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 : )