Industry innovators: Garrett Brown

It all started on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The iconic scene from Rocky has been paid homage to or parodied dozens of times and is rehearsed daily by tourists on what is now known as the Rocky steps - all thanks to Garrett Brown.

The shot he took of his wife Ellen in 1975 running up the steps was a showcase for the invention of a camera stabiliser that has arguably had a more profound effect on camera movement than any other technology.

The Steadicam freed the camera from being bound to cranes and the straight lines of dolly tracks. Instead, the camera could be moved handheld but smoothly for entirely new shots around corners, through doorways, travelling up, down and in any direction. Using it, cinematographers began to transform the rigid language of cinema with complex and fluid compositions.

The Oscar-nominated 1917, filmed as if in one unedited shot, is just the latest motion picture to be inspired by the near half century-old mechanical design which shows no sign of being superseded in the age of digital.

• Read more: Behind the scenes: 1917

“Steadicam remains the most artfully controllable means for moving a camera,” Brown tells IBC365. “For filmmakers…