| | | | | | A second attack on the senses was made possible by Garrett Brown's invention of the Steadicam in 1976. At first the new stabilizing device was used to supplement regular filmmaking rather than as an alternative to it. More specifically, it integrated both the convenience of handheld shooting (a practice somewhat inimical to the Hollywood spirit) and the steadiness of the dolly. 54 One could now follow a protagonist past sharp turns and up a flight of stairs without any shakiness marring the image. Beyond this, the Steadicam focused the attention of filmmakers on camera motion as a device capable of engaging audiences' participation. But, unlike the views which emanate from the camera when it is handheld (when one feels the pressure of the air as it surges ahead) or from a dolly which is weighed down by gravity, there is a definite insubstantiality to Steadicam shots. In fact, the Steadicam look can be described as pure penetration of space, a zero degree of kinetics. Its effect, speed, Jean Baudrillard wrote, "is itself a pure object, since it cancels out the ground and territorial reference-points, since it runs ahead of time to annul time itself, since it moves more quickly than its own cause and obliterates that cause by outstripping it."55 In other words, camera motion could now separate itself from the world of the characters and address the senses on their own. Suspended in midair, whirling around, the camera could make itself known and provoke reactions unconnected to the limited, diegetic space occupied by the protagonists. Rock videos showed the way by using the new possibilities to the hilt, capturing the attention of the younger audience and redefining visual style for the rest of the industry in the process. | | | | | | | | | To strengthen its hold over its young customers, Hollywood had no choice but to follow suit, adapting its filmmaking to the virtual world made possible by the Steadicam and all the other devices that similarly helped disembody the camera style. Whereas, in the classical cinema, camera movement and action scenes were used as visual punctuation mostly, with the regular, more sedate narrative resuming just afterward, in contemporary filmmaking, motion of one type or another could be added at any time to spice up a shot. In Bound (The Wachowski Brothers, 1996), for instance, as a protagonist is making a phone call, the camera abruptly takes off and rushes along the long telephone cord, all the way to the plug on the wall, and through the plug, to the other side, onto the cord again, the telephone, and the character who answers the ring in the apartment next door. Viewers are thus taken on a totally arbitrary but | | | | |
