Managing shoot equipement via Milk Crates ?

[PatrickFaith]

I have about 8-12 milk crates of "stuff" I use on shoots. My shoots I have to deal with are low budget locations where I do multiple week shoots at a single location (where an entire film is done just at a few locations), but the locations aren't really made for filming so I'm navigating things like stairs of a two story house, garage steps, backyard walkways. I'd love to use the larger "back stage" carts, but my back isn't perfect and those carts get over 100 pounds without the crates in them.

Before I make the purchase, I'd like some feedback if anyone has used the "Gleason Collapsible Milk Crate" dolly's ( http://www.filmtools.com/gripdept/carts-dollies/collapsible-milk-crate-caddy-cart.html ) . If anyone has any better idea's i'm all ears. My crates hold cords, grip stuff, kessler motion control stuff, multiple small tool/bolt/fastener cases ... basically everything I need aside from the actual camera equipment for a shoot that will fit inside a milk crate. I have separate cart for the DIT and larger lighting equipment. I also like to keep organized so i'm not searching the whole world for something, so pre-shoot I do setups in the crates and only move what I need for the days shoot (so move the crates to the right rooms).

Thanks for help.

 

[PatrickFaith]

I went ahead with this, is so great on my back, plus am able to move around a ton of gear quickly(even over sets of steps). Here's my general setup:

I btw really like working through filmtools.com, and the backstage cart works perfectly with the Gleason truck. I did put felt under the gleason truck on the bottom steel rails for when I'm inside. LMAO ... i got this image reversed.

 

[Daniel Reed]

Sweet, thanks for sharing!

I pelican major gear, but I often use a couple crates for random stuff like spuds, gloves, C74s/C47s, stingers, etc.

This looks great for that AND I dig how the crates become sliding drawers.


Let us know how it goes :auto:

 

[Eric M Hurt]

My gaffer loves the DeWalt Tough Boxes for a smaller mobile set up. He put together two for the truck, one grip and one electric. He just rolls them onto set. He says the rest of the guys dig them as well.

http://www.grainger.com/product/7AY...7AY33&ef_id=UuQApAAABALTWhEW:20151102201702:s

 

[David W. Jones]

Patrick, I have been meaning to build a Milk Crate Truck for some time now but I have just been too darn busy. So I went ahead and ordered the Gleason model like you did. I have really been needing a smaller cart like this, and will be happy once it arrives.

Dave

 

[David W. Jones]

So Filmtools is out of stock on Milk Crates and they won't ship my cart for another week.

Gee I can get milk crates off ebay and have them here in 3 days. :crazy:

 

[Elsie N]

My gaffer loves the DeWalt Tough Boxes for a smaller mobile set up. He put together two for the truck, one grip and one electric. He just rolls them onto set. He says the rest of the guys dig them as well.

http://www.grainger.com/product/7AY...7AY33&ef_id=UuQApAAABALTWhEW:20151102201702:s

that looks good and sturdy. But I opted for a cheaper solution in the Stanley FatMax.

 

[PatrickFaith]

Sweet, thanks for sharing!I pelican major gear, but I often use a couple crates for random stuff like spuds, gloves, C74s/C47s, stingers, etc.This looks great for that AND I dig how the crates become sliding drawers.Let us know how it goes :auto:

I really still really like the setup. I'm doing a bunch of vr cinema surround sound stuff and have also found it really useful for all that (vr sound starts getting as much stuff as camera stuff).

My gaffer loves the DeWalt Tough Boxes for a smaller mobile set up. He put together two for the truck, one grip and one electric. He just rolls them onto set. He says the rest of the guys dig them as well.http://www.grainger.com/product/7AY...7AY33&ef_id=UuQApAAABALTWhEW:20151102201702:s

I think that is excellent for remote stuff. My setup is good as long as things are relatively flat and not a ton of stairs.

Patrick, I have been meaning to build a Milk Crate Truck for some time now but I have just been too darn busy. So I went ahead and ordered the Gleason model like you did. I have really been needing a smaller cart like this, and will be happy once it arrives.Dave

I love the Gleason, I find it super flexable. I bet ya some large production came in and gobbled a ton of stuff up, so it should be available soon.

that looks good and sturdy. But I opted for a cheaper solution in the Stanley FatMax.

I use one of those for my Kessler gear, that format I find more useful on larger steelish things with a lot of pieces. My main problem with that is the handle that moves up/down seems to get jammed.


Shot today of the gleason/crates:

 

[Steve DiMaggio]

whats the audio gear with the fairchild meters?

 

[PatrickFaith]

whats the audio gear with the fairchild meters?

I like to do old school film sound mixed with the modern surround sound. That cloth hanging down is a KU4 (i.e. a remake of the old standard ku3 ribbon mic which was used in hollywood in the big 40-50s films -> which also goes through a bunch of tube gear). I find mixing the high tech sound (array of ccm41 to the nagra) with the old school portable tube racks helps me set the scene. Funy story, someone today touched my original fairchild tool set which I had layed out, which I kind of freaked and said "your touching the sacred toolset" (it was a gift set given to fairchild employee's in the 60's). I'm probably way over the edge, but I also run through the old portable ku3 pre-amp that use to drive the telephone lines to the recording station (op-6). Time will tell if obsessing over sound makes sense, but it's just how I do things.

 

[David W. Jones]

Funny, I worked at a radio station many many years ago which had Fairchild, Collins, well every big time compressor every high end studio wants badly now, and I hated using them as they introduced a huge amount of noise. Of course no telling when any of them had been serviced.

 

[PatrickFaith]

Funny, I worked at a radio station many many years ago which had Fairchild, Collins, well every big time compressor every high end studio wants badly now, and I hated using them as they introduced a huge amount of noise. Of course no telling when any of them had been serviced.

I get a lot of advice from industry experts, I'm using a different technology base then they use, but I'm always trying to derive the fundamental principle from what they are saying - then apply that to the new technology base. One thing I've "finally" gotten is conversational distance, how to record and mix to maintain a conversational distance. Radio is a great example of maintaining a conversational distance even when people are thousands of miles away and/or in random locations. So I use the old equipment (the New Old School (NOS) the pultec, sta-level , fairlchild (pre-transistor) & ku4 - which btw have very low noise levels which is not true if you get old equipment) to define that conversational distance (i.e. center channel) while the new tech surround stuff is for the other channels.

For this scene the surround sound mic is placed at the same location as the virtual camera that you can see in my latest blog posts (those are spherical deep images on my nuke display). On key plot pivots I like to align the camera location with sound recording location, even do the ADR at that specific physical location. It's pretty obvious in the dalies that this is a good thing to do, but from a practical equipement/personal/schedule viewpoint it's really tough. Using these milk crates with crate dolies and carts is pretty much required if your going to do a performance capture shoot, followed by a physical RED shoot, followed by a music session, followed by a ADR session - all at the same physical location and with camera and microphone alignments. Even then it's only practical when the crates are part of a studio that is built for this (I kind of think of it as an old time stage where all this equipment is quickly brought out as various acts are on). The spherical sound recording which is centered on the old school equipment has lobes using the new technology, which is then aligned with the spherical camera projections - all aligned to the realtime acquisition of the actor performance. So if you throw out the tech, i'm not sure there is anything in principle different then some ancient greek play, but the stage equipment in both cases turns out to be more complex then one would think.