The insane camera moves of ‘La La Land’

[Update: All the videos have now been pulled from Robbins’ account. Some are being released separately as exclusives now. I’ve tried to re-embed the videos as they originally appeared here]

Steadicam operator Ari Robbins has worked on dozens of projects over the years, but his work on La La Land is exceptional. We all know La La Land has great camerawork but it wasn’t until I looked at his Instagram that I understood how much manpower went into some of the shots.

Here’s a photo showing the rig they used for the opening number of the film:

A post shared by Ari Robbins SOC (@steadijew) on Dec 10, 2016 at 3:31pm PST

I can’t believe these whip-pans were actually done in-camera (I suspected digital trickery might be involved, but nope):

Watch #LALALAND director Damien Chazelle work with cameraman Ari Robbins to execute a precision whip pan in this behind-the-scenes footage! pic.twitter.com/TwluxBcA26

— La La Land (@LaLaLand) February 4, 2017

And this shot from the number “Someone in the Crowd” is mindblowing:

A post shared by Ari Robbins SOC (@steadijew) on Feb 16, 2017 at 10:24am PST

The Hollywood Reporter also has footage on how they did the final “Someone in the Crowd” sequence:

Also: Deadline has footage showing how they shot the final sequence of the film.

(Thanks to Steve Ho from the Slackfilmcast for bringing this to my attention)