Earlier than “The Shining,” Garrett Brown had debuted the Steadicam within the 1976 Woodie Guthrie biopic “Sure for Glory,” which gained the Academy Award for Greatest Cinematography. The thriller “Marathon Man,” launched the identical yr, confirmed how chase sequences may successfully make the most of the tech. Nevertheless, the Steadicam’s most well-known second at that time was in “Rocky,” wherein Brown’s preliminary check footage he shot of his girlfriend operating up and down the steps of the Philadelphia Artwork Museum impressed the triumphant scene of Rocky Balboa doing the identical.
Brown acknowledged that for “The Shining,” nevertheless, “[Stanley] Kubrick wasn’t simply speaking of stunt photographs and staircases.” Somewhat, the director needed to make use of the Steadicam “as a device which may help get the lens the place it is needed in house and time with out the traditional limitations of the dolly and crane.” In different phrases, Kubrick approached the Steadicam as a major device as a substitute of an exception. For instance, Brown defined that whereas a dolly would have made the monitoring photographs that wind round hallways within the resort look jerky, the Steadicam allowed for simpler turning round corners and injected the scenes with an “unearthly tranquility” that made the motion appear extra ghostly.
Kubrick innovated artistic methods to include the machine into tougher components of the shoot, too. It was cumbersome for Brown to maintain up with actor Danny Lloyd throughout the well-known shot of Danny Torrance driving his bike down the hallways of the Overlook, so Kubrick mounted the Steadicam on a wheelchair whereas Brown managed the digicam with two arms. These had been difficult efforts, however the actual hazard of the shoot arrived with the hedge maze sequences.