Last week was both intense and educational for Visualaz as a company and for me as an individual. From March 20th – 26th I spent a whole week at Lake Arrowhead California training in the art of steadicam operation. The Tiffen Company organized this intensive workshop at U.C.L.A. Conference Center. This premiere world workshop attracted people from all over the globe: USA, France, Holland, Switzerland, Australia, Hong Kong, Brazil, and other countries.

For those of you who do not know what a steadicam is, it is a device that isolates the operator’s movement from the camera. Typically a camera operator holds the camera in his hands, but even the most experienced and skilled camera operator cannot prevent the image from shaking. A steadicam alleviates this problem, and allows for very smooth shots even when the operator is moving over uneven surface. Owning a steadicam is only half the battle, knowing how to use it properly is another story. Not a lot of videographers out there invest money in personal education, especially in steadicam training. Having a steadicam and knowing how to use it properly adds significant production value to every video piece, and helps turn videography into cinematography, video into film. As a result, we here at Visualaz decided to invest in this once a year professional camera operation workshop.

A steadicam is generally used in high budget hollywood productions, and professional network television production. Only recently did a few high end best videographers in the New York City and around the world start to implement this unique tool in their production work. I was the only one at the workshop representing the wedding videography industry, the rest of the workshop students came from film, news and music video production background. Everyday, for a whole week, from 7:30 am to 10 pm we were engulfed in steadicam training and learning how to compose shots artistically. We were extremely fortunate to be learning first hand from Garett Brown, academy award winning the inventor of the steadicam, who has pioneered this amazing tool in 1976. Garett with his fellow lead instructor Jerry Holway have an extensive array of credits, and have worked with world renowned hollywood directors such as Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick and A-list actors as Jack Nicholson, Johny Depp and many others. Their extensive production experience and mentoring skills helped us achieve a new level of work and professionalism that we here at Visualaz are striving for.

Everyone here at Visualaz once again would like to thank fellow steadicam operators, and all the instructors: Garett Brown, Jerry Holway, Ruben Sluijter, Peter Abraham, and Robin Thwaites, for their amazing help and support. We are confident that this workshop will help us add a unique edge to the contemporary modern weddings and films, and make Visualaz one of the best videographers in Brooklyn, NY and around the world.

Yours Truly,

Igor Boshoer