There Will Never Be Another You

**photo: Ryley flies the Arriflex Alexa on a Steadicam® "Ultra 2". Photo courtesy Aaron Brown**

Good day all!

I am currently sitting in Vancouver airport awaiting my plane bound for Calgary.

I have spent the last week down in LA taking a workshop, and man was it fun!

I saw PALM TREES!!!!!

Those things are totally out of this world! Such prehistoric looking things. Not only did I see palm trees folks, but there was a palm tree outside my window at my hotel! In other news, I successfully navigated both the LA airport, and their Metro system (which was actually really similar to Montreals Metro - just much sketchier).

So I caught a ride up to Lake Arrowhead with this guy named Dave (he was also taking the workshop, but he had a car). I'd been watching the forecast for the region for about a week or so in advance, and it looked like it was going to be quite warm! I mean common - it's California... right.... hmmm...

So it's beautiful in LA, and we're rocking out, going up into the mountains and then - whiteout!

Literally, have never had so little visibility! I don't think that we could see more then about 15 feet ahead of us for big chunks of this narrow, winding, surprisingly busy mountain road. When we arrived, we could barely see anything! Good thing I listened to my parents and didn't bring any warm clothes..... flawed premise #..... Love you mom and dad!

So anyways, we got there super early, and so we waited around for quite a while, and then this big van pulled in, and out got this HUGE man! This guy must have been six foot six or eight. Then it hit me - That's Garrett Brown - Inventor of the Steadicam!

Following him out of the van were Jerry Holway, Peter Abraham, Chris Fawcett, and Rubin (I'm not sure of his last name...?) - our instructors for the week.

It was wild to have Garrett showing me how to do up my vest, and how to fly the rig. It is a sensation like no other! As I stepped back from the stand, and suddenly had 50 - 60 more pounds of steel hanging off my body, I truly became an appreciator of the technology. Even with all this extra weight, I didn't feel like I was exerting any extra effort! But there's this really cool sensation of this thing hanging off of you, and just floating there - literally - let go of this stick, and it just hangs there in space, immune to all movements of your body - at least that's what I thought at first....

Turns out, it's incredibly sensitive! Basically the idea of the rig is that it is a bottom heavy pendulum - with the spring loaded arm supporting all of the weight from the centre of gravity. One of my hands (usually the right) holds the mechanized arm and guides it through space vertically (boom), and my left hand grabs the post just below the centre of gravity and points the camera (pan and tilt). My legs then take the weight of the rig (which is channeled through my body by the vest), and propel me and the rig around set! Brilliant!

The problem is that because the rig is basically a pendulum, every time you move the rig, the post wants to tilt in the opposite direction of movement. This gives the operating hand (left in my case) the job of correcting for this (to keep the post level) while still trying to do some artistic framing! It's really hard, but after five days wearing the rig, I think I was starting to get a handle of it!

The instructors were great - all of them distinguished operators, and teachers. They had incredible communication skills, and I they managed to conduct the whole workshop in a wonderfully light hearted manner! I learned so much, and met 15 other awesome students. Everybody was so wonderfully different, yet we all seemed to get along! There were six different languages represented by the students - English, Finish, Arabic, Portuguese, French, and German, with people coming from around the world - even Australia!

But yes, the weather promptly turned itself around, and I am now pleasantly sunburned, and have experienced 30 degree weather in March.... I spent the last day in LA. One of the students from Portugal asked me if I would like to split a hotel with me, and it turned out he had found a deal at the Sheraton hotel right beside the airport!

We wandered around Venice Beach for a few hours and caught dinner at a little hole in the wall pizza place. It was beautiful. I got to see the beach right at sunset, with the palm trees all in silhouette, and the waves crashing in from the open ocean with surfers riding atop - like, all the clichés! It was other-worldly! I could have sat on that beach for hours! Venice is interesting - quite weird, but interesting. Lots of like - freak show deal-ies... not my style, so we just wandered and looked for food. I liked the beach...

And the ocean was so nice! I love the water (I can see the ocean from where I'm sitting right now actually)!

Sam wanted to meet up with a friend of a friend over in west Hollywood (at least I think that's where it was...) afterwards, so we wandered down and met them at this really funky bar / desert restaurant! They were really nice people! Even though they mostly spoke Portuguese the whole time (which is such a beautiful language), I was at least able to find the tone of the conversation, and every once in a while Sam would say some word like "Steadicam" or "Dave" etc... and I was at least sort of able to follow. He tried (very patiently) to teach me some Portuguese, but I was terrible at it... maybe I should stick to learning English first...

Anyways, this post is getting WAY to long, and my plane is about to leave. Snow bound for the last time for a long time!

Lurve y'all

-Ryley