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
Posts
