When is a “Jimmy Jib Rental” or “NYC Jib Operator” better than a gimbal? Gimbals are an amazing tool to create the smaller scale motion of a jib shot, tracking shots, and much more. There is a lot of cross over with what a jib and gimbal can do! When it comes to live events, jibs are much more helpful in capturing the size and scale as the jib arm can physically move the camera from a few feet off the ground to 30’ in the air! However, a gimbal can do fun tracking shots such as flying down the length of an isle. These are both fantastic options! However, in live events people don’t enjoy staring at the operator’s back for too long. Gimbals tend to need to be right in the action which means they are parked right in front of people trying to see! With a jib flying from above, the base set up from further away, and arm constantly moving, the sight lines of the people attending a show are much better preserved. The jib also gets a much more grand perspective of a space since it can fly higher!
NYC Jib Op - Take on Congestion Pricing
Let’s dive right into this! There’s a lot of uncertainty on how congestion pricing is going to effect the economy below 60th st, how traffic/parking will work in boroughs close to bridge/tunnels, and if the results of less traffic will be maintained. Being a “Jib Op NYC” and offering “Jimmy Jib Rentals NYC” and keeping the shop in Jersey City, I’m right in the cross hairs of this extra toll. To be honest, it’s just another $6 at worst and it’s just the cost of doing business. I have to get my gear from A to B! However, I’ve noticed a huge reduction in traffic in all of my NYC travels and a nice reduction of traffic locally in Jersey City and Hoboken. In driving in NYC if you have to decide between saving 45min and saving $8-9 b/c you want to skip a toll tunnel or bridge, you aren’t thinking how time is $$. If this congestion pricing plan tones down traffic where my previous 90min trips to Queens just take 45min, it is well worth $6. I might even save that $$ not burning gas stuck in traffic! That being said, I only drive when I can’t carry what I have in a backpack. Obviously I can’t take “Jimmy Jib Rentals” or “Spider Pod Rentals NYC” on the train. But when I’m free to exist with a backpack, I get around Jersey City mostly on an E-scooter and take the PATH/Subway to where I need to go. One person in a car clogging up all those roads with just a back pack is crazy!
Jimmy Jib Rentals - Jib Op NYC
As we get closer to Super Bowl Sunday we enter a time of year of jib shortages! There are so many jibs in transit directly to the event, to pop up events around the country, and tied up shooting pre roll projects ahead of the event. It always amazes me how the frequency of local work picks up during the super bowl and the olympics simply bc so much equipment is gone! Google Jib Op NYC or jimmy jib rentals and I’m sure you’ll find a lot of people are booked. It’s always a great time to meet new clients, get new connections, and enjoy being busy without the intensity of working a major event.
Jimmy Jib Rental - Cine Camera Package ! Jib op NYC Talk
Earlier this year I made the call to move on from my Cabrio 19-90 as the main cine lens for the jib camera package. The picture results of the cabrio and fx9 combo were absolutely stunning, especially since the image circle covers 5k crop. However, I always wanted just a little more range from the lens and the opportunity to flip the 19-90 into a Canon 17-120 came last summer! The Canon lens is absolutely beautiful, just a little wider, and more tele. It still covers 5k crop yielding a wonderful width equivalent of just about 20-21mm. That is perfectly wide without getting into a slight fish eye distortion. I find DPs and directors for live broadcasts like that super wide distortion on TV lenses which is about the equivalent of 16mm. However, when it comes to cine projects, directors tend to avoid that look and 20mm gets you plenty wide without getting that grandiose super wide look…..but still very grand, if that makes sense : ). SO for the world to know, the main NYC FX9 Rental for cine kits is now features a Canon 17-120!
Jimmy Jib Rentals NYC - The Truth
The truth about Jib Rentals in NYC or Jimmy Jib Rentals in Boston is that these are tough cities to work in. Loading is difficult, a lot of buildings were never designed for large scale productions, and certain venues don’t even have loading docks,. Part of the grind of working with larger equipment is simply getting it in and out of the door without getting a parking ticket! At the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ you just pull up a vehicle right to a truck loading bay and often smaller vehicles are allowed to park in the dock area. You are loaded and parked in 10min! In Manhattan around 5th ave/midtown, you can have load ins that spiral thru a building, use multiple elevators, garage parking eats up a half hour, and it takes the better part of an hour just to get back to the stuff to start building! On smaller film sets, productions will have hire overnight parking fixers that are putting out fake cones or caution signs in parking spots as spaces free up! What other city works like that?! It’s tough being a jib operator in NYC!
Spider Pod Rentals NYC - Spider Pod NJ
New for 2025!! We aren’t just offering Jimmy Jib Rentals in NYC! We of course can crew full teams for cine or ENG capture styles of events. To help facilitate crewing and set up efforts, we offer up to (6) Spider Pods in NJ, NYC, Boston, or Washington DC. The spider pod is a great camera riser system that is much more compact than dual 4x4 stage decking. Weighing just about 45lbs, each unit folds up into a soft or hard case making transportation easy and possible in a minivan. Twelve 4x4 decks (two sets for six operators) would require far more set up space, a truck to deliver, crew for assembly, etc. Spider Pod Rentals in NYC or NJ are easily added on to jib rentals in NYC OR available for stand alone rentals.
Jib Rentals NYC and Happy New Year Wishes!
Universal Jibs is wishing all production folks in our tight knit community a wonderful and healthy new year! Hopefully everyone stays busy and profitable! 2025 is our year!
Camera Jib Rentals NYC
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.
