The Steadicam: An evolution in film language, pt. 1

Ryerson film student Andrew Lounsbury penned this essay in the spring of 2008 for an advanced film theory course. In it, he uses various theories of camera movement to illustrate and expand on the claim that the steadicam has been a significant advancement in the evolution of film language. Please find selected paragraphs from this work in two parts.

Film language is similar to human language in the sense that it is something that can be read and interpreted based on a pre-established syntactical structure. For instance, in film there are many different shots that, when edited in such a way, allow us to ‘read’ the progression of the narrative or story. Similar to human language, there are certain shots that are more expressive than others, and shots can be used in such a way that force us to interpret their meaning. “It was montage that gave birth to film as an art,” claims André Malraux, “setting it apart from mere animated photography, in short, creating a language” (qtd. in Bazin 42), and it has evolved along the conventions of continuity editing and parallel editing. In his essay, The Evolution of the Language of Cinema, André Bazin challenges this notion, claiming that editing is a vehicle used to create meaning which does not exist in the individual images, but arises from their collocation (42). Furthermore, the silent cinema would have been a complete art had its essence been all that plasticity and editing could add to a given reality (44). This, of course, is not the case, for since the inception of sound, films have grown fuller in their ability to represent experience, making use of both visual and aural techniques to evoke and signify their ideas. According to Bazin, all of the necessary conditions for creating film art existed by 1930, and therefore it was not so much the introduction of sound technology, but rather, the introduction of new talent, subject matter and the styles necessary to express it, that drastically influenced film language (46).

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…the use of moving camera can achieve things that would be impossible to achieve through editing (Rahtz 299). Although neither shot would be impossible without the steadicam, it is the use of the steadicam that makes them stand out, for to cut these sequences together would simply not be as effective. Rahtz argues that it is the process of moving with the characters, to get into their space and to eventually reveal their destinations, that is dramatically important (298).

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The wandering camera is not a new evolution in film language, as early filmmakers like Murnau and Welles had made use of it. What is of interest in these examples is the way both directors use the wandering camera to suggest a presence greater than the characters who are being filmed. In The Shining, Kubrick’s camera wanders suggesting the presence of the haunted hotel, while in The Aviator, Scorsese’s camera wanders, prompted by Hughes comment about the room giving him the ‘willies’, suggesting that their may be some mysterious presence lurking in the mansion. The steadicam significantly enhances the language of the wandering camera since the camera can truly wander, free from dolly tracks and jib arms, it is free to explore, providing directors with new opportunities for expressiveness.