When the Camera Learned to Dance
There was a time when cameras didn’t move at all. In those early days, in the novelty of the first moving pictures, pictures of people gesturing and waving on the screen was enough. Then very quickly the camera learned to travel, first on cars and trains and then on primitive dollies and cranes, and then for quite some time they were…content. The technology of the time made large and fanciful camera movements difficult. When filmmakers wanted to rise above a scene or reach out over an obstacle, they mounted the camera on a giant crane, and they went along for the ride. It was a wonderful feeling to rise majestically through the air on tons of metal, and I was lucky enough to be there for that. I was also there stuck high in the air while an actor discussed his lines with the director…and that was not as majestic.
The nineteen seventies brought lighter cameras, better electronics, and small video cameras you could mount on the film camera to see exactly what it was framing and around 1974 a couple of ambitious young filmmakers began to imagine what might be possible if they married all these tools together. The filmmakers were Jean-Marie Lavalou and Alan Masseron, and their imaginings with help from David Samuelson gave us the Louma Crane.
