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Welcome to STEADICAM!
A letter from Steadicam® inventor, Garrett Brown.
Dear Friends,
Congratulations! Your Steadicam SOLO™ is a professional shooting instrument. It’s also
a brand new critter -- a radical hybrid that crosses-over seamlessly from Steadicam to
monopod and performs tricks in between that neither can do alone.
You may be a veteran Steadicam ace looking for the ultimate run-and-gun rig for your
new digital camera, or a seasoned conventional shooter, eager to expand your technique,
or maybe you’re new to the game: a film student or gifted amateur, ready to edge into the
professional world...
in any case you’re in for a rewarding experience. Your new SOLO is a true Steadicam®:
precise, rigid and beautifully engineered, and it’s also a brilliant and versatile monopod;
but most startling to me, after decades of shooting, is the realization that SOLO can de-
liver combination shots I never imagined, and with a speedy panache that would spin
the heads of my old Hollywood colleagues.
With its inertia-augmenting ‘wings’ folded out, monopod shooting is stable in all three
axes -- ‘tilt and roll,’ obviously, but now also ‘pan’ -- and with SOLO also balanced in Stea-
dicam mode (at any desired length), you can smoothly ‘lift off’ and walk, run or climb
stairs like your favorite moves from the movies.
You can hoist the camera up for ceiling-height ‘aerials’ or invert it to skim the floor, and
then seamlessly return to monopod or Steadicam-mode -- with or without the optional
arm and vest.
We have entered a new, highly democratic era in filmmaking, and our tools are ever
more accessible for shooting, editing and special effects. Increasingly, success may fi
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nally depend more on skill and talent than on big budgets -- and SOLO can help you get
there.
This latest iteration of the ‘noble instrument’ is cool and it’s hot! and I look forward to
seeing your results -- in sample reels, documentaries, commercials, home videos, reality
TV and feature films!
In this manual you’ll find all you need to know for balancing, basic operation and be
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yond, including superb Steadicam training exercises and monopod techniques.
Good luck with your new Steadicam SOLO™ and good shooting!
Garrett Brown
Philadelphia, 2013
www.garrettcam.com
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