What apple boxes to get and how many?

T

TheThe

Well-known member
I am rounding up my gear for an HVX indie feature shoot and I am about to buy apple boxes. I was wondering what brands to get / avoid and where to buy from... oh, and how many do you think is enough. I was thinking 4 of each.

Here is a link to some that I found. Are they any good?

http://www.appleboxes.net/
 
Those are fine. Any brand is fine. The ones at that site have the modern, industry-standard, double-handles (so you can hand a box to someone else). Their prices are decent. I paid $35 for one full apple at Filmtools in Burbank. Half-apples there are THE SAME PRICE AS FULL APPLES! I'd start with 4 full-apples and 4 half-apples (or even just two of each). Pancakes you can make out of plywood. I rarely use 1/4 apples.
 
Or if you are the Tim Taylor type, you can always have a go at making your own. :)

This might take more time than it's worth though if you don't have power tools. (Be carefull, don't run with scisors, blah blah...)


- Mikko ... always finds it ammusing trying to explain Appleboxes to someone outside 'the business'. -"You see it's an apple box, but it's seald, so you can't put anything in it." -"Well that's prety useless then" -"eh..."
 
The "premium grade" that Film Tools sells are the same as their standard ones but are painted. Knowing how fast these things get beat up, I don't see any advantage to buying them, save a bit of money and go for the regulars.

The one thing to consider when choosing a source to purchase them from is location and shipping costs. Buy local, don't spend nearly the price of the item over again to have it shipped. Nearly every market that has any bit of film industry will have a local fabricator.

Apple boxes are simply commodity items.
 
Thanks for the plug on the apple boxes. We're not currently offering them, mostly because they're too expensive to ship direct-to-customer. Once we sort this, we'll have those pages up and running!

Between $28 and $36 a piece is a fair price for full, half and quarter sizes. $20 - $24 is about the going rate for pancakes.

At those prices, they should be a good quality Fin or Russian birch or comparable cabinet-grade or better material. If there are a bunch of boat fillets and signs of putty along the plywood edges, then you're buying a substandard box.

Lower-grade ply will have lots of voids and often delaminiate, so if you're buying a typical set of 4, 8, 12 or 24 pieces, then it's worth finding a quality box.

e
 
I own two fulls, two halfs, two 1/4s and two pancakes. I sometimes find myself wanting and needing more, especially when we do living room sets and I have to raise furniture to get it to the correct level to read on camera in sit down scenes.

Kind of like sandbags, you can never have too many.

I bought mine from Norms in North Hollywood. Good deals but you have to go there in person, they don't seem to have a website. Old school.

Dan
 
I wanted to thank everyone for their input, especially Erik from Overland films. I now know what to ask for and sound like I actually know what I'm talking about. Too bad that you guys stopped making them. I will try to find a local vendor, but being in Ohio somehow is the sasme as being in antartica as far as film production is concerned... except for Visual Products who also are here... Hey, wait a minute... Maybe they have them...


P.S. Hey KHMUSE, thanks for the heads up on the Film Tools quality differentiation scam.

PS2. Thanks PUREDRIFTING for the post. I think I will go with 4 complete sets (16 boxes in all) to start of with. I can alway add on later.
 
J P said:
Enough for what? Not sure how to answer this question.
Click to expand...

For a negative-budget 'bottom-feeder-type' indie feature involving 12 crew people, no permits, and a smallish equipment package that includes the following (for lights):

1 x 1.2K HMI
4 x kino flo 4Bank fixtures
2 x 2K Arri Tungsten
1 x 1K
2 x 650w
2 x 300w
8 x 150w
 
For years, I used to sell all the appleboxes to Fox and Universal under the name Monumental Grip. Appleboxes purchased as lines for features are almost always spec'd at 24 boxes or 48 boxes - 6 or 12 of each size: full, half, quarter and pancake (or eighth).

Remember, you can double up your half boxes if you don't want to carry as many fulls. The bad news is that, due to the amount of labor involved in assembling the boxes, two halves will still cost you double what that full sized box would.

e
 
Thanks Erik for the info. I really apreciate it. Now that you clarified this for me I think I'll go with the 24 box set (I was thinking of 16 at first). My aim is to also be able to rent out my equipment package, so having a 'standard' set is very appealing to me.

By the way, I can completely appreciate the amount of labor that goes into making them. Yesterday I almost ended up buying all the materials to make them myself. But after closely taking into account of all the time I would spend making them (including doing all the dovetail joints and holes, etc), and how much money I am paying in rent (the real answer to the question of how much is my time worth), I conludes that I would end up loosing money on the proposition if I transformed myself into a carpenter.
 
For the record, the only joinery used on an apple box is a butt joint. Unless they're bespoke or built by an advanced carpenter-user, there would be no dovetails, dados or other fancy woodwork.

You're right on the time element - even a heavily automated shop like Sun Valley Cabinets, who manufactured the lion's share of the cabinets for Matthews and the studios before we came along, had very narrow margins on these assembly-intensive products.

e
 
Apple Boxes -

Apple Boxes -

We have been the industry standard of apple boxes, and wooden studio gear for one heck of a long time, and probably the best kept secret in the entertainment industry. We are the company the makes the apple boxes everyone likes because of the nice smooth corners, as well as long term durability. Someone just brought a full apple box back to me this past November in good but battled condition, that was built around 1980, and still functional.

We supply all of the apple boxes to American Grip, Modern Studio Equipment, Norm's Studio Equipment, Cinema Gadgets, and many others. We were providing wood products to Filmtools and Matthews, but pulled the plug on them this past year.

It's funny that the quantity question comes up often. There is no right or wrong answer for quantity.

Depending on what you are doing, the standard is one set - a full, a half, a quarter, and a pancake. Most independent operators have 4 of each, or more which is driven by what they specialize in. Being a manufacturer, we see a diverse set of applications, and quantities.

I define quality differently though.

It seems as though too many people are looking at the cosmetic aspects of an apple box, and forget in essence, that it is an 'expendable item'. It depends on how you take care of them. I have seen them literally thrown 20 ft onto trailers and trucks to clear a set or location.

I've entertained the idea of producing apple boxes out of the Baltic Birch, and we make other products like our grip boxes, and scrim boxes out of it. Indeed it is pretty when it's new. If I were to do apple boxes though, the weight of the apple boxes we make due to the size of materials and construction we use would increase dramatically. We use 3/4" pine plywood for frames, and 3/8" pine plywood for the tops and bottoms. Most grips and other studio trades working on large sets can carry four of every type apple box, in additonal to other gear, to save time. Increase the weight, and I'd hear alot of complaints. That's why many other manufacturers make boxes out of 1/2" Baltic Birch - because of the weight, and 1/2" thick material is far more less expensive. Some manufacturers have even used 1/2" domestic birch, which to me is insane, because the core is like cork - so what's the fastener going to hold on to? You need to figure out why you are paying $25 - $50 a box for 1/2" material ???? 100 to 150% markup maybe?

There are other reasons that we have not switched sizes, or to Baltic Birch for apple box material (based on my own experience and countless hours working with it):
  • If you get it wet while it is unfinished, the outer veneeer flashes with mildew in a short amount of time, and cinches up. If you soak it, it will begin to delaminate. Pine plywood does this also, but it takes quite a while to get this to happen because of the amount of sap/pitch in the wood. Pimne is much more resilient when it comes to this.
  • The strength in an apple box comes from it's joints. The more surface area for the glue, the stronger it is. Do you think that a frame using 1/2" thick material, which is 1/3 less surface area to glue than one made from 3/4" material, is going to last as long???
  • While Baltic Birch is more dense, the outer layers are lucky to be 1 mm thick. If you hit it perpendicular to the veneer, you'll be ok; if you hit the end of the veneer dead on at the corner of the box, there's a good chance it will raise the veneer at the point of impact. Ask me how I know this . . .
Those are the main reasons, and there are others. You also have to watch out for some manufacturers that have skipped installing the center frame member to skimp on cost. So what you're not getting is an apple box, but only a box.

Just be smart about what you buy, and where you buy.

Jeff
 
Hi Jeff:

I never knew there was so much to know about Apple Boxes. I bought all of mine from Norms so I guess I have your boxes. They have been great.

Best,

Dan
 
Thanks Dan. Try telling that to Filmtools. The kept on trying to beat me down on price to make our boxes comparible in margin to the crap they label as 'premium'. I wouldn't follow the rat down the hole.

We have a website(a work in progress).

www.sunvalleycabinets.com

Take care,

Jeff
 
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