I do a lot of directing for live broadcast. Not many projects have a budget for steadicam ops but I love when they do. It’s a constant battle for movement and smoothness, and steadicam is at the pinnacle.
I actually also do live broadcast. I’ve been working on a morning shot for a major network and they have two steadicams on set at the same time!! Live steadicam is a very different beast that teaches you a complete different approach of operating compared to scripted shows. You only have one take with a couple of rehearsals if you’re lucky then when you’re called to “make your nove” there’s no going back. No second take, then when it over, it’s too late, you’re done. At first I was so scared to even do the show I was almost paralyzed and failed my first rakes. I hop on the coma and apologized. That’s when the director went on the headset and said. It’s okay, you blew it, thousands of people saw it, you can’t take it back, now do r fuck up the next one, focus on the next shot. I had a lightbulb moment and now I just “here goes nothing” before every take. If you don’t care about failing, you won’t fail as much. And if you do, you can keep your head on the next shot.
Great advice, that’s honestly why I love live, because if you screw up it’s in the past, we’re on to the next one. A lot of what I do is either sports or bands, so it’s very, very chaotic. Shots can’t really be planned, so you have to be quick and just send it and hope for the best.
Oh man sports is such a rush! My favorite event I ever did was the Fortnite world Championships finals. 100 players on stage fighting each other. We had 4 Steadicams on stage (plus 2 jibs and a bunch of peds and hh) total we had around 800 inputs on the switcher (100 players= 100 screen capture, 100 webcam pov, 100 stats graph, they also had dozens of god mode cameras flying in the virtual world, AR/VR green screens on one of the jibs, … it was madness!!). The goal was to get a OTS shot of the winner while he fires the last bullet and the winner signs shows up. It was such a rush!
I do a lot of directing for live broadcast. Not many projects have a budget for steadicam ops but I love when they do. It’s a constant battle for movement and smoothness, and steadicam is at the pinnacle.
I actually also do live broadcast. I’ve been working on a morning shot for a major network and they have two steadicams on set at the same time!! Live steadicam is a very different beast that teaches you a complete different approach of operating compared to scripted shows. You only have one take with a couple of rehearsals if you’re lucky then when you’re called to “make your nove” there’s no going back. No second take, then when it over, it’s too late, you’re done. At first I was so scared to even do the show I was almost paralyzed and failed my first rakes. I hop on the coma and apologized. That’s when the director went on the headset and said. It’s okay, you blew it, thousands of people saw it, you can’t take it back, now do r fuck up the next one, focus on the next shot. I had a lightbulb moment and now I just “here goes nothing” before every take. If you don’t care about failing, you won’t fail as much. And if you do, you can keep your head on the next shot.
Great advice, that’s honestly why I love live, because if you screw up it’s in the past, we’re on to the next one. A lot of what I do is either sports or bands, so it’s very, very chaotic. Shots can’t really be planned, so you have to be quick and just send it and hope for the best.
Oh man sports is such a rush! My favorite event I ever did was the Fortnite world Championships finals. 100 players on stage fighting each other. We had 4 Steadicams on stage (plus 2 jibs and a bunch of peds and hh) total we had around 800 inputs on the switcher (100 players= 100 screen capture, 100 webcam pov, 100 stats graph, they also had dozens of god mode cameras flying in the virtual world, AR/VR green screens on one of the jibs, … it was madness!!). The goal was to get a OTS shot of the winner while he fires the last bullet and the winner signs shows up. It was such a rush!