TECHNES Encyclopedia Database

As studio cameras and tripods were getting bigger and heavier in the 1920s and 30s, many directors and cinematographers sought to provide an alternative to the standard style of commercial filmmaking. This led some to experiment with the use of devices and harnesses liberating the camera from its tripod. F.W. Murnau (The Last Laugh / Der letzte Mann, 1924; Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, 1927), Abel Gance (Napoléon, 1927) and Marcel L’Herbier (L’argent, 1928) famously put cameras on all sorts of harnesses, vehicles and moving platforms, or suspended them from rails in the ceiling, threw them in the air, etc.