SWAMP - 2-Day Intensive Grip Workshop

When:

July 24, 2010

About the Event:

When: Saturday July 24 and Sunday July 25, 2010
10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Where: Houston Community College - Spring Branch

Instructor: Billy MacTavish

Cost: General Public - $95
SWAMP Members & Students - $75

About the workshop: Some of the most highly trained technicians on a film set are the Grips. Good ones make the demanding, challenging, fast paced and complicated engineering that they perform to shape shadows and light look easy. They rig cameras on cars, and hang lights for the electricians in mid-air. They build building size tents that allow for the filming of a night time scene in the middle of the day, and they provide the physical camera movement that adds production value to a scene.

This two-day workshop will give you a working knowledge of what the Grip Department does on a film set. Come get the hands on training and knowledge about the equipment and tools that are used everyday on a set to create the mood and feel of Hollywood films.

Day one will start with a few basic but necessary knots, and how to properly set a C-stand and end with the complexities of rigging a car mount.

Day two will put into practice the practical skills covered in day one with the filming of several interior and exterior scenes that use all of the equipment covered on day one. The climax of which will be a low angle tire screeching camera shot on a car mount. Day two's set-up will be filmed and viewed at the end of the class.

Some of the equipment that will be covered is:
• Apple Boxes
• C-Stands
• Grip heads
• 12 x 12 Overheads
• 20 x 20 Greenscreen
• Flags, Nets and Silks
• Dolly Track Leveling
• Knots
• Mafer & Cartalini Clamps
• Scissors Clips & rigging hardware
• Lolly-pops & turtle stands
• Matthews & Speedrail based car mounts
• Rocky Mountain Legs and much, much more.

Billy MacTavish has nearly 20 years of experience as a professional director of photography, camera assistant, grip, gaffer and set electrician in Houston. His credits include "Arlington Road," "Rushmore," "Friday Night Lights" and dozens more films! Billy currently serves as an adjunct professor at the Houston Community College, where he teaches in the Filmmaking program.

Registration for this workshop to begin soon! Please keep checking our website for more information.