Two TV Technologies Mark Major Milestones

Forty years ago, TV viewers who happened to catch a certain Keds sneaker commercial with a bunch of teenage girls running around had no idea they were witnessing television history. Yet there it was: The first commercial shot with a Steadicam®, an invention that soon revolutionized the TV and movie industries.

The Steadicam is a device for supporting a camera that allows the operator to follow subjects in motion and capture footage without the shaking that comes with a handheld camera. If you caught any of the recently ended World Cup matches, you may have seen ESPN’s Steadicam operators running the sidelines, shooting live video of footballers as they dribbled past at high speed. The device looks like a vest with a small extending arm attached to a vertical pole with the camera mounted on top.

Garrett Brown, a Philadelphia-based cinematographer, invented the Steadicam in the early 1970s and shot the Keds’ spot. Prior to its introduction, camera operators relied solely on dollies (wheeled platforms) or cranes to get stabilized footage while following a moving subject. Though that setup is still used for certain shots, it is time-consuming and restrictive—turning a corner is tricky and going up or down stairs is impossible.

The Steadicam operator is free to walk, creep, or run alongside of, in front of, or behind the moving subject and shoot at angles high and low.

Brown experimented with several versions of a stabilizing device before getting it just right. He first settled on a horizontal pole with a 16mm camera at one end and a counterweight at the other. It was heavy and clumsy; he likened it to holding a ladder in the middle and trying to turn it or tilt it up and down.

Nevertheless, the demo footage he shot with it wowed Hollywood camera companies. But when they pointed out that he would need to use the heavier 35mm camera for feature films, he went back to the drawing board.

“I needed to find my way through all the old ideas and drawings to a more commercial version of the Steadicam,” says Brown, now 72.

Brown eventually came up with a design very close to today’s Steadicam that applies the same physics. A “sled” assembly at the bottom of the pole holds the individual pieces of equipment—the battery and video monitor, with the camera on top of the pole—apart from each other, which pulls the center of mass away from the camera itself. The operator typically grips the pole near the center of gravity, which allows him to move the camera precisely by tilting or rotating the pole.

Following the Keds’ commercial, Brown went on to shoot other ads using the Steadicam as well TV shows like Little House on the Prairie, and close to 70 feature films, including The Shining, Rocky, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

While inventing such a groundbreaking device might be legacy enough for some people, for the innately curious Brown, it was just a start. In 1984 he came up with the Skycam, the aerial camera that today we see zipping high above sports stadiums on a wire during games. Based on the same principles as the Steadicam, the Skycam made its debut 30 years ago this fall at a preseason game between the San Diego Chargers and the San Francisco 49ers.

Like the Steadicam, the Skycam revolutionized TV. Sports viewers at home now expect to be taken from high above the 50-yard line right down into the huddle and trail along behind a running back bursting out into the flats.

What’s next? An underwater camera? Oh yeah, Brown has already invented that. In fact, he’s invented two versions. One is the Swimcam, the other, the Divecam. You’ve seen them in action at the Summer Olympics.

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