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In my years of production work I have had the chance to work with jibs and cranes of varying degrees. And every time I consider using a jib on a specific project there are two main factors that I use to weigh the decision: time and size.
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The investment of time is probably the most important factor for me when it comes to jib use. The amount of time and effort it takes to unload, unpack, assemble and balance a jib is usually the deciding factor as to whether or not I even use a jib on the shoot in the first place. For this reason, in the past I have only used jibs on shoots that could justify it. This meant usually two things, the budget had to be high enough to allow for the added time, and the shots that we got had to be “large” enough to justify spending the added time and effort to get them. Essentially, all other factors I look at when deciding on a jib come back to the issue of time. On set time is money, and I'm not interested in spending disproportionate amounts of time in setting up equipment unless the shots justify it.
The size of a jib is crucial to me, both when packed up and when fully extended. Many jibs seem like a wonderful idea, with the promise of 15 foot high crane shots, until you realize that they can take two people and 20-30 minutes to set up. As with anything in life, finding the right jib seems to be a balancing act (no pun intended). Size is a trade off with time. In general the larger the jib the longer it will take to setup, and vice versa. So for me it's a matter of finding the most efficient compromise between the two.
Generally speaking, jibs usually come into play only on larger sized productions where we have the crew and the time to handle such a piece of gear (and when the budget justified it's addition). I've always thought it would be great to have a jib that would be easy enough to set up that I could consider using it on a one man job, but in the back of my head I often laughed at the idea. Well, I'm definitely not laughing at that thought anymore.
Last year I was given the opportunity to be a beta tester for the prototype of the Cineventions Vance-Jib. Engineer (and fellow DVXUser member) Dan Vance contacted me to see if I would be willing to try out the jib on a couple of shoots and give him feedback on it so he could refine the design. The first thing that struck me about this was the fact that he was actually doing a beta testing cycle. I could understand that from a software or technology company, but for a jib? That gave me an idea of Dan's dedication to his goal of having the most efficiently designed jib on the market.
When I received the prototype for testing I was immediately struck by the design. It was compact, simple to setup, had virtually no assembly, and yet gave me a reach that was more than adequate for the majority of my needs. After running it through it's paces I sent back some ideas on what I thought might be refined, but all in all I was under the impression that this was a jib that was absolutely ready to go to market. It was by far the easiest jib I had ever used, in terms of setup as well as operation.
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Given that I was so impressed with the prototype I used, I didn't expect to see much of a different when I received the final production model of the Vance Jib for review. But I was surprised to see it was truly a night and day difference. Upon first glance it's clear that this is a professional piece of gear to be taken seriously. The design is sleek, efficient, compact and, most of all, intuitive.
Before going into my specific impressions about the Vance Jib I worked with, I should explain something about the design. There is one thing in particular that I feel makes this jib stand out amongst the myriad of options available, and that is it's ingenious single piece design. The entire jib is one piece. It can be collapsed, transported, extended and setup all without having to attach or remove anything. The inclusion of a tail skid on the back also keeps the jib feeling stable even when fully compact (so it can be set down without any worry of pressure on the lower strut). The camera plate, the fulcrum, the arm extensions, and even the weight handles and trim weight are all built together. This to me is a huge advantage, as there is no longer any need to worry about assembling a jib on set, it's just a matter of unfolding it (much like a tripod). The first time I saw it I had that, wow, why don't all jibs work this way? reaction. I'm surprised Cineventions hasn't put a big 70's style sticker on their website yet that says, No Assembly Required!
Upon opening the box the first thing that got me was the size. When compact the Vance-Jib measures a mere 48 inches long. This is more than small enough to fit easily in the backseat of a car, a trunk, on an equipment cart, or to be carried by one person.
Now, some people may disagree with this sentiment, but I've always felt that a well designed product should be able to be used without so much as looking at the instructions. So, even though the Vance-Jib came packaged with a set of instructions, I started by pulling it out of the box blind to see how long it would take me to get it up and running. I had the jib fully extended, mounted on my tripod with the camera attached in just under 3 minutes (2:53 to be exact). And that includes the time it took me to remove the tripod head from my sticks, as well as attaching the head to the jib. Pretty impressive, I thought.
I've used plenty of jibs that seemed relatively easy and intuitive to set up, but for the most part even those would take me at least 10 minutes to get up and running once I knew how to put them together. In this case I was able to have the Vance-Jib setup and ready to shoot in less than a third of that time, straight out of the box. The claim of 90 second setup (which is made on their website) started to seem more feasible after this experience.
The jib comes standard with a 100mm bowl on the camera plate, and a flat base on the jib itself which should attach to virtually any style of legs (I had no problem attaching it snugly to my 100mm bowl Bogens). The setup is very straightforward.
Here are the steps:
- Remove the head from your tripod.
- Attach the VanceJib (collapsed) to the legs via the included collar/clamp handle.
- Unfold the camera plate at the head of the jib.
- Extend the jib about a foot to keep it balanced.
- Level the jib/tripod
- Attach your tripod head to the camera plate.
- Unfold the weight handles and add weights to balance.
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That's all there is to it. Ideally I would like to have a bowl adapter attached to the bottom of the jib which would allow me to balance it even quicker. But at only 3 minutes for a full setup, I can't really complain. The advantage of having everything in one piece becomes incredibly apparent from the first time you set this jib up. It's rare to be able to be up and running so quickly, much less with one person setting up a jib solo.
So far so good -- the jib is quick to setup, and it packs up to a size that I would say is small enough for most needs. Now we come to the question of reach. The benefits of compact transport and quick setup are meaningless if the jib doesn't add enough movement or added value to my shots. So is a jib of this size even worth the trouble? I have to say, for my purposes the answer is absolutely.
I set up the jib on my Manfrotto 515MVB legs, with the legs fully compact (I'm not certain I would trust the Manfrotto clasps to hold the weight of any jib). Set up this way the Vance Jib had a vertical reach of 75" (measured from the floor to the camera plate). So that gets me to 6ft 4" before adding in the height of of the head itself (Bogen 516 in my case) and the distance to the lens. Counting all those factors my vertical reach was roughly 96" (or 8ft off the ground). I found this to be more than enough reach to create dynamic camera moves. The vertical reach is enough to be able to boom down to reveal a character, boom over a car, or any other number of common booming shots.
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Now I realize there are many jibs out there that can give you a reach of 15 or 20 feet. The thing for me is that it is not very often that I would ever need to boom that high. Keeping in mind that I'm reviewing this piece of gear as a purchase item for my kit, and not a rental, I would say that I'd want the VanceJib in my arsenal on any shoot versus longer options. My thinking on this is that extremely high reach jib shots are rarely called for when compared to more simple moves. For every 20 foot crane shot I've done, I've probably done twenty smaller jib moves. So the Vance Jib is able to accommodate my needs probably about 95% of the time. If I find myself in a situation where I need to boom 15 to 20 feet, then I would have no problem renting a jib that is specifically made for that purpose. It's a matter of using the right tool for the job, and the Vance Jib seems like it would be the right tool for the majority of jobs. And given it's solid construction and weight capacity of 55lbs, it is a piece of gear that can work with virtually any camera package I move into in the future.
And that is what I find so nice about this jib. It is not designed to do everything, it is designed to do the majority of shots you would want and it does that incredibly well without compromises to the integrity of the jib. There are no awkward extensions, no pieces to swap out, and because of that it feels very rock solid in every configuration. It can also be telescoped via the clamps on each strut. This means you can setup the jib at any length you need, from as short as a couple of feet for cramped interior locations, up to the fully extended 8ft reach configuration I mentioned earlier.
This brings me to my final point about the Vance Jib. It does me no good to have a jib that can cover any situation if that jib is going to take me 4 times longer to set up. The Vance Jib sets up so quickly and easily that during the time I've had it for review I have taken it with me to a few shoots that I never would have considered using a jib on before (one of which I shot completely alone). This to me is the biggest advantage to this jib. Yes, it has its limitation in terms of reach, but I believe I would easily use this jib at least twice as often as any other jib I've seen, simply due to its efficient design and ease of use. So while I might find myself renting a larger jib a handful of times over the next year, in the meantime I'd be using the VanceJib on virtually any other shoot I have. This is exactly the piece of gear that I've been wanting to see for years -- a compact single piece jib that does what it does incredibly well and efficiently.
AT A GLANCE
PROS
Incredibly fast setup
Single Piece Design
Rock Solid Construction
Weight Capacity of 55lbs for large Camera packages
Telescoping Arms for variable reach setup
CONS
Limited to 8ft vertical reach
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