This is not just any steadicam. This is the steadicam used by the character "Vasquez" in the film Aliens. You may remember that she was the Puerto Rican woman soldier who used a big gun worn suspended from a... you guessed it: a steadicam mount. With such a mount, a person could run forwards while firing steadily at a target. This might sound good, but a drawback of the idea, is that it would be a LOT trickier to aim the gun at a new target. Steadicams are designed for stability while on the move, and the price you pay is that it is blinking difficult to stop the camera being stable, and to point it at a new angle. Still, nice idea though.

Doing a piece to camera in Delphi, while on a three week shoot based in Athens, working with the Greek National Film School. As you can see, I am dressed as an archaeologist.

Crew shot for the local press, from a television play called The Dinner Party made in Penrith, Cumbria. The writer/director was Rachel Mathews, on the left. We shot for three long weeks, but it was worth it. I was taken on as "gaffer", but ended up also focus pulling, dolly grip, and various other rôles with obscure names. You can see that as best boy, or lighting assistant, I have several clips clipped to my pocket, ready to attach gels, frost, scrim and other exoticly named things to the barn doors (front flappy bits) of heads (lights). Lighting men get all the best jargon.

You can see me, leaning forwards, pressing my end of the jib down, thus raising the camera operator in the air, for a corny shot for an awful corny pop video, shot at Whitley Bay. It was one of those boy-and-girl-in-each-others'-arms,-then-running-arm-in-arm-down-the-beach-in-slow-motion videos, utterly void of imagination and novelty.