What do you always want in a grip truck?

[RyanT]

In 4 years I've never used a putty knife. I look forward to the day when I can say that I actually need one.

So glad I found this post. Just used one last month. We were in this small motel office and needed to stick a 4' covered wagon in there to backlight this actress as she went in and got a room....the only spot to rig to was a crevice where they had installed this bulletproof glass between the clerk and patrons. It was a pretty glorious moment.

I don't squeegee on gels, for a variety of reasons. I wonder, could you give a nice complete explanation of how it's done with any tips and tricks? Thanks.

First clean the window so that there isn't any dirt of grime on it. Then measure out the window, cut your gel to fit, then spray the window with water and a small amount of soap mixed in. I've heard of people using soda or diet coke, but soap is always much easier to just find around. From there you just have to make sure there is a small amount of room around the edges for the air to escape, spray a little more water over the top of your gels to lubricate the squeegee..(dry squeegee on dry gels doesn't go over so well.) And just squeegee it on. Works great and will stay up forever. It's mostly a good trick when you just can't reach the windows outside, otherwise ND on the outside with some thumbtacks is a much better and easier way to go. Sometimes you will cut it a little too small, but depending on the color of the edge of the window, you can use small strips of gray, white, or black gaff to cover the holes of light peaking through.

I was on a job a while ago where we had these pretty reflective cabinets in this house, and we used that trick to put 250 on all of them to cut down on reflections, worked really great.

Have you tried speed-C's though? They're like c-clamps, except cut in half with a speedrail fitting mounted on top. The only limit to how much they can open up is how big of a piece of pipe do you have. Really great thing to have..

[slondon]

So glad I found this post. Just used one last month. We were in this small motel office and needed to stick a 4' covered wagon in there to backlight this actress as she went in and got a room....the only spot to rig to was a crevice where they had installed this bulletproof glass between the clerk and patrons. It was a pretty glorious moment.



First clean the window so that there isn't any dirt of grime on it. Then measure out the window, cut your gel to fit, then spray the window with water and a small amount of soap mixed in. I've heard of people using soda or diet coke, but soap is always much easier to just find around. From there you just have to make sure there is a small amount of room around the edges for the air to escape, spray a little more water over the top of your gels to lubricate the squeegee..(dry squeegee on dry gels doesn't go over so well.) And just squeegee it on. Works great and will stay up forever. It's mostly a good trick when you just can't reach the windows outside, otherwise ND on the outside with some thumbtacks is a much better and easier way to go. Sometimes you will cut it a little too small, but depending on the color of the edge of the window, you can use small strips of gray, white, or black gaff to cover the holes of light peaking through.

Thank you, just what I wanted to know.

I was on a job a while ago where we had these pretty reflective cabinets in this house, and we used that trick to put 250 on all of them to cut down on reflections, worked really great.

Have you tried speed-C's though? They're like c-clamps, except cut in half with a speedrail fitting mounted on top. The only limit to how much they can open up is how big of a piece of pipe do you have. Really great thing to have..

Good tip for the cabinets, and no, haven't even seen a speed-C except on Filmtools. I'll pick one up on your recommendation.

[Airboxlights]

The pancakes are nice because they're flatter, more of a ellipsoid solid than a sphere. Works better in places with lower ceilings. Also, the skirt is better designed. The skirt is in 4 sections which zipper together at the corners, and down the center outside of each section is a strip of female velcro, and down the center inside is a striop of male velcro. This allows you to gradually and specifically furl up each of the four sides independently. They may have updated the skirt design on the standard chimera lanterns to match., but a while ago the standard lanterns just had the one black side that you could stick on.

-Tom Guiney
NYC gaffer and shooter
Airbox Lights .com
inflatable softboxes for LED lights

[Airboxlights]

a digression to anser the window question in more depth:
Follow RyanT's instructions more or less, with extra emphasis on the precleaning of the window. Any little bit of crud or particulate on the glass will make a bubble. Clean the window, spritz the window with your coke/water mix, slap the gel up, spritz again and squeegee out the bubbles.

It's generally easier to make your piece of gel too big, and then you carefully trim around the edge of the glass with your utility knife. Change blades often, this is precision work.

The coke method works great for long-term installs. It's about a 1:2 ratio of coke to water in your spray bottle. I've successfully done it on a lont of long-term reality show house installs. it stays up basically forever. It's only good for long term jobs because it takes a few days to "settle": it'll seem like there are bubbles under the gel that you cant get out, but then they go away as the remaining soda under the gel dries up. When you're doing it, the smell of coke mist in the air is actually kind of pleasant. Junk food aromatherapy. This method is much cheaper than using GAM Windowgrip and a lot easier to install. Warning- for very long term installs, like more than a year, CTO will start to lose its color integrity and start looking magenta. Sunlight is powerful.

If the window is more than 4' (or 5' if you ordered 5' rolls), there is a challenging but effective way to solve it by doing a butt-seam between the two separate pieces of gel. apply both of them normally with a spritz and squeegee and spritz, with several inches of overlap. LAy one of them down flat, then lap the other one over it a few inches. Take your straightedge and put it perfectly plumb/level against the window on top the area of overlapping gel, then slice down the straightedge through both layers. The edges of the two pieces of gel still stuck down will line up perfectly.

Or just add a fake "mullion" of 1" or 2" black paper tape. That's quicker but lousier.

That's window gelling.
-Tom Guiney, Gaffer, LD, DP in NYC
Owner, Airboxlights.com
inflatable softboxes for LED lights

[Airboxlights]

Basso blocks have a little depression in them which helps a stand leg stay in the center of them.
-Tom Guiney, Gaffer, LD, DP in NYC
Owner, Airboxlights.com
inflatable softboxes for LED lights

[Airboxlights]

more on chain vise, with or without 5/8" stud

extremely useful for joining round tubes to each other. For example, you want to goalpost a 5k over camera, and your stands aren't tall enough to get the light clear of the camera. Instead of underslinging th e5k from a 2k pipe clamp, which would altogether be about 2 1/2' down from the pipe, you take two chainvises and attach the side tubing of the lamp yoke directly to the pipe, saving you about a foot and a half of drop down.

Or- you've got some scaffolding. It's too rickety. You want to stiffen it up with more triangulation. stick a long slice of pipe through it, and at the points where the pipe crosses teh scaffolding tubing, on goes a chain vise. They're really excellent.

-Tom Guiney, Gaffer, LD, DP in NYC
Owner, Airboxlights.com
inflatable softboxes for LED lights
lighting tips on Twitter: @airboxlights.com

[Paul Hudson]

Huge shoot last few days. I think it should be noted: you never understand the value of an apple box or a sandbag until you are one short. Make sure truck as an supply of both.

[RickyC]

Well as a Grip I like when things are organized, making unloading and loading easier. But on those hot summer days, you can never go wrong loading in a few more floppies ;)

I'll be building a 2-ton later next month. Aside from the basics, anything you guys would prefer to have? I'll be including a pair of Kinos (4x4), a nice dolly, enough track, wedges and cribbing

[Moseph]

Pancakes (1/8 apple, not the Chimera) with a baby pin screwed onto them are great for placing lights on top of cabinets. I wouldn't trust anything more than a 650 on a regular pigeon, but if you have a pin on a pancake you can use much larger fixtures and arm them out if necessary.

[RickyC]

I've done babies and 2ks on the plates, works fine, but sometimes the pan is too small, I prefer having a wider pan specially for the junior receivers to make space for a few sandbags