Darryl Richard Humber

With the strike on, rental houses may be more willing to make a deal. A lot depends on your locations, whether they are in hard to get into places, up stairs, etc., and also what types of shots you're doing, and also if you have an experienced dolly grip. If you're keeping it simple, just moves, go with the simplest dolly. If you want compound moves, stand ups, sit downs, a lot of dance floor, and you have a dolly grip who can do that stuff, go with a peewee or something. If you're using an Elaine, ask Panavision NY if they'll make a deal on a dolly also. I know they have Chapman. I don't know what you're doing for crew, but if you have an experienced Key or Dolly and they know what you want to do, ask them what the best dolly is to use.

They work well, Ian, and not just for bead board. They're also handy for things like stabilizing flags on car rigs etc. I think you'll find them very useful.

Hi Ian, Onky-bonks are another name for "duckbill" style bead board holders in the us and, I guess, Australia. They have a lot of different names depending on where you are working. It's probably the most "multi-named" peice of grip equipment in the us. I've known them as duckbills, lips, onky bonks, and platypus'. I generally just say bring me a set of lips.

An onky-bonk and a duckbill are the same thing. Also called "lips", and other things depending on where you are.

I found a website that is selling an old Hollywood Scene Dock lamp for $1295.00 (wow) as memorabilia at americanheritige.us. Something to think about.

I remember years ago every now and then a c-stand would show up in a rack from a rental house while we were working that said "Hollywood Scene Dock". They were obviously very old (1950's ish). I haven't seen anything else with that name in years and just figured it was an old company that went out of business.

I've learned that if you take a call, a better one will always come that either overlaps or is exactly in the same time frame, unless you turn it down. Then the phone doesn't ring for another two weeks. If I get a call for a movie more than two months in advance, I'll wait till the last possible second to give a definite yes because my regular DP or Key will call if I take it too early.If I turn it down, well, you know. Le Poisson, Le Poisson, Hee hee hee, Haw haw haw.

There are certainly worse places to be than Savannah. I'm glad you found something. By the way, Paul, I pushed dolly for you on a tv movie with Cheryl Ladd in Wilmington years ago. It's good to read your posts.

try Alan Gordon Enterprisesalangordon.com

I would agree with Jess, depending on what you're doing. If you're doing video/ run and gun stuff with Losmandy's Spider dolly or whatever they call it, it's probably fine. They will tell you that other dollies don't work well on it. For features etc. I would say no. For what it's designed for, based on my experience with their Portaglide speed wheels which has been fantastic, it probably works fine.

Thankyou for the on set recollection! Was it mostly fight sequences shot for TURTLES 2 second unit? There didn't appear to be any visual/optical effects work on these first two movies, everything was done in camera My recollections are a little fuzzy, but yes, we did a lot of fight sequences with the big mutant animals as well as inserts and closeups of Splinter. The Turtles were a lot of stuntmen and martial arts experts in costume. I seem to remember that one of the main actors (who played an actual person) was a martial arts expert and also played one of the Turtles in fight sequences. We shot on stage at Screen Gems (then Carolco) studios. My first day, I was going out a door and unexpectedly ran into one of the "mutant animal" bad guys who in costume had to be 7 feet tall. He scared the hell out of me.

I did second unit on the second one, though I don't remember much about it except helping rig big softboxes on a condor for moonlight (and the painful memory of "Go Ninja, Go Ninja, Go.") I do remember the second unit DP was Jon Kranhouse.

That's interesting. I was doing a movie in New York last year and the set burned down overnight. They said the batteries they left charging were the culprit. We got a lot of new stands, slider. rags, and camera got a lot of new Steadicam gear out of it.

I forgot to mention that you might want to go with pneumatics or medium soft tires on a Chapman. On a Fisher, you might let some air out of the tires.

It all depends on your surface. A low mode low angle prism solves having to undersling and gives you the narrowest profile. You can always stabilize the ubangi back to the dolly and anything wider than a 50mm you should be fine(if your floor is good). The main problem you'll have to worry about is surge on a wooden or concrete floor, but usually you won't notice unless you're really creeping (which I doubt). You probably won't have jiggle, but you may have slight surges. The jib is a good idea because you can lay track for it, again assuming it's not being operated (unless you have remote in your budget).

yeah, it's a hard question to answer without knowing the type camera. The more I think about it, the Weaver Steadman is infinitely adjustable as opposed to the Lambda. It may be the easiest to shrink up. Or the Skatedolly, which might be ideal. So many possibilities....head getting cloudy.

What size camera are you using? Do you have to be on the deck or will calf height work? If you don't need to skim the ground, you can undersling the 4' ubangi and go on top of it and get around calf height. I've done a similar shot on the Lambda if you need to be on the deck and it worked fine. I've also underslung the O'Conner and used the low mode steadicam plate for the top of the camera and underslung it that way. There are actually a lot of options depending on the size/type camera you are using. If it's more or less a lock off as far as operating goes, your Key Grip could probably rig a swiss cheese plate off a ubangi and get you pretty close to the ground.

Will was speaking of "post 60" residuals which are paid into the health plan for West Coast locals. Somewhere a while back, I saw a figure of 9% of accountable reciepts from theatrical movies shown on tv. This was for the Motion Picture Industry Health plan. Of course we all know about creative accounting.

Just an interesting note, I was doing a television pilot in Savannah a couple of years ago and happened to run into a director I'd done the series "In the Heat of the Night" with 15 years earlier who is now an instructor at SCAD. He is a veteran tv director and I was impressed that SCAD had him. His name is WInrich Kolbe.

No dude, that's for playing Halo 3. Sweet.

Advantage Gripware, at advantagegrip.com, is a company based in Georgia that manufactures rags, flags, nets, frames, and sandbags. Their manufacturing plant is in Alabama, but their offices are in Douglasville, Ga. We've had several things recovered there as well as bought sandbags from them in the past.

I should clarify my last post following up Davids. David's post was: "mmmm not really. Pushing/ Pulling is one thing... and there are crew who can't get that right. Add a Boom rise to a shot then Track left and Boom down... and hit another 4 - 6 additional Move and Booms in the same take and that separates the boys from the Dolly Operators. " It was unclear who said what....my fault.

[ -Joshua Bluth Joshua, I also have a blog at dollygrip.blogspot.com run by myself and a dolly grip from Toronto that is all about dollygripping. It has tips, tricks, dolly reviews etc. D

While on the subject of speed wheels, I bought a set of the Portaglides from Portajib last year after getting sick of flat spots over the years (Moderns, Willy's, blah blah blah)and researching them. I've used them on several jobs since and they give the best ride I've ever seen. They have different size wheels distributed on their swing arms and this eliminates the flat spots. I've had operators and dolly sit for as long as half an hour in one spot and no flat spots. Robert is right, things like speed wheels and track are better to own yourself and rent to production if you can because you know what you're getting. To get back to the original question- over time you'll realize the same things you use over and over and add and subtract things over time. Things like 2" c-clamps for extra security on some rigging, 3/8 camera bolts etc. Generally, at the beginning of a job, tell the best boy what you need in the way of expendables or special orders and he'll pick them up while he's shopping, although I don't know if you would do that in England.