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!
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 : )