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Grip is one of the most important parts of the whole process: unsexy but essential and a good part of what will be interesting at IBC.
Talking to filmmakers about grip and lighting support is like talking about healthy eating and spending more time at the gym. Most people are aware it’s essential. Fewer show much enthusiasm for it, which is a mistake.
As we’ve seen in the past, stands, clamps, frames and large pieces of fabric are crucial to creating results that actually look like a movie. All this has always existed at events like IBC, although the modern world of social media has had a hard time finding a way to work an open-mouthed thumbnail into a trade show booth full of carefully-welded metalwork.
Matthews Studio Equipment has been challenging that trend for a year or two with the Air Climber, a very tall extending column intended to carry a big, bright light. It’s bad manners to fire up an 18K HMI in a convention center, but in theory it’ll put a big light in the sky for when the naturally-occurring big light in the sky isn’t available. There’s a pan, tilt and focus accessory, too. Lighting technicians might be pleased to avoid a day spent sitting alone in the bucket of a scissor lift with a series of water bottles which become progressively empty… then full again.
You have no idea how many people have been talking about this...
Some of Matthews’ other tools will be more widely applicable, particularly this year’s Middle Max menace arm. The Middle Max is a version of the famous menace arm designed to be the mightiest overhead rigging device that will fit in a small van. Matthews’ most recent announcement, meanwhile, is the Apple Box Topper (above), a padded item designed to make an apple box more comfortable as a seat. Whether that’s a high-end luxury option for apple-box natives or a desperate workaround for the absence of a real seat is a matter of perspective, but let it not be said that Matthews is not eager to address every possible market.
If there’s a competitor, it’s probably the Avenger brand which will reside on Videndum’s enormous booth in IBC’s Hall 13. On that same booth, we might also wonder if there’s a line to draw between camera accessories and grip equipment. Wooden Camera’s body of work is a category of equipment which has exploded in utility since the dawn of camera rigging as an everyday occurrence. Given there’ll always be new cameras to accommodate with accessories, it seems likely Wooden Camera’s work will never be done.
The company’s latest announcement is an edition of its D-Box series of enhanced I/O options for the Red Komodo-X, although the most intricate piece of innovation is likely the recent Maxi Rod Light series. And no, that doesn’t mean lightweight, it means there’s a light on the viewfinder support rod to illuminate the lens scale. Once people start putting flashlights on things, we might take it as a sign of a fairly mature market.
There are probably as many grip companies as there are companies making cameras. It would be a bit unfair to mention Wooden Camera without also mentioning Tilta, for instance. Tilta will be among an enormous number of Chinese companies exhibiting at the show. A search for “grip” in the exhibitor list turns up five companies beginning “Shenzhen”. Solidly high-end suppliers such as Grip Factory Munich and Egripment are also listed, and while that’s the sort of gear that tends to be purchased as a business-to-business transaction, it’s a good idea to spend some time in Hall 12 in order to establish what a really, stupendously nice dolly is supposed to feel like.
In a way, we’ve already discussed grip - is Steadicam not grip? - but there’s almost an inverse relationship between how prosaic something like a C-stand seems, and how crucial it is to the sort of results everyone seems to crave. So, go and see the likes of Matthews, and Avenger, and reflect that the reason so much of the booth has changed so little in so long is that it’s really really important.
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