Steadicam Testing

After coming across some major camera shake in our opening scene for our first 2 minute film, today I decided to have a play around with the Merlin Steadicam. As you can tell from the clip above, using the steadicam takes away all the camera shake you get from using the camera hand held. In some circumstances the camera shake works. The clip below is of a famous scene around 10 minutes which all one take and is all shot with a camera shaky look. I feel it gives this scene the effect of it being in first person and making it look like we are with Clive Owen as he runs, sneaks into the building which is under attack. If this shot was very smooth and still like the clip above, we wouldn't have the same effect which we get from the shaky camera.

This clip off youtube isn't the full scene but from this 6 minutes you should be able to get the impression. Other films such as the Blair Which Project and Paranormal Activity have a lot of camera shake in the movies footage but this is done by an actual camera which is help just in the hands as the people behind the camera are actual characters in the film. The scene above was shot on a steadicam to allow the cameraman to maneuver easy but he has manually given the effect of the handheld camera shake.