So I'm a grip/electric now.
I do more gripping than sparking though. Fucking love gripping.
First off, the fact that I haven't posted anything to this blog in three years really speaks to my lack of follow-through. I'm working on it.
I'm going to explain the G/E depts now so industry brothers and sisters, skip this part.
So, cameras record light. Photography literally means "drawing with light". Movie cameras need a lot of it, and it needs to be all creative and dramatic and whatnot. The grip and electric departments are the lighting guys. The electrics operate the lights, run the power cables, basically PROVIDE the light. Super important.
Grips SHAPE the light. We have all kinds of flags and nets and cloth to bounce light or change its colour or diffuse it, whatever. The best definition of gripping i've heard of is "lighting refinement, camera support and mechanical rigging". The last two are awesome. We almost never touch the camera, but we build all the crazy machines cameras ride on. Giant cranes that sweep over houses, car mounts, whatever. I rigged a camera to a hand mirror once so actors could do coke off it*.
For me, thats the rad part. Mechanical rigging. I've always wanted to be an engineer, but never had the grades. We have all these fancy expensive parts that production companies buy so we can get the shot they need, and all the different rods and clamps fit together like giant, steel K'nex. Or maybe Meccano. I'm a huge fan of it because we're always asked to do something we've never done before, rig this to this, get this thing way up there, etc. It's super challenging and super exhausting(everything is heavy) but whatever. No two days the same.
It's been quite a road getting here, and maybe I'll expand on how i did that later, but my first priority was catching up to where I am now.
Madly in love with my job. Check.
~s
*fake coke.
