When skeptical colleagues ask me, “Can videographic criticism really make a contribution to scholarship?” I shall point to Katie Bird’s “Feeling and Thought as They Take Form” in response. Not only does the video advance an original historiographic claim; it does so by asking us to see its subject anew. The seeing is essential to the effect.

The central argument is a bold one, challenging the film industry’s own history of the Steadicam, one dominated by an aesthetic of dolly-like smoothness. While finding much to value in the craft’s own discourse, Bird retains an interest in early practices that did not become norms—in particular, in the bobbing style that Steadicam/Panaglide operators came to reject as insufficiently invisible. Her close look at these alternatives uncovers an overlooked aspect of the craft: its repeated suggestion that the operator must move like a dancer.

Bird addressed related subjects in an excellent 2017 article in The Velvet Light Trap. This video complements that essay, but I want to stress that it is much more than just an illustration. Whereas the written article made its case by analyzing craft discourse with word-by-word precision, the video does something different—it teaches us how to see the bobbing shots of the early years as documents of the operators’ own dancelike movements. Bird makes her case through the creative use of audiovisual tools: a wealth of carefully chosen clips, an expert use of split screen, and a quietly effective soundtrack. The technical skill is impressive throughout. See, for instance, the moment when Bird fades in black-and-white and color effects to direct our attention from one side of the screen to the other during the analysis of The Shining, or the moment when she introduces an eerie music track to create an uncanny mood as we watch not-quite-identical footage from various video releases of Halloween.

Throughout, Bird asks us to situate the canonical examples within a larger context, where Steadicam and Panaglide operators were trying out a range of dance-like alternatives in films and TV shows that have long since been forgotten—forgotten, in part, because the industry has chosen not to uphold these richly embodied alternatives as examplars. The video starts with the classic cases (e.g. Rocky), and it ends with an example that is as beautiful as it is obscure (a logging-movie-turned-IBM-commercial). This organization (classic-to-obscure) expresses the arc of Bird’s argument. Meanwhile, the bold decision to end with the rough, VHS-quality footage of the logging movie eloquently expresses Bird’s ability to find joy watching footage that others might reject as “imperfect.” By the end of this video, we have learned how to share the same joy.