https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4KdIyDyKjA

The Glidecam is a film equipment used heavily by indie filmmakers – it’s basically a steadicam for lightweight cameras such as DSLRs. This tool is used HEAVILY by Devin Graham. Using a Glidecam allows for long, steady takes with little to no shake at all as the system is balanced to your camera’s weight (this needs to be done yourself though). When it comes to ‘shaky-cam’, this looks amateurish, so using Glidecam adds a lot of production value to the look of your videos. It doesn’t look cheap and ‘doco’ style. Doing slow steady movements through an area with no shaky cam looks a lot more cinematic to an audience as that is what they are used to seeing in major films that use steadicams and dolly tracks.

I, however, do not own a Glidecam and thus, have had to make use of the tools I have to emulate that kind of look. I used my monopod as almost a ‘ghetto’ version of a glidecam. Not the same, but it allowed me to get my hands away from the camera body so it would reduce any shake in the image. After that, in post production, I added a Warp Stabilizer when I edited the footage in Premiere Pro. You can definitely see a digital look to the way the shot is stabilized – it doesn’t feel as natural. This showed me how important it is to get things ‘in-camera’. That being said, I think I came close to the Glidecam look, and the shot does look very steady, giving it that nice sweeping look.