Crane Marking

Today's post is a guest post. I haven't been able to post as much, or prepare anything for a few weeks so I asked my buddy Greg Brooks to fill-in. Greg is a Dolly Grip's Dolly Grip. His credits include: the Showtime series Californication, and the Clint Eastwood films, Changeling and Gran Torino. He knows his stuff, you should listen to him.



CRANE MARKING

                                                                    "Good luck!"


A big part of what we do as dolly grips is operate camera cranes and jib arms. These too require the same soft touch and subtle corrections as a dolly but now you have to fight (or befriend) gravity and inertia. It can be quite challenging. Often times you are on a wide lens and you can wing it and get it close, but often times you are not and pin point precision placement is key and settling that crane into an over from thirty feet in the air is a skill like any other that challenges us as dolly grips. I've learned a few key tricks that can aid you immensely as a "bucket guy." This of course refers to the guy that is operating the crane and doing the primary arm movements from the handles at the rear of the crane. First thing I do is try to pick the back corner of the bucket that is between the action and the crane. Once a number one position is established by whomever is calling the shots, depending on the ground surface, I'll give myself a T-Mark (like the ones we use for actors) on the ground so I always come back and stand in the same place. Any mark will do, but the key is to have your feet in the same place every time because the camera can look like it's in the same place from thirty feet away from different foot positions. Secondly I look up at the camera which is where your eyes are going to be focused and match a vertical or horizontal line on the camera or the head with a vertical or horizontal line in the background. Sometimes it's the front of the matte box or the base of the head or anything like that. Then you just look beyond those two things and see what they fall in line with. The trick here is to not mark off objects that can move!! This is a mistake that we've all made a million times. Sometimes you'll mark off the top of a truck that you're sure will never move and then the 2nd A.D. comes out right before they yell, "Rolling!!" and asks for that truck to be backed up five feet!! Always stick with inanimate objects. I can't stress that one enough. I've been burned more times than I can think and my B-Dolly grip and I always tell stories about the times we've been burned by marks. The other thing you can do as a back up or as a primary mark is measure off your own body since sometimes the only thing to mark your first position off of is blue sky. So I make a note of where the back handle rubs against my side and remember the position. This is handy, but way less precise when you get into the very tight shots that your number two position is often establishing. So once your number one position is established, there will always be a number two and sometimes a three and four. I use the same procedure for all. The floor marks are really key for me because you can step into the mark as you are swinging around and then shift your eyes to the camera and land it in the exact place that you want and already have your feet planted so you can use your upper body strength to softly slide the camera to it's last mark. This system works pretty well for me. Again, I'd like to reiterate something that is stated on this site many times about being a good dolly grip. The most important part of all this is knowing what the shot is trying to achieve and knowing your lenses and what the shot will see at all your positions. I look forward to hearing some new methods from everyone.

Dolly Grip Job Description

This post is a case of catering to my search engine hits. I get a lot of hits from Google with the search title dolly grip job description. This inevitably leads them to my post Dolly Grips and the Camera Department. That post really doesn't actually describe the job, so I'm going to post this to lead prospective searchers here instead. Those of you who are regular readers may add to it in the comments or skip this post altogether. It ain't nothing you ain't seen before.
 The Dolly Grip is responsible for camera movement in the film world. We operate all moving camera platforms (except Steadicam) and are responsible for their maintenance and setup. We also work in conjunction with the camera operator to come up with the best way to do a particular shot, as well as what piece of equipment will work best. Dolly Grips are considered to be kind of a rough camera operator, in that it is our responsibility to have the camera in a particular place at a particular time during a shot in order that the camera operator can refine it and make it work. We do the broad strokes so the guy looking through the eyepiece can do the detailed work of composing the frame. To do this job properly you must have an innate sense of how shots are staged and know where the camera needs to be to make it work. You must develop a sense of split second timing and be able to repeat a shot from take to take as exactly as possible. You must also have a knowledge of many different camera platforms from various dollies to various types of camera cranes and be knowledgeable in their safe operation, keeping in mind that your primary responsibility is safety. As technology changes, so does the role of the Dolly Grip, and our skills are relied upon more than at any other time in the history of filmaking.
Aside from the technical demands,the Dolly Grip also adds emotion to a scene through camera movement. The "slow creep," the dramatic boom up, the quick push -in, have been used for decades to move the viewer and help tell the story. The Dolly Grip achieves this through absolute control of his machine, timing, and an understanding of the emotion the director is trying to convey. We've helped create some of the most memorable images in movie history through movement: The soaring crane shot in Gone With the Wind, the dramatic push-in on Brody in Jaws. These are just a couple of shots immortalized by the Dolly Grip.
The best Dolly Grips work as a team with their Camera Operators and make it their responsibility to assist them in any way they can to get the shot safely and smoothly.
There. I hope this helps those of you who have found this site through Google. Welcome to our little corner of the interweb. Comments are welcome.

This Weeks TV Nice Moves Award Goes To...

Burn Notice. I just started watching this show and was immediately impressed with the nice sled work. Just coming off an episodic, I know the end result of a lot of our work ends up on the floor. Directors in TV don't get final cut, so a lot of really intricate work that took a lot of sweat to set up gets butchered, for time if nothing else. So if the moves aren't actually worked into the overall look of the show (CSI: Miami, NCIS) you get a lot of inward groans as that beautiful Technocrane shot you worked so hard to get is cut two seconds in for a closeup or an insert.
Burn Notice makes camera movement a large part of the cinematography of the show and it's really nicely done. I don't know who the Dolly Grip is- there's no IMDB listing for him/her (though it's shot by Bill Wages, whom I've worked with a few times) but I would like to send some praise in his, or her direction. Nice work!

Oh yeah, I also saw The Uninvited on cable. Nice work, Gil!

Update- Earl wrote in to tell us that the "A" camera DG is Casey Osborne, and the "B" camera

DG is Jimmy Greene. Thanks Earl and nice work guys!