Garrett Brown, who made Rocky’s run up the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps possible, is the subject of a new documentary
Francis Ford Coppola will serve as the executive producer for "Thank You, Mr. Brown," which will explore the life and career of the Philadelphia-based cinematographer
What is common to the Rocky run sequence up the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps, the hedge maze scene in The Shining, aerial shots of football games, and underwater footage of Olympic swimmers?
They were all made possible thanks to the same Philadelphian inventor.
Oscar-winning cinematographer Garrett Brown invented several camera systems, most notably the Steadicam, a wearable camera rig that allows for stable running shots without any shakiness. That creation, introduced in 1975, revolutionized filmmaking, and now the Philadelphia native’s story is the subject of a documentary Thank You, Mr. Brown.
“He’s a really smart, wise individual, but also just a very humble down-to-earth guy who is very open about daring things and making sure he’s a part of the community,” said director Andrew Schwartz, also a longtime friend of Brown’s.
The two met when Scwartz started teaching at Steadicam workshops around two decades ago in Yellow Springs. Brown was always present, he said.
The documentary is currently being filmed in Philadelphia and produced by EBE Productions. It includes interviews with Brown along with other filmmakers, actors, sports broadcasters, and camera operators.
This includes cinematographer Larry McConkey, best known for shooting the three-minute long single shot of the Copacabana in Goodfellas. Francis Ford Coppola, who worked with Brown on One From the Heart, serves as an executive producer.
“[Coppola] doesn’t normally do that for a lot of people and I think it just goes to demonstrate the type of relationship Garrett has fostered in the film industry and with people he worked with,” Schwartz said. “Knowing Francis’s career, this is another guy who’s really paved his own path in his own way and has demonstrated that same daringness and persistence toward his ideas with a somewhat relentless nature.”
Brown, 84, was born in Long Branch, NJ, grew up in Haverford, and lives in the Philadelphia area. He was a folk singer until a friend gifted him a Bolex camera. Before long, Brown decided he wanted to work in the movie business and create something that had never been made before.
“He basically locked himself in a motel room trying to figure out how to get a camera to be steady,” said William Forbes, one of the film’s producers. After creating a multitude of prototypes, Brown finally landed on something special.
And that’s how the Steadicam was born.
One of the earliest Steadicam shots is a demo reel of Brown’s wife, Ellen Shire, running up and down the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which convinced Rocky filmmaker, John G. Avildsen, to use Brown’s new contraption. The Shining followed, and Brown’s career got its jump-start.
The Steadicam stabilizes a shot through three main components: the vest, the arm, and the sled. The vest is what the camera operator wears and the arm is what is attached to the vest. It allows the operator to move the camera around. The camera sits atop the pole-like “sled” and all of these come together to absorb the shock as the camera operator runs.
“Everyone we talk to echoes the same sentiment, which is that there’s a before-Steadicam and an after-Steadicam when it comes to filmmaking and sports broadcasting,” said Forbes. “You can see the imprint of [Brown’s inventions] on all these new technologies that come out, from legacy movies like Avatar or smaller things like the GoPro, and all these little things that people are trying to be able to have new visual language in film.”
Brown has patented several key camera systems that have been revolutionary in the world of sports broadcasting. The SkyCam, for example, shoots football games from above; the DiveCam tracks divers; and the MobyCam tracks Olympic swimmers underwater as they move across the pool.
Michael Phelps, Forbes said, wouldn’t have won his gold medals if it weren’t for the MobyCam. The camera tracking “was able to show his fingertips touching just before another guy, which gave him his eight gold medals,” referring to Phelps’ historic sweep at the 2008 Beijing Olympic games.
Brown founded the Steadicam Operators Association in 1988, through which he and other camera operators teach workshops on using the machinery, working with new operators, and finding ways to alter the technology.
More than 50 years after introducing the Steadicam, Brown is still not done tinkering with it.
“We’ve made incredible movies that we tell each other on screen even through sports that we watch,” said Schwartz. “Garrett very much brought us closer to communicating that way with the tools he made.”
A lot of Brown’s story, he said, “is one thing to the next and an evolution that was somewhat accidental at times because he was just going on an adventure. I hope people are inspired by his story as much as they are educated by it.”
A release date for Thank You, Mr. Brown is yet to be announced.