What Goes In Must Come Out

When you are operating, everything is about the frame and the camera movement, all of which are dictated by story. As a result, any body movement required of you to get the shot is going to have to be ‘operated’ out of the shot so that it is not seen. Consider walking with a camera. You need to take steps to move but you don't want to see the footsteps so you will likely be walking with bent knees to minimize the camera motion. Your walking is introducing vertical movement that you dont want to see, so your knees must work harder to make sure that movement doesn’t translate to the camera.

As a steadicam operator, when I teach, I try and explain that the gimbal and gravity kind of know what they want to do and that your hand on the gimbal, pointing the thing, is really the problem. You need to do it so it knows where to point, but you are also introducing all sorts of things – horizons for example – that you then need to correct.

The bottom line is you need to have physical input into a camera to create shots, but any way you can minimize that input, the input that is required to do your job but that you don't actually want to see through the lens, the less you have to ‘fix’ with your operating.