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Thomas English, UK based Steadicam Operator 07970 025 389
I am doing what is a dirty low-mode shot. The rig is turned upside down to get the camera lower however here the camera is upside down too (the dirty part). The advantage of the dirty low-mode is how quickly I can get into low-mode. It can sometimes take under 10 seconds to flip the rig, pop in the monitor and tweak the balance although it would be safe to consider 3 minutes to change into dirty low-mode with the camera a foot or so off the ground. Any lower will take longer.
With the camera upside down all we need to do is flip the image in post. There is no “mirroring” issues with this; a question I have been asked many times before. The only problems are that any client monitors need to be turned upside down; which on a big video village or with certain clients may be unfeasible or unsuitable and if you are doing a neg cut the old school way on film: Then you would have to flip the image optically, this would be expensive and a pain in the arse. Your Steadicam Operator will always check at the start of the day when shooting on film if your doing a neg cut or simply going straight to telecine/DI before he offers up dirty low-mode.
Here I am using low-mode not only for the camera height but also so I can fly the camera up and over the bonnet of the car. It works well for this application. Sure there are better ways to do this shot, such as laying track and using a dolly and jib arm, but here we are shooting a music video and are in a dreadful hurry. It should be noted that the director did say… “perfect” a nice word to hear to be sure.
I have now included the whole music video with this clip. It was pretty much entirely done on Steadicam (bar like 2 shots). The DoP was the extraordinary Dave Miller
Low mode tracking up and over a car from Thomas English on Vimeo.
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