Steadicam Op....

With 12+ years of experience of operating big rig Steadicams there isn’t a rig, situation or problem I haven’t seen. Certainly there are new challenges and I would dearly love it if you could bring those challenges to me.

I work as a cameraman with a specialty as a Steadicam Operator. I started in the moving image business at 18 making and mixing events visuals for bands and nightclubs as a visual jockey. This led to a 3 year stint at BBC documentary factual as an Avid editor and cameraman where, with my visuals and motion graphics background, I gained a reputation as someone that could make something visually arresting from any material. I left the BBC 13 years ago to specialize in Steadicam, something he had already been doing for 5 years; messing about with tiny lightweight steadicam rigs to make events visuals.

Currently I am available for Feature Films, Commercials, Music Videos, and Television work. I pride himself on speed and efficiency in setup and re-rig and de-rig times.

ITV Idents – Windy Beach and many others

Steadicam isn’t great for the wind so for my favourite of the ITV Idents we shot recently we pulled out every trick in the book. Kenyon Gyros, Antlers, wind-nets and a white knuckle ride against two massive car engines wind machines. Easysily strong enough to knock you over. Directed by Sonja Phillips and DoP’d by [...]

Myself and Dale Rodkin tagged teamed Steadicam on this set of Debenhams commercials for director Paul Barulis and DoP Dan Holland. Dale got to shoot all the lovely wide stuff with pretty girls on various beaches and outdoor locations in South Africa and I got to try and VFX match is shots for cuts for [...]

A wolf’s POV running through the streets at night for this commercial we shot in Romania for director Chris Hewitt and DoP Chris Sabogal. It involved a lot of running with a Steadicam, Alexa and Master Primes. The big crowd scenes we did on a Rickshaw or hanging off the front of a speeding car [...]

I have been shooting a lot of ITV idents recently as part of the big ITV rebrand with DoP’s like Chris Sabogal and Oliver Schofield and Directed by Sonja Phillips and Ray Moody. I did like 20 odd this past week alone. Here is a little taster one I did with Chris Sabogal and Directed by Sonja [...]

Promo’s: Steadicam, Handheld and a bit of Sticks.

Freeing up the DoP. In promos where lighting setups become more and more complicated and schedules more and more brutal I have found myself offering to DoP’s the option of myself akin to an A-Camera operator role. I am up for doing handheld, Steadicam and Sticks if required or B-camera on Sticks/handheld getting pickups. This [...]

Christmas Time! Advert I Camera Operated every shot for on the Steadicam for good friend and top Director Paul Barulis and top DoP Olivier Cariou . Certainly a tricky shoot with some quite dynamic moves with very fixed marks that had to be hit at speed but worked out well and I am very pleased [...]

DoP’s by the esteemed Barry Ackroyd this awesome advert I was lucky enough to Steadicam and operate a bit of handheld on, which was particularly painful as it was a long low handheld shot in tall grass of a dog a five o’clock in the morning. I am really happy as it is pretty much [...]

Small film we shot for Mr Porter for the Jimmy Choo AW12 collection. DoP was Chris Odriscoll and Directed by Chris Vickers at Punderson Gardens. I used the MK-V Superpost for this to get the camera nice and low. This was only a C300 so it was nice and easy but also using the Steadicam [...]

A little Steadicam on my part for DoP Nic Booth amongst angry rebellious school girls armed with guns and burning cars. Shot as if part of some Japanese horror movie featuring the band being kidnapped by feral school kids a la Battle Royale, Spector and Director Ben Reed also get meta from the start: the [...]

Shooting for Coca Colas campaign for the London Olympics we used the MK-V AR rig for the opening shot of the commercial and regular Steadicam to get lots of very intimate crowd. shots. Dan Bronks DoP’d this with great panache for Director Chris Cairns based at Partizan. The initial opening shot, of the torch bearing [...]

Another little promo I Steadicam Operated for Ben Todd DoP. For Marcus Collins’s “Mercy”. A relatively long day in and around Old Street offset by the fact that its only a stones throw away from where I am based. Marcus Collins – Mercy from Thomas English on Vimeo.

Done in one take with Commandante DoP Mattias Nyberg and Director Zac Ella on the side of a really bloody steep hill! Mattias said if I faltered he’d have me shot so we did many many takes backwards on that stupidly steep hill in painful low-mode with an Alexa Plus and Master primes. It hurt [...]

Directed by world renowned fashion photographer Tim Walker, THE LOST EXPLORER is produced by Ben Pugh and Rory Aitken, the successful duo whose first film, Shifty (d: Eran Creevy) won critical acclaim and was nominated for a BAFTA. the DoP was Robbie Ryan and the camera was the classic 35mm Panavision Platinum. There was a [...]

Fun little music video I did for Dop Brian Fawcett. Another long promo day with little time off Steadicam culminating in a load of Don Juan running shots at 11pm. As I remember we shot this on the Sony F3 without an off-camera recorder. Eva Arnold did a fantastic job at pulling focus and managing [...]

James McAvoy and Mark Strong in an action thriller Directed by Eran Creevy and lensed by Ed Wild. I got to Steadicam and operate B-Camera handheld in what looks like an awesome film in the making.

DJ Shadow “Scale it Back” – One shot promo

Ewan Jones Morris & Casey Raymond’s directed this very sweet one-shot promo for DJ Shadow in Wales. Nicholas Booth DoP’d it and I was lucky to come along and operate. There was a making-off shot as well.

Playstation- Most Insane Movie Experience

The most mental job I’ve ever been involved with. We strapped a Playstation move to a camera, rigged inside the MK-V AR rig, sucked all the camera tracking data out of it to give position, orientation and speed and rendered out the projection mapping in a room to the perspective of where the camera was. [...]

Here is a commercial we shot for Age UK. Directed by Becky Martin and DoP’ed by the infamous Captain Jamie Cairney and off course; Steadicam Operated by myself.. Using the Arri Alexa with a Gekko Ringlight and Panatape on an optimo zoom. All the people in the advert are non-actors and we suspected they would [...]

NEWS AND BLOG Thomas English, UK based Freelance Steadicam Owner/Operator 07970 025 389 . Directed by the now famous Dom Bridges and DoP’d by the renowned Chris Sabogal; This advert for 6 music was a lot of fun to work on. All the faces and very little time. I have to say that the Arri [...]

NEWS AND BLOG Thomas English, UK based Freelance Steadicam Owner/Operator 07970 025 389 . Shooting in Brixton we made this Adidas Commercial. Pretty much all Steadicam with a PL mounted 7D and Cooke lenses from Arri. Ben Moulden DoP d this with his characteristic flare for Passion Pictures. Normally Passion specialize in animations and it [...]

NEWS AND BLOG Thomas English, UK based Freelance Steadicam Owner/Operator 07970 025 389 . This is quite a funny little viral we shot for Xbox with the delightful Kylie Minogue. I’ll tell you, it was pretty funny whilst we were shooting it too! Jamie Cairney was the DoP and directed by Becky Martin.

Solid Steadicam Music Videos

NEWS AND BLOG Thomas English, UK based Freelance Steadicam Owner/Operator 07970 025 389 . I’m not sure where it says in the Health and Safety manual that we should go straight onto Steadicam at 6am call time and keep Tommy in the rig until midnight. It happens… very regularly. Here are a few little recent [...]

Ringlight control

When the subject gets too close to a ringlight often they become too hot (bright). We quickly want to start controlling the ringlight power on the move. For a commercial for Liang O’rouk we had a beam of light fly through a building. Time for ringlight control! I ended up using blue tak to fix [...]

NEWS AND BLOG Thomas English, UK based Freelance Steadicam Owner/Operator 07970 025 389 . I worked earlier this year on a 3D feature film using 2 RED cameras on the PS Technik flyer rig. Really proving that it is all possible in anger. I did a lot of my shots off the rickshaw, which incidentally [...]

Burberry SS10 Campaign_ Accessories Collection

NEWS AND BLOG Thomas English, UK based Freelance Steadicam Owner/Operator 07970 025 389 . Here is just some of the work I do for Burberry. It is intercut with some stills work by Mario Testino and some “Making off” footage of bags being manufactured and catwalk. All the beauty shots are done by myself on [...]

Primo Anamorphics, Tim Westwood and the News of the world

NEWS AND BLOG Thomas English, UK based Freelance Steadicam Owner/Operator 07970 025 389 . Shooting on some of Dan Bronks’s (DoP) favourite lenses, the Panavision Primo Anamorphics proved to be interesting. The little buggers are so big! Some of them larger than the camera. They are amazing though; opening up to T1.9. The problem is [...]

4321 Feature Film in general cinema release

NEWS AND BLOG Thomas English, UK based Freelance Steadicam Owner/Operator 07970 025 389 . I was the Steadicam Operator last year on this feature film; 4321. I also did Noel Clarke’s previous film “Kidulthood”. The DoP was Franco Pezzino and I had worked for him before on music videos including a James Blunt one. It [...]

DJ ZINC FT MS DYNAMITE – ‘WILE OUT’ OFFICIAL VIDEO

NEWS AND BLOG Thomas English, UK based Freelance Steadicam Owner/Operator 07970 025 389 . Another solid all day Steadicam promo for Dave Miller DoP. A little rest at the end for the body rig. I am frequently asked on Steadicam jobs to make it less “Steady”. They want something smoother than handheld but they don’t [...]

AR rig- Anti smoking commercial

I have only just managed to get a copy of this commercial we shot years ago. It actually never aired because of the polonium 235 incident where a Russian dissident was killed with a sprinkling of radioactive sushi. Apparently this spot was too similar to these sushi murdering activities. Anyhow, an awesome commercial directed by [...]

Pendulum “Watercolor” : Lens Baby Operator

NEWS AND BLOG Thomas English, UK based Freelance Steadicam Owner/Operator 07970 025 389 . Pendulum Watercolor from Thomas English on Vimeo. I camera operated for the world renowned Joe Dyer DoP extraordinaire and my good buddies Barney Steel and Mike Sharpe from The Found Collective. These guys are geniuses at integrating VFX and SFX. They [...]

Two RED cameras on a Steadicam 3D rig

NEWS AND BLOG Thomas English, UK based Freelance Steadicam Owner/Operator 07970 025 389 3D RED cameras on Steadicam from Thomas English on Vimeo. Patric at Fava rental has had his P+S Technik Freestyle 3D rig delivered. So I did some Steadicam testing. I could not wait to try it out with two RED cameras in. [...]

With Robert Pattison from Twighlight, A charming feature directed by Oliver Irving and lenses by Paul Swann. Steadicam was obviously done by myself. Thomas English.

P+S Technik Freestyle 3D Mirror Rig for Steadicam and Handheld

NEWS AND BLOG Thomas English, UK based Freelance Steadicam Owner/Operator 07970 025 389 P+S Technik Freestyle 3D Mirror Rig from Thomas English on Vimeo. So this is the lightweight 3D mirror rig, enabling 2 cameras for stereoscopic production, from P+S Technik called the “Freestyle 3D Rig” developed by Philippe Bordelais. Its great for Steadicam! It [...]

Operating Super Low-Mode

Thomas English, UK based Steadicam Operator 07970 025 389 from Thomas English on Vimeo. Here. I am Operating Steadicam in super low mode with 8 inch actors! You see here I was asked by Malcolm Hadley to shoot 8 inch actors as though they were 6 ft humans. So to get the camera this low [...]

Edgy urban film by Menhaj Huda and DoP’d by Brian Tufano. Lots of Steadicam on the Aaton s35mm camera. Fun times.

Low mode Steadicam shot over car bonnet

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 [...]

Panavised Steadicam Running

Thomas English, UK based Steadicam Operator 07970 025 389 Here I am shooting a running sequence on the Panaflex 35mm camera. Really I should be using a quad bike or a much lighter camera but sometimes you don’t have a quad bike nor a lighter camera. Dave Miller asked me so nicely, I had to [...]

Vehicle Mount: Polar Commercial

Thomas English, UK based Steadicam Operator 07970 025 389 JP Gossart was shooting a commercial / viral for the new Polar computer. He kindly asked me to Steadicam for him. These Professional cyclists are often able to hit speeds of 50mph. I can’t run that fast so the only option was to vehicle mount onto [...]

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Utopia

Kidulthood

4.3.2.1.

TT3D: Closer to the Edge

Torchwood

How To Be

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