Research into Steadicam's

What is a Steadicam? 
-Steadicam is a brand of camera stabilizer mount for motion picture cameras that mechanically isolates it from the operator's movement. It allows for a smooth shot, even when moving quickly over an uneven surface. The Steadicam was invented by cameraman Garrett Brown and was introduced in 1975.

 

As a lot of the shots that came out of my first shoot were unsteady tracking shots, it was suggested to me that the best option to achieve smoother shots would be to use/ find some way of making a Steadicam. Of course I wasn't going to be able to use a hi-tech heavy loaded model (like the one pictured above). But there would be some options and ways that I would be able to create something that would acted in the same way as a regular Steadicam would.  

What were my options? 

- The most obvious option I had was to buy or try to find a small, professional Steadicam but I knew that this would be near to impossible or wildly expensive. 

-My second option was to look online for tutorials on how to make my own Steadicam out of wood and plastic piping, but again this option was going to take time and money (two things I did not have a lot of) 

-My final option was to find something that I could use that would act like a Steadicam. It didn't need to look the part but it just needed to act as a weight on the camera to balance out any unnecessary movement that would be translated into my shots.  

The outcome

- In the end after looking all over online to see if there were any tutorials or DIY's showing me how to make a Steadicam for no money at all I decided to make my own extremely basic but rather effective model. 

- My model actually consisted of a plastic shopping bag which inside held my rather bulky and heavy denim jacket. To attach this to my camera I used some ribbon that was attached to an old top and tied the bag to the bottom part of my camera. 

-Believe it or not this actually worked wonders at cutting out the shaking from my footage and helped my tracking shots appear smoother and more fluent. 

- Deciding to use this technique definitely paid off and my footage in comparison looks much better.