anniversary screening of Goodfellas set to close the Tribeca Film Festival on April […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Apr 23, 2015
