The meaning of
C-stand in the film production environment is used by the Grip department to accomplish various rigging and light modification task.
The name comes from the official term "
Century stand", which in turn comes from the earliest days of filmmaking, when the sun was the only major source of lighting;
reflectors were used to keep the light on actors. There are also other various ways to use the C-stand. Its primary purpose is to position various flags, color gels, bounce cards, and silks in front of light sources to block, direct, or modify the nature of the light. The production team also loves to use the stand to make wardrobe racks. We also like to use them for our
Kino Flo's and the
1200 Par HMI .
One of my task for the last few days was to change the "O" rings. Which are a part of the stand not many know about. Its a rubber piece that sits between each section of the stand. After awhile they start to fall apart, crack and just fall off. It can be unsafe if not replaced. Trust me, I got my finger smash a few times and it hurt! Replacing these is just one more thing we like to do for you, so everything goes smoothly on your shoot.
OK, well it's not actually Earth Day nation wide... just for us here at Hammer Lighting & Grip! Derek purchased two Red Sunset Maples recently and we finally have time and a perfect day to plant them.
They will go in front of the building and really look beautiful on the property. I can't wait until this fall when the leaves turn that great color!
Along with maintaining the grip trucks and lighting and grip equipment, we also like to spend time on our property. We have made many improvements to our lot over the last 2 years it's really looking great!
The staff here at Hammer Lighting and Grip has been busy over the last few weeks reorganizing the warehouse. With so much new equipment in the last two years we've found ourselves out of floor space so it was time to clean house, condense, and go UP. We bought a vintage 1974 Clark forklift (she's the same age as me) and rearranged our racking system. Julie has put all of the grip equipment in an awesome bin system that organizes each item into its own separate labeled (of course) bin. Sean rearranged some of the other lighting and grip equipment onto the shelves. We put our overflow stock up high and we made a lot of extra floor space. That means that all of our trucks still fit inside this Winter which means that we'll have fewer worries about trucks starting on cold mornings which means that we are the Midwest lighting and grip rental company thats looking out for YOU. It also means the many jobs that require lots of cable or other large heavy things can be loaded by forklift, keeping costs down here, which keeps costs down for you.
The lighting rental equipment here at Hammer Lighting and Grip is constantly changing. It is my job to make sure that we have every bit of information on the items coming in and out of our rental inventory at our fingertips at all times. I created what I enjoy calling the "Mega Master Inventory List" many, many months ago. However, I cannot seem to complete this project. We keep finding more rental gear to add to it. I never realized how much lighting and grip equipment you must have to run a rental house like this. Even just today I found a few pieces of grip equipment in our warehouse that was not on this list. There are so many things that have been custom made or ordered for certain productions that nobody even knows about! My goal is to provide our customers with all of the information on these pieces so they can take advantage of the specialty items that exist right here in Indianapolis!
Please call us at 317-547-GRIP if there is something in particular you are looking for or visit our website at
www.hammergrip.tv! Check back often because as I said before, it is constantly being updated!
Our job here at Hammer Lighting and Grip is often about maintaining and improving our rental inventory. Sometimes in the process we learn something new or find a great resource. Grip equipment is rare and often doesnt come with a manual. Lighting rental isnt included in the "For Dummies" book series. I was working today to order some parts to fix some damaged Cardellini clamps and ran across this page. Take a look.
http://cardellini.com/clamp_info
Along with our lighting and grip rentals, we also have plenty of grip equipment to sell! We recently had Steve Jensen, a local freelancer by day/carpenter by night, build us some apple boxes for our grip trucks. We decided to have him build extras for anybody who might want a set or two. Give us a call at 547-GRIP or check them out in our display room if you are interested!
Ok, so we have made a few changes to
Hammer Lighting & Grip. It is now easier and better to look at our truck packages. You may now click on which truck you would like to rent for your next shoot. Please make sure you check them well because we have taken off a few items and rearranged them so we do not go over the DOT weight regulations.
Well, we have them! We have a variety of
Production supplies that you might not even think a Lighting and Grip company has. We have from 6ft to 8ft tables, to metal chairs for you catering needs. We have EZ-UP 10x10 and 10x20 tents for those Indiana rainy days or hot summers. How about radios? Well we have those too. There are Motorola GP300 VHF Radios for $15.00 each. This package comes with extra batteries, headsets, security headsets, speaker mics as requested. As well as the 6 radio charger to charge the extra batteries while you are shooting away. Come check out our website for more Production supplies options.
Lately, We have been wearing out our Green screens with so many shoots whether its small like our
8x8 or big like our
20x30. We recently had the opportunity to work with ESPN again for the Indy 500. They needed to fill an area with a Green Screen that had was bigger than our 20x30 and our 20x20 combined. That also had match with no seams in the middle.
So we had the opportunity to buy a
NEW 20x40 Chromakey Green Screen for them to rent and to also put in our backdrop inventory!!!
Now we have pretty good size inventory of Green Screens and also Blue Screens. The best thing about it is that our 20x30 now matches our 20x40. So the options are out there to do whatever your creative minds can think of with so much Green screen!
Hey everyone! I just wanted to write a quick post about the past 3 weeks here at
Hammer Lighting & Grip! Like my last post I wrote I said I loved May because we are always really busy with all the pre shoots with all the drivers. We have had a great time working with some of the best people at ESPN.
We got to first work on what we all call the the "Indianapolis 500 Tease". You ask "what's that mean"? Well, turn to your TVs to
WRTV 6 on Race day for Pre-Race between 7-8pm and then at 8:00pm right before the race actually starts you will see an introduction for the race. Derek ended up working on that job and on the last day asked if I would want to be an extra. Of course I said yes. When do I ever get an opportunity to leave my normal job here and actually see what all my work goes too! So my husband and I headed down to the Speedway to be extras on the 70's version of the commercial. So look out Hollywood here we come!!
As we all know the month of May is finally here. In the Midwest this is a pretty big deal! I have to say this one of my favorite times of the year. There is just something about the Indianapolis 500, the people, and the events around the
Indianapolis Motor Speedway .
There are also many other events that go on in May's such as the
Indy 500 festival which includes a Parade in downtown Indianapolis, the Mini Marathon and the opening of the summer concert series!
This is also one of the busiest months at
Hammer Lighting and Grip. We have plenty of gear around for any of your Lighting and Grip Equipment needs. So come on over to our
shop or give us a call we would be glad to help!
In my mind, the worst thing a lighting rental house could do is stop the ebb and flow of gear. Here at
Hammer Lighting & Grip, we are always buying and selling rental equipment. We have already replaced 3
grip trucks and 2
generators in our 11 years in business. This is especially important with
HMI's. The technology is so new that we must keep buying and selling HMI's so that we are constantly improving the quality of our inventory. Manufacturers are always making changes to their lights. For example,
Kino Flo improved the design on their backplates. They have changed the 4 push pins design into a easier and safer twist lock backplate. This is a great improvement and we will soon be switching all of our heads and backplates to the new design but it will cost us about $300 per light!
Although these improvements can be expensive, we think they are very important to maintaining our top of the line lighting and grip equipment.
Recently at
Hammer Lighting and Grip we have had a great opportunity to rent our Grip Trucks, Camera Dollies, Lights and our Generators to a few Independent Films. Last year we got to work on the movie
www.mynameisjerry.com . It was all filmed in Muncie, In.
This year we are doing two, yes I said two
Independent Films at once!!! That means the month of April will be busy. We have BOTH our
3 Ton Truck and our
4Ton Truck out for a full month. We're supplying them with camera dollies and generators too. Now, this doesn't mean we are out of trucks, dollies, lights and generators. We have plenty of options to get you the truck package you will need. We don't want to you to forget about our
1 Ton and our
5 Ton Grip Trucks that are sitting waiting to be loaded up with lots of gear!!
A customer asked me yesterday, "How do you wash this green screen?" He had just rented our 20' x 30' Chromakey green screen and hung it in a studio downtown Indianapolis.
This question made me laugh because it just so happened that we had washed it 3 times in the past week. It originally had some footprints on it and hadn't been washed in a while. So we took all of the strings off of the edges of it and called our friends at Classic Cleaners. They pick it up, wash it in one of their super-sized washers, and deliver it back to us in a plastic tote so it doesn't dry out. Then we retie all the strings on it, build a 20' x 30' frame in the shop, and carefully hang the green screen without letting it hit the floor! We hang it on a frame while it's still wet to keep the fabric from shrinking.
After doing this once, we noticed a mysterious stain right in the middle of it. So, after repeating these steps not 1, but 2 more times, we finally got the green screen spotless and ready for its next job.
This time-consuming process might explain why we like to keep it as clean as possible! Dirty grip boots are prohibited!
I've spent the last few days working on one of our three generators that we offer for rent. It's an older unit with a long history in our market but, as with all of our gear, we're constantly efforting to bring you the highest quality Lighting and Grip rental equipment in the Midwest. We've given it a bit of a facelift, gone through all of the mechanicals; added a newer, better fuel tank, and performed the usual periodic maintenance. Why? Why would I want to get my hands dirty and play mechanic when I could hire it out? I do it because it gives me an intimate relationship with each and every piece of gear that we own. When it comes to generator rental in the Midwest, we're the ones you can count on!
Did you know that we stock all of the most commonly used lighting and grip expendables right here in Indianapolis?
We have a display room filled with all kinds of globes, gel, rope, and tape (like the 2" black gaffers tape pictured here). If you venture on into our warehouse you'll find different types of showcard and foamcore amongst our lighting and grip equipment.
Why hunt these items down and ship them from L.A. when we have it right here for you? Just stop by and pick it up before your next production! Or give us a call and we can have it on your doorstep in no time.
One of the most asked about items from our lighting and grip rental inventory is the camera dolly.
We have a total of 5 riding camera dollies but 1 of them has been left in the dark! The most forgotten about dolly is the Matthews Western. It has a HUGE platform with a 1200 lb capacity. Its wide tires make it perfect for transporting equipment across rough, sandy, or super soft terrain (like astro turf fields)! If you're worried about losing the capabilities of the Fisher dolly, just throw one of our J.L. Fisher 10 or 11's on top of the Western and go! It also makes a great platform for a jib arm. So, next time you call us to order a dolly, don't forget about the Western! Yeehaw!
Midwest winters can take a toll on a lighting and grip rental company. I was out taking a stroll after lunch today to assess the impact of this winter on our grounds. We fared pretty well aside from a few landscaping tasks. As I was walking along I noticed a crawdad who was apparently just waking from a long winter nap. I picked him up and noticed that he was missing a claw. As I examined the claw I realized how much some of our grip equipment looks like that claw and how strong both can be. Pound for pound, that little crayfish is probably way stronger than any grip clamp. However, it's hard to get a truck load of crayfish to work and they small far worse than a bunch of grips (hard to believe, i know). So, your only consolation is to call us. We have grip trucks from 1 ton to 5 ton and a couple in between. They're loaded with clamps, pipe, wood, and a whole lot of other goodies just waiting to hang, clamp, span, dangle, or suspend anything on your next job. Think of us as the "do anything that anyone else on the crew can't" guys. Yes we're grips. No, we don't smell like crayfish.
Well, It was a long cold winter here at Hammer Lighting & Grip! I'm staring out my office window at green grass, new leaves, and trash! It's time for some spring cleaning. That reminded me of something you might not have known about us. It's a small thing but I think it says big things about how we roll. I looked around a film or video set that we were lighting one day at all of the trash and it disgusted me. For some reason the lift gate on the grip truck collects all sorts of empty water bottles, gel scraps, tape, you name it! So, we found these handy little collabsible 20 gallon trash cans that neatly store on every truck. Viola! Clean. No more empty water bottles on the camera dollies! I always want us to be known as the "clean" lighitng rental house. I said it was a small thing. But I think it says big things about our phiosophy.
GRIP GEAR IN A TRAILER? BRILLIANT! 
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