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!
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.
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!!
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.
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.
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!
