TV Commercial Production: Grip Tales 1

• Posted on 21st December 2015
• in Entertainment, entertainment books, Film Production, Hollywood memoirs, TV Commercial Production
• by Ben

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Here are two excerpts from my

TV Commercial Production

book Circumstances Beyond My Control

From “Openers”

“There is a lot of talk in this volume about members of film crews. For me the most satisfying and fun aspect of working as a producer and AD [First Assistant Director] has been the camaraderie and relationships – both short and long term – with the people on the crews. Film technicians are among the most interesting folks with whom I have ever had contact. I used the word “technicians” but that’s too limiting a term. Many of them are actual artists and, with few notable exceptions, all are highly skilled craftsmen. I know, lots of them are women but “craftspeople” is an inelegant word, is it not? By the time I’d been in the production world for a couple of years most of my friends were (and still are) people who work in that challenging and exciting profession.

“I have often said, not entirely in jest, that if I were ever stranded on a desert island (with a person who was not an attractive woman) I would want it to be a key grip. These are people who know how to get things done. Every day they are called upon to solve unforeseen problems and to satisfy unplanned impulses of directors, DPs [Director of Photography] and stars.”

From Chapter 14: This is but one story of many about the ingenuity and creativity of a Key Grip.

“David Fang Yuen, an immigrant Chinese-Australian with an engineering background, is physically compact, fast with his “feet” and his mouth. (Fang is now a DP and at last report was teaching at a film school in Florida.)”

“Ray Baker had a job for Hoover vacuum cleaners and we were shooting in a suite of a Manhattan hotel. We had brought a minimal package of grip equipment since it was supposed to be a simple scene, one or two setups on a dolly, in and out in three hours. As so often happens the location inspired the creativity of the director and Ray said to Fang, ‘Can you get me an angle shooting in the window?’ We had no rigging equipment and were on the 17th floor. Fang looked at his small bundle of 2X4s and batten, asked me if there was a hi-hat (low angle camera support) on the truck. There was. He spoke briefly with his second and replied, ‘Thirty minutes.’ Half an hour later an Arri 2C [Arriflex 35mm Movie Camera] was hanging safely 200 feet above Madison Avenue and Ray had his shot. …No one but me seemed to think that what David Fang Yuen and his grip crew had accomplished was extraordinary.”

In  my TV Commercial Production book Circumstances Beyond My Control there are many more Grip Tales. Get it here.

Tags: David Fang Yuen, Ray Baker