A closer look
Before the late 1950s, shooting a documentary meant dragging a truck full of audio gear into the wild, which kind of ruined the candid vibe. Enter the Nagra III, a ridiculously over-engineered Swiss tape recorder that was finally small enough to hang off a sound guy's shoulder while maintaining perfect sync with a film camera. It completely revolutionized the cinéma vérité movement, allowing directors to actually follow people down the street instead of forcing them to awkwardly recreate their lives in a soundstage.
