On the subject of how to find a good camera jib or camera crane rental in NYC, it can be quite a process. Jib Rentals in NYC have variable rates, operators have different equipment, and policies. Larger NYC and Washington DC jib companies often will bill labor from the minute the equipment begins transporting to the shoot location! When accessing jib rentals in cities such as Philadelphia, Boston, DC, or NYC it’s best to try to identify a company that displays quality work online but also showcases great communication. As with any service you may ever need, someone communicating to address your needs and make you feel you are being taken care of is the first step! A lot of people are guilty of minimally responding to inquiries of any kind. How many times have you send a text to friend that had a few points to be address? For example, say you text your friend who is coming to your BBQ and you are double checking that he or shit is bringing ice, some extra burger buns, and chips? How many people do you know that are likely to just say “yea I got the chips”…..nothing more. Now how many people do you know that respond to emails like that in a world environment?? It’s staggeringly a lot! Thorough communication is something you should be looking for with any service as it builds trust and confidence!
Jib Operator NYC - Jib Op New York City 2024 Brings Us a New Year
Welcome to 2024! It’ll be an exciting time for all NYC Jimmy JIbs and New York City Jib Operators! The world feels much more normal, stable, and with a volume of work that no one has felt since before covid. It’s been a long journey for all of us to make it this far, but we all did it and did it together as an industry! Cheers to a great 2024 and hope everyone stays happy, healthy, and busy.
Jib Op Visits Rock Lititz
How has this NYC Jib Op never heard of this place?! I get that Rock Lititz is far from home, but it’s such an amazing campus and place to work. Rock Lititz is a massive production facility with several arena sized spaces geared towards touring acts to tech their shows. I’ve been jibbing a show that would typically have me having a Jimmy Jib in NYC’s Beacon Theater for a live awards event. Instead, the entire show is a hybrid virtual event against a massive video wall. Somehow it’s been cheaper for production to rent this massive facility for 2 weeks than to actually do this project in a theater. Rock Lititz has been amazing! The hotel on campus is wonderful, there’s a huge gym with a bouldering wall, a brewery on site, and the area has a number of attractions. Take this NYC Jib Operator out of New York anytime and take me right back here!!
NJ/NYC Jib Operator Pulls off Flying 2x Cameras!
NJ/NYC Jib Operator Pulls off Flying 2x Cameras!
Earlier this fall I had a fun shoot covering detail shots of an enormous research wave pool in NJ. This NYC Jib op went a little ways from home base down to the shore areas. The client wanted to load my 30’ Jimmy Jib Triangle with a Sony FX9/Cabrio 19-90 + a Canon 7D with wide lens. What a camera build! We wound attaching the 7D to a very strong noga arm to a top cheese plate on the FX9. The client periodically snapped stills using the 7Ds wifi as I was swinging around the wave pool. It worked perfectly!
New York Jib Operator - Upgraded Controller
NYC JIB Op - Upgraded Controller!!
A couple weeks ago I punched it on a custom joystick from Jony Jib which was supposed to be a significant improvement against the stock part. Let me know you all this, it’s amazing! Since this is just NJ/NYC Jib op talk, I’ll spare the crazy engineering details bc even I don’t understand them. You can definitely read up on the tech stuff if you’d like, but the end result is it’s amazing. The controller is enormously smoother, more accurate, and dreamy. The biggest gain is how smooth the image is at the tele end of lenses. With the stock joystick you do need to pay attention and get in the zone to ensure smooth moves in the 200-400mm range. The new controller makes this far easier and almost effortless! You will be seeing this jib op around NY, CT, PA, NYC, NJ and more being smoother than ever before.
How I became a NYC based Jib Operator
Lots of people ask me how I got into this weird niche. Most people I knew growing up went to college, got a degree, possibly a grad degree, and work some kind regular well paying job. You just say to yourself, well that figures! He or she studied HR, they do HR. They have a business degree….and now they do some ethereal job involving paper and $$ deep inside a computer. What’s my story? How did I manage to get into this??
Well, many might be surprised to know this was entirely an accident. I actually graduated from Mason Gross School of the Arts (Rutgers) with a bachelors in jazz performance. I was a drummer, a pretty good one too! I played professionally for several years in a variety of bands, taught private lessons, and even taught high school marching band for a few years. It was during this time that I got more and more into production work. It started with learning audio skills to record my own bands. That turned into me teaching less and working with sound more. One day I got the opportunity to do audio for video with a production company that specialized in streaming MMA/Boxing. We hit it off and eventually they had a job with no budget for audio, but asked me if I wanted to learn camera. I jumped at it! From there I just kept learning more and more, more and more, more and more.
A year or two later I wound up in a situation where the production company’s jib operator had to bail very last minute and we couldn’t find an op. I figured out how to put the jib together and got promoted! Funny enough, this NYC JIb Operator’s jibbing debut was actually in Lancaster, PA! After that, I took the jib home with me to practice. I just kept getting better and better. Eventually, I just wasn’t a drummer anymore but wound up with the wonderful business and career I have today.
You never know where life will take you!
The perfect jib vehicle for being a NYC JIB operator
Jib Operators around the country have it so easy compared to here in NYC! Being jib op in NYC is a little cut throat with loading. Forget the paralyzing traffic, most venues are super old and were never designed for modern load ins. Loading docks are very small and sometimes you can only street load into a stage door. THEN, what do you do with vehicle?? I honestly have no idea what people do with their box trucks OR trailered vehicles! For me it’s super simple, I can fit a 30’ JJ Triangle, many cameras, tripods, and lighting right into a Toyota Sienna minivan. Productions that have reserved street parking love it b/c they think you’re coming with a truck and that means you take up way less space! Parking garages never turn you away and you can street park a whole lot easier than a sprinter van!
When this jib op takes a camera crane rig down to newer buildings in the DC area, I’m always amazed at how intelligent venues are set up! NOT the case in NYC!!
NYC NJ Jib Op now with a Fujinon Cabrio 19-90
Long time and no text! Sorry google! This NYC based jib operator has been busy busy busy thru the pandemic times. Fortunately business has gone well and I’ve been able to do a few equipment upgrades including two Sony PXW-FX9s and a Fujinon Cabrio 19-90 T2.9. The Cabrio lens is absolutely beautiful and covers the FX9 in 5k Full Frame. That allows a little bit more width on the lens which is wonderful on a jib.
The first use of the FX9/Cabrio 19-90 Combo came a few weeks ago. I turned into a Phiadelphia Jib Op for a day (or perhaps just a Bucks County one) and worked on a project at The Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, PA. The results were stunning! The image is magical and the servo functions like a dream come true. I honestly think I like this lens more than the Canon 17-120.
New Hope, PA was beautiful and sad it only lasted a day. I was back home by 7PM in Jersey City, NJ where Universal Jibs is based. In the coming weeks I may be turning into a Washington D.C. jib op or a Boston Jib op - we’ll where the bids take me!
Sony PXW-FX9 with Fujinon Cabrio 19-90 T2.9
Jibbing at the Bucks County Playhouse
Top 10 Ways for an Event Patron to Disturb a New York City Jib Operator
Top 10 Ways for an event Patron to Disturb a New York City Jib Operator!!
To be fair, these can be great ways to bug a Boston Jib Op, a Washington D.C. based jib op, a New Jersey Jib operator, or gasp….some guy with Cammate rig ; ). Operating a Jimmy Jib in New York City has its challenges with tight spaces and obstructions, so it’s best not to talk to a jib op while he or she is swinging a rig around. Here we go, the best ways to create distractions, ALL of which have happened to me.
Jump over a jib barrciade and slap the operator in the butt. It’s ideal to do this mid shot, on a tight zoom, and while the shot is live on IMAG.
Throw beach balls at the jib operator. Aim for the face!
When your favorite song plays at some kind of crazy teen event, everyone swarm the stage and climb over the bike rack baricades to get there.
Go near the jib operator and try to strike up a conversation despite the op working and having a heavy duty double muff headset on.
If and only if you are extremely tall, stand near the jib permitter, find a chair to stand on to be even higher OR put your kid on your shoulders.
If you’re a photographer, place an enormously tall monopod or flash stand very close to the jib.
If and only if it’s an extremely loud sound environment, approach the jib area looking very concerned and like you have a very big issue on your hands. It’s super loud, so you can’t really hear anything but eventually get to the point that you need to plug in your phone somewhere or else your Instragram Live is going to go down!
When the jib op and assistant are on break, go unplug all the gear to charge your phone and vape pen. .
Leave unfished drinks or empty glasses near the jib for the operator to inadvertantly kick over.
Dress up in a gorilla costume and throw bananas at the jib operator.
What is the right size jib for the job?
As a rule of thumb, in a stage environment you want to avoid a jib arm crossing more than 1/3rd the length of the stage. This helps keep the jib out of other camera angles but also lets the widest point of a shot still look very wide. If the arm is going any further along the stage, your wide can result in a cameo appearances of the jib rig and operator! But what about jobs where there isn’t a stage and it’s just an open space? Being a NYC based jib operator, you see venues and spaces of all kinds. A good rule of thumb is to make sure your arm isn’t built so big that you don’t have room to boom around. If the space is 40 wide, then a 30’ reach jib would have a 90’ degree boom radius. An 18’ jib reach would have considerably more boom radius and be a lot more appropriate. With camera crane/jib operator gigs in and around New York City/Philadelphia, ceiling height and what’s around you also is a big factor. Let’s say there is a chandalier close by to where your footprint is. You need to make a judgement call if it’s easy to avoid OR if it’s better to build 3’ shorter so you don’t have to even think about dodging it. No one likes having to use a shorter arm for safety, but if the camera can boom right up to a cool lighting fixture or grid, then you’re in for setting up some amazing shots! Lastly, how high or low the camera needs to go is something to consider. When using the larger Triangle Jib sizes, you have 6 and 9’ ballast arms. To get extra lens height, you set up the tripod legs to be higher. The flip side is that it gets very difficult to boom close to the ground. It’s important to get a feel for the zone you need to be swinging in before you build a rig.
30’ Jimmy Jib Triangle at Parx Casino outside of Philadelphia. Jibbing around lights needs to be done carefully, but there’s a lot of cool perspectives to be had!
Jibs vs Drones Part 3: Practicality
Another installment of jibs vs drones! This time, let chat about the practicality of both. Say you want to do live sweeping shots a parade and be connected to a live switch. That seems like it’s a slam dunk for a jib right right? However, it’s surprising the number of people that are trying to turn to drones for this. Of course, the drone can soar far about the parade lending views a jib could never do! But is this practical? First of all, let’s forget the legality issues with doing that as it’s sort of obvious there would be loads of them. Let’s focus on work flows. A drone needs frequent battery changes, is not as weather proof, and only get you a handful of shots. Jibs can run off AC and don’t burn thru battery power nearly as fast, so that lets us provide much more sustained coverage. With proper rain gear, jib rigs are impervious to torrential rain that would make a drone crash almost instantly. The drone would be locked into some kind of blimp camera angle. That’s an amazing shot, but it’s not nearly as versatile as a jib would be. When I’m jibbing a parade for example, I position the end of my arm to come within a few feet of the floats. This lets me very high and wide but still maintain an eye angle to the people on the ground. It also lets me zoom right into close ups of people on the float and give the effect of flight within that space. Doing this with a drone would certainly be an amazing skill set, but those propellors can slice a person up very easily so it’s just too risky. Even the smallest contact with a tiny branch can knock an sUAS out of the sky. For now and years to come, it’s simply not technologically feasible to do this kind of camera work with a drone. This doesn’t mean a drone shouldn’t be considered for some grandiose high and wide shots, they will look amazing!
Why jib ops love wide angle lenses?
Why are always asking for super wide lenses when we get a say in lens choice? This tends to apply most to events, cool spaces, or epic scenes. The jib has a role of establishing the space BUT also taking you into it. You don’t need much zoom to achieve this b/c the tight camera angles will capture those details. I have two polar opposite situations where wide angle lenses are super useful to me. The first one is MMA and the second is orchestras! In MMA, you want to position the end of the jib so it comes just over the cage bar. With a solid 2/3” 14x4.3 or a 4.5x13, you can usually fit the entire cage in your shot when flying around it. When it’s time to take viewer into the cage, you can boom out from the crowd, go super high over the cage, and then drift down INTO it for quite an experience if you’re watching it on a big TV at home. For orchestras, a lot of clients love the jib right on the stage to get the perspective of flying over the musicians. A super wide zoom lets you get the entire stage in the shot and zoom right into close ups of fingers on instruments or bows moving on violins! On top of that, you can start doing jib moves zoomed in while booming in the opposite direction to create a pretty trippy effect!
Jib Operator in New York City Using The SmallHD 1303!
OK. sorry to bore everyone with writing about this again. I’m not sure if anyone actually reads this, so it might not matter ; ) I used the SmallHD1303HDR yesterday jibbing a parade in Manhattan. I had an 18’ Jimmy Jib Triangle set up on a super bright sidewalk on 42nd st between 2nd and 3rd avenues. The morning sun was insanely intense and I even got a touch of sunburn despite it barely touching 70degrees. Despite all of this, I could see the smallest details and focus was rock solid. Meanwhile, in video village the director crew had rigs a whole lot of flags on C stands to block the sun. This monitor made SUCH a difference.
New Gear for Universal Jibs - NYC Jib Operator at work!
Universal Jibs is excited to announce adding a SmallHD 1303 HDR monitor to the equipment roster! This monitor is amazing and has been something I’ve been wanting to punch on for a while. Being a jib operator in New York City (NYC) means we can be outside in all kinds of weather, including the sweltering heat and humidity you’d think was only reserved Florida. The SmallHD1303 has a brightness of 1500 nit which makes seeing the monitor with the sun right over your shoulder easy as can be. Prior to acquiring this unit, I used a combo of a Marshall MDVLCD9 and SmallHD702 Bright for outdoors. The Marshall monitor is an early model daybright, but no where near the screen power as SmallHD. It was however, a bigger screen size so it was easier on the eyes and I could just have the SmallHD unit set to the side incase the sun really started to obstruct my view for pulling focus or framing. As luck would have it, I was on a job where the 3 Phase power was set up incorrectly for the whole production, which was a live dinner event for about 5,000 people. The event literally kept going in to darkness over and over again while they tried to figure this out!! My Marshall became a victim of circumstance so I was suddenly in the market again for a monitor. I was torn between Boland and SmallHD Daybrights but ultimately I was just on set filming a few days for the PBS Series “Breakthroughs” and the directors monitor was a smallHD 1703. I was blown away by EVERYTHING on it…..2 weeks later I finally got enough guts to punch it : )
Using Jib on IMAG: Part 1
So why use something that typically does wide shots on IMAG? Usually IMAG is used to show something you can’t see which is far away right? Jibs have an amazing way of connecting all of the production elements in space to give the viewer a much better experience of of what’s going on in there. Sitting in audience, you don’t usually notice things like the uplights on walls, lighting gobos on ceilings, light beams going thru haze, the lighting grid, or just sheer size of the space. Since jibs have an ability to fly thru the air and often feature wide angle lens, they can connect all of these elements and show them off as a whole work of art vs noticing them one at a time. Jibs connect the viewer into an exciting environment, even if that person is sitting in a chair right there! A jib can start off a shot that is super wide showing all these elements and fly right into a close up of someone on stage, what’s cooler than that?? Watching that on the big screens is far more exciting to see than a placeholder graphic dissolving into a person at a lectern finally ready to speak. That graphic is really there to hide the person walking up, doing the fake move to the lectern but getting caught with hand shakes, shuffling papers out, putting reading glasses on….dropping the reading glasses, A2 running up to the stage to adjust the mic for someone having trouble…. Why not have some awesome jib shots to pace this all out OR just show off the crowd?? : )
Check out the shot below. This is great b/c you can see the program feed on a big screen! As I fly in, you can see how it’s a little bit chaotic around the lectern. There’s a few hand shakes in the speaker switch off, not everyone is sure where to go, etc. If you just be a little bit wider and fly in, you can hide some of this and cut right back in when the speaker is fully ready.
The video above shows off all of the amazing lighting at this wedding event space. This gives you a view you cannot get sitting in a chair in the audience!
Jib Vs Drones Part 2: Legal
The saga continues, Drone or Jib?? They both have their uses but this series is more about considerations which may not always be obvious and that leads up to the legal subject. Not all drone operations are legal to do in the eyes of the FAA. Furthermore, the rules of Part 107 gave communities the go ahead to make their own laws and ordinances on the subject. Flying within the rules of the FAA may actually be violating some kind of local regulation. For example, there are plenty areas within New York City that are not Class B controlled airspace but the city still has banned drones everywhere except AMA fields. Other towns in NJ have made it illegal to fly a drone anywhere other than the lateral limits of private property. It’s getting intense nonetheless! Jibs are still a very handy resource in red tape situations like these.
What is helpful is that an automatic authorization system for surface level class B, C, D, and E airspace has gone live around many airports in the country. This changed the authorization process massively as it may only take a few moments on an app vs 90 days with the FAA. However, what do you do if you can’t get an authorization OR you get an authorization but local regulations prevent you from flying?? If you can’t get authorized, it’s game over. Then it’s jib time. If you do get authorized but it’s still illegal to fly? You may be dealing with red tape, more asking for permission, or going back to the ole reliable camera jib.
Drone flights directly over people are still NOT allowed by the FAA or by local governments. You can fly “around” people but the flight path can’t go directly over anyone. Some cities have restricted this even further by creating specific regulations to keep drones away from people. For massive shots directly over people, jibs still are the best and safest option.
If you think airspace may cause an entanglement for a shoot you a planning, please feel free to reach out to me at steve@Universaljibs.com to discuss options!
Rain Gear - Protect the Jib
I’m probably way to excited about this subject, but having proper rain gear has really saved me from having to replace parts on the Jimmy Jibs. Being a NYC based jib rental operation in the summer months means it can be sunny one minute and pouring rain the next. I found wrapping electronic components with garbage backs to do well except for certain potentiometers on the zoom/focus handles would die and occasionally there’d be trouble inside the control box. Shooter Slicker makes amazing rain covers for Jimmy Jibs and can customize anything for your particular needs. https://www.shooterslicker.com Since investing in these easy to use covers, I haven’t had to do a single repair following a gig in a monsoon. They have a great control box cover which I have modified to seal around an israeli arm mount for my monitor. Being a jib operator in New York City also means shooting in the freezing weather! The control handle covers come in handy in the winter as well b/c you can put pocket heaters in there to help keep your hands warm on a cold day! I’m still in search of warm gloves that give you full function on touch screens and tactile touch on controls. For now I layer up latex gloves with pocket heaters in the control covers.
Jib and Drone Footage: Fun with Slow Mo!
In my spare time I’ll get out into more secluded areas in NJ and break out the drone. Slow mo helps capture the true beauty of natural elements. They often happen way too fast to take them in so seeing them from angles you can’t be in or at speeds that don’t exist is a great way to change things up. Check it out. I promise this waterafall is much bigger in real life. It’s approximately 25’ from the base to the top!
Canon CN-E 17-120 on a JIB
What a wonderful lens! Many times a year the client springs for the Canon CN-E 17-120 F2.8 and they never regret it. When shooting live content and with large sensor cameras, it’s always tricky keeping up with focus. It gets especially tricky if the jib is swinging around aggressively. Cine servo lenses such as the Canon CN-Es or Fuji Cabrios help solve this issue as they are fully parfocal servo zoom lenses. They blend the functionality of a 2/3” broadcast zoom lens with the super35 world. The CN-E 17-120 is a lens I particularly like to use….I know who doesn’t like a $25k+ lens?! The servo motor is extremely clean and accurate. I can start jib moves and at any point sneak into a super subtle push. You should expect this kind of quality from high end ENG lenses, but I haven’t quite experienced a lens that was THIS accurate with its servo. A good measure of quality is how easily you can start and stop a zoom from it’s beginning and end points. With lesser quality ENG lenses or simply beat up ones, I find the starts/stops aren’t perfect. When completely wide, you sometimes get that dreaded zoom bump when starting a push. I work around this by tapping on the zoom control to get the lens slightly off the starting point. It does not give any noticeable amount of push, but it allows me to comfortably sneak into a push without having to think about it. On the 17-120 this is never a worry!
Jibs Vs Drones Part 1: AUDIO
It’s a common question DPs often have for me and unfortunately the answer isn’t always clear cut. Big swooping wide shots are very important tools for editors as they transition scenes together and connect you into a larger space. But what is better when you need to consider audio?
Jibs make very little noise and often the fans on larger sensor cameras are far louder than anything electronic on a Jimmy Jib. This means all of the swoops and establishing shots can be accomplished capturing live audio! Drones are very loud and even the smallest and quietest ones will sound like a landscaper is out to drive your field recordist crazy. If audio capture is important, then jib is the way to go.
There is a gray area here though. What if it’s an outdoor wedding and you’d like some big shots? The drone flying 400’ off the ground may not interfere with audio if it’s a small unit, but you lose a lot of perspective and intimacy of the shots. That being said, maybe you want a few of those big shots to show off the surrounding? However, if you are flying low enough so the subjects don’t look like ants, you are probably ruining the audio a well as making all of the guest listen to a drone! A large format jib such as an 18-30’ Jimmy Jib Triangle, paired with a wide angle lens, will get an impressive height perspective and also allow you to zoom close up to the subjects without disturbing audio capture or the event itself!
