Printable Film Guide: Grip Gear Basics
If you’re working on a non-union film or TV set, you’ll probably be asked by someone for an “apple box”, “furni pad”, or “C47” at some point in your life. It can get a little overwhelming in the beginning, so in an attempt to help iron out some of the initial confusion, use this printable chart to help identify on-set items. And this is only the very basics, folks. My head still spins when I hear words tossed around like Mafer Clamp, Buttplug, Quacker… if you’ve ever wandered into a grip truck, there is a TON of stuff in there, and it all has different names – most of which are slang. My grip friends tell me different grip departments speak in different dialects – slang/terminology can vary. Note: Flags come in an a variety of sizes, usually barked out in measurements, the smaller ones being in inches, the larger in feet. 18×24 is a smaller flag, whereas 4×4 is 4-foot-by-4-foot. Also note: Do NOT touch grip gear if you are on a union set! UPDATE: If you would like to learn more about grip gear and its application, the Grip App is a fantastic resource. It’s a full glossary of every piece of grip gear you can imagine; it also shows you how the gear works together and how and where to use it. I wish the app had existed back on that one job when I was as swing! (click for crisper PDF version) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . If you liked this post, subscribe to receive updates and stories about the film industry – or subscribe to my normal feed which includes all of my posts, including my adventures abroad!...
The Demands of a Relationship with Show Business
You’ve been flirting with the idea of being on television and movie sets for awhile. You’d be a perfect fit for each other – after all, you watch a lot of TVs and movies, so helping make them is the soulmate career choice, right? Just like any relationship, the film industry requires a LOT of hard work. It stretches everyone in all departments to their maximum capacity on a daily basis…and I’m not talking about the typical 8 hour day. These are 15, 16, 17, 18 hour days… sometimes more. And every day is a long one, followed by another long one, and so on for several weeks. Working on a movie is the most all-encompassing relationship you’ll ever have. Here are a few of the demands. The Early Morning Call Time If you’re filming outdoors, it’s likely the crew’s call time will be before sunrise in order to allow maximum use of natural light. Location, production, transpo, and AD departments usually arrive at least an hour prior to crew call. If it’s the middle of summer, this could be as early as 4am. (Random fact: My earliest call time ever was 2:30am for a shoot at a military base.) The Overnight Shoot It’s like a sleepover, but with cameras!…. kinda. Sometimes “day for night” is an option (faking nighttime while filming during the daytime), true nighttime exteriors look the best, because, well, it’s REAL. (By the way – here’s the worst “day for night” I’ve ever seen.) Depending on availabilities of actors and locations, night shoots are usually grouped together, which can mean a week of working from 5pm-10am, and it only takes 2 days of this to start feeling like a zombie. These days are physically and emotionally draining, and everyone gets tired and cranky by the end of the week (or maybe it’s just me and I project my crabbiness onto everyone else). The Elements If it’s pouring down rain and the script calls for a sunny exterior, that scene might get pushed, but one of the talents and common traits of people in the film industry is their ability to make it work, regardless of circumstances. (And, while we’re being honest here, the people that have the authority to cancel due to weather are usually dry and warm by the monitor). What usually happens, if not filming at a soundstage, is that the interior location is far too small to house all of the crew, and stuff still has to get done outside. So, it’s 10 degrees and sleeting, and you’re stuck at the end of a driveway, making sure no one drives up during the take and ruins...
If the Film Industry had Olympic Events, they would be…?
In honor of the Olympics, what if film crews had to audition their members by holding Olympic style events? Or what if the best from each film crew went head-to-head to earn medals? Walkie Relay (4 by 400m) If there’s a position most vied for, it’s the set production assistant position. What better way to test a team of PAs than to time their ability to get a walkie to set? Film Offices in Oklahoma have laid out the following scenario: at the start of the race sits the AD trailer, with a case full of walkies. 400 metres away, at the finish line, sits an actor in a picture car, unable to communicate with the film crew around him. 4-person PA teams strive to get the walkie from point A to point B in the speediest and most efficient manner, without sacrificing the duties of lock-ups and first team whereabouts. The PA team with the best time gets hired. Dolly Sprint (10m) Dolly shots are some of the more difficult to obtain, particularly if the dolly grip or AC isn’t at the top of their game. This celebrates the fastest of dolly grips and focus pullers, as both work together to obtain a quick shot while maintaining focus. Shotbag Shotput For the grips that are not known for their speed and miss qualifying for the Dolly Sprint, there is an event celebrating their brute strength: the Shotbag Shotput. Fairly self-explanatory; grips must be able to chuck a shotbag 50m to a nearby C-stand. *Bonus points if shotbag lands on the high leg of a C-stand. Synchronized Steadicams There aren’t enough steadicam ops to go around. To remedy this, interest is being generated by unions in the form of Synchronized Steadicam competitions, with preliminary matches being held in the auditoriums of film schools. This celebrates the grace and methodic nature that being a steadicam operator requires, and celebrates the best Steadicam Ops in the world, along with raising awareness. Boom Pole Vaulting “It’s the pole that counts,” Alfred Hitchcock* once said in an edit session about a crappy boom pole that nearly ruined the audio for a particularly quiet and tense scene in The Birds. The pole was hollow, weak – and in the arms of an equally weak, unsteady boom operator, the pole shook and the operator attempted to compensate, creating loud “adjustment” noises throughout the dialogue. Since learning this lesson, directors who are concerned with the quality of audio in post production** put potential boom ops to the challenge in boom pole vaulting. This not only tests the integrity of the pole, but the strength...
Working On a Film Set: First Day Survival Tips
Securing the first opportunity to get on a movie or TV set is a huge accomplishment. The next step is to do a good enough job in order to get hired again, and perhaps turn this bizarre (yet awesome!) job into a career. Here are some tips for surviving that first day, and some protocol that’ll help you appear less “green” or “new”: First and Foremost: Learn to Use the Walkie. Listen to it, and for the love of all that’s good in the world, ANSWER it. You will thank me. If you don’t want a giant arrow above your head with the word “NEWBIE” flashing in neon, learn to use your walkie. OK, maybe I’m being unfair- you’ve never used a walkie before, of course you won’t know how to use it! But film sets are fast-moving, well-oiled machines – and when close to a hundred people are spread out all over a set, walkie communication is vital. It doesn’t matter that you’re new. You will be given a quick, 30-second tutorial by the walkie PA on how to use the walkie, and it’s up to you from there. Few things are more frustrating than working with someone who doesn’t listen to their walkie, so pay attention. Paying attention to your walkie and “copy”-ing when you’re spoken to will earn you a gold star and your peers will never guess it’s your first day on set. I promise. Okay, so there’s no gold star, but being walkie savvy is an easy way to showcase you’re not worthless. Do not stand around staring at the action. It’s easy to get sucked in by the awe of being on a set. After all, you’re given a behind-the-scenes look at something just a fraction of society gets to see – but you have to fight the urge to gawk. Standing around observing is the job of the executives, not yours. The AD will get annoyed at you for being in the way. There’s almost always something to do. If you’re not sure what that is, watch your fellow PAs. Do NOT take pictures of celebrities…and definitely don’t post them on Facebook! Unless you want to end your career before it begins, this isn’t smart as someone starting out in the business. Eventually, after you prove you’re not in the business to be a stalker or a fan, you’ll be an AD or producer and you CAN do these things, but if you do this on Day 1, or even Day 50, you will not be asked back. Similarly, do not talk to the actors unless they talk to you. Ask one of your...
How I Got Started in Production
As I said in my previous post about not having all the answers, networking wasn’t my strong suit. The hardest part about getting into the film industry – especially a smaller, concentrated one like Nashville – was making the initial contacts. I knew I didn’t have any experience. How do you convince someone to hire you over someone else when you don’t know anything about the industry you’re trying to get into? I didn’t know anything about film. Or cameras. Or lighting. All I knew was I wanted to be on a set and see whatever I did on TV. Internships, yay! In the summer before my senior year of college, I landed an internship with a chill music video production company. Unlike my music business internships, I was thrilled! My first day on the job broke down like this: Started at the office at 10am. Ran errands (which consisted of picking up police lights). The music video* shoot began that afternoon at 3:30pm and lasted until 4am the next morning. During that time, I babysat extras (who can get into trouble if left unsupervised, I quickly learned), helped with set dec (which consisted of removing dozens of old, dusty fourth of July decorations from bannisters in the background), and made two separate runs to Wal-Mart at 2am for zip ties to re-tie the dirty decorations. It was crappy work, but I didn’t notice – I immediately fell in love with the energy, and how thirty normal people can create something seen by thousands. I didn’t get home until 6:30am and then had to turn around and go to an 8am class. I’d worked a 20 hour day, didn’t make any money, but it didn’t matter. I knew I’d found what I wanted to do. Want to get into the film industry? Work for free. You don’t have to commit to a semester-long internship in order to get your foot in the door, although it was helpful for me since I didn’t know anything about the way a set flows, and it allowed me to see a little bit of how the office worked in preparation for the shoots. Interning on independent movies can be a good way to get your foot in the door. Call the film commission in your state, ask them what’s going on. You probably won’t get on Tom Hanks latest feature (or maybe you will!), but you might be able to get a few days on an indie movie. It’ll introduce you to people who normally work in the biz, and they may be able to help you secure future gigs. Film School Disclaimer: Having never...
TV Production? It wasn’t the plan.
The responsibility of finding your own “American Dream” is pushed on us early in life. Society forces us to have everything figured out by the time we’re 18. We have to go to college. We have to somehow know what we want to do with the rest of our lives. And we have to be successful. Going to College Solves Everything…. Right? Fully aware of this pressure, I set my sights on Belmont, beginning at age 16. For three years, I worked my butt off with Belmont as the end goal – somehow thinking that by stepping foot on the campus, I’d suddenly have all the answers, and I would live “happily ever after”. Yes, that was naive. Early college years. As you can tell by my outfit, I didn’t have much figured out. After one year in Nashville attending Belmont, I wanted to give up. I wanted to pack it up, go to UVA, get a nursing degree, and live a life I could predict. I’d realized the music business wasn’t for me. My classmates seemed to have confidence pouring out of them. They were all somehow going to change the music business world – and I believed they all would. As for myself… not at all. But, leaving Nashville after only a year seemed like a cop-out. I had made some good friends that I didn’t want to leave, plus, as crazy as this sounds, I landed my dream job on campus as a tour guide. I began to realize that just as it had taken awhile to get my “college life” started, it was also going to take time to cultivate my “real” life, my “post-college” life. And so, I decided to stick around Nashville a little longer. Internships. Blargh! I still stuck with finishing the music business degree (it was a BBA, after all). I even had two internships on Music Row, but it only reaffirmed my gut feeling that the music business wasn’t for me. Granted, they were probably two of the suckiest internships available, but networking wasn’t one of my skills at the time, and I needed whatever I could get! I sat in a cubicle doing data entry, entering dozens of newly written songs into the database. It was miserable. Working just 10 hours a week felt like an eternity. I took numerous trips to the water cooler and coffee machine to try to kill time. I felt like my soul was seeping out of my pores with every minute that dragged on. I felt out of place. I even turned down the only redeeming thing that ever came out of that internship...
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I'm Laryssa, and when I'm not working in film or television, I'm attempting to travel -- or I'm here, providing resources for working in film or travel. Read more Elsewhere on the internets
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