Next Dolly Grip Q&A.

 

Here is the link and times for the next Dolly Grip Q&A. Please join us!

Topic: Darryl Humber/Matt Moriarty, Dolly Grip Q&A

Time: Oct 3, 2023 01:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada) 4PM Eastern.

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Meeting ID: 973 555 8598

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8

I've Got Nothing Better To Do

 Hi all! I see we are all back in the same boat we were in three years ago or so. Once again, we were told to go home in the middle of a job, uncertain and a little anxious about what the future holds. I'm trying to figure out ways in which whatever skills I have translate to the real world and so far all I can come up with is one of those people who shop and deliver groceries. I may not be good at much but I can drive the shit out of a shopping cart. In the meantime, we do have some things coming up. We are going to start up our Dolly Grip Q&A zoom meetings again soon, so be on the lookout for the first one. We are in the process of lining up guests, so if there is anyone in particular you would like to see, shoot me an email. I had a fairly busy year up until the recent shutdown. I spent most of my time on the 45' Scorpio crane, except for the couple of times I was on a 50' Techno. Going from the smooth as butter Scorpio to a rather aged Technocrane is quite a change. Those older cranes just don't stop and start as smoothly as the Scorpio.I don't think I've been on a Supertechno that was under 20 years old in a while and forgot how much of a monster they can be to get moving or finesse a slow correction up or down. The bearings tend to break loose all of a sudden which makes a small correction at full stick a little tricky. Add a rain cover to that and now you're doing it partially blind. Once the rain cover gets put on, I'm constantly switching sides of the bucket, sometimes mid-shot just so I can keep my eyes on the head.

  I did do an actual film job shot with a Panaflex for a week, filling in for a friend. It was amazing the difference in set discipline that automatically seems to come with just shooting film. The rhythm of the set that we all remember was back and I wasn't constantly clearing people away from the crane. There weren't people standing in front of the lens scrolling their phones as is unfortunately the case these days. I asked the operator if he had noticed the difference and he said, "Absolutely."  It would be nice if we could get back to that.

Anyway, that's all I have for now. I hope to get back to posting more often now. Stay tuned.

D

Time flies when you're having fun!

No, we're not dead.

Has it been over a year already? What’s changed? Nothing. If anything things may have gotten worse. Long hours, nights, Fraturdays… the list goes on. Coming out of the world wide lock down it was as if a gun had gone off. Studios and streaming services needed new content as we had binged watched EVERYTHING. And what? Now? A writer’s strike? Who’da thunk…

Long and short of it. Please be careful and look out for yourself. If not for you, but for your loved ones that want you around to tell them how you did that amazing shot you’re forcing them to watch.

Thank you to the American Cinematographer Magazine’s Jay Holben for his “Shot Craft” article on “The Dolly Grip’ in the February ’23 issue of the magazine. Tip of the hat to Ralph Scherer for being featured.

Speaking of featured - a big congratulations to our own Darryl Humber for being the Society of Operating Camera People’s “Dolly Grip of the Year”! If you have to opportunity to go to the awards dinner in Los Angeles in February please stand and give him a huge cheer from all of us.

That is all - be seeing you!

 (anyone know how to delete all the spam comments on Blogger?)