Hitchhiker: Creative Gaffing and Gripping For The No-Budget Set

The lighting and grip crews are departments that too often don’t really get the respect they deserve. Lighting is headed by the Gaffer, a funny sounding word, made funnier by its use amongst the Hobbits in Lord of the Rings. That both the Key Grip and Gaffer’s assistants are called the Best Boy doesn’t make life any easier. More importantly, however, the practice of lighting and rigging the set is seen as mechanical, and any creativity involved is assumed to have come from the Cinematographer / Director of Photography.

But not all Cinematographers lord over their Gaffer. Many rely on the Gaffer’s experience to help them achieve the look they’re going for, giving general directions rather than micromanaging the placement of every light. The best Cinematographers develop the same kind of trust relationship with their Gaffer that the best Directors do with their Cinematographers. By learning each others’ styles and how to work together, a Cinematographer and Gaffer can develop a shorthand for quickly creating the right look for every shot.

Grips tend to get even less respect than Gaffers, even though they are essential to pulling off complex shots. Dolly grips, TechnoCrane operators, and the like are critical for Directors and Cinematographers that want the most sophisticated camera moves they can get. The rigging that Grips do ensures the safety of the cast and crew who are all standing beneath potentially tons of lights and light modifiers. Rigging problems can be quite vexing, and require some very creative solutions. A smart, talented Key Grip is just as critical to a shoot as any other lead role.

For no-budget shooting, lighting and rigging can become very creative. Even on a big set that creative problem solving can be the difference between hitting the look or not, but because no-budget shooters are always running low on time and money, there may be no second chances or backup plans.

On Hitchhiker, we had to shoot long dialog sequences inside a car. The actor was rightfully worried about trying to act while actually driving, particularly with a camera rig hanging off the car. Since we had nowhere near the budget for a truck or trailer rig, even a jury-rigged one, we decided to shoot indoors and do rear projection.

Erick built the rear projection screen using PVC pipe and translucent plastic from Home Depot. One interesting thing that we didn’t even think about until I noticed a problem on-set was whether or not the translucent material was color neutral. It wasn’t, and I wound up having to adjust the color of all of our footage in Final Cut Pro in order to compensate for the fact that the plastic caused a color shift towards green.

Because the original plan was to shoot more footage in a moving car than we ultimately did, a substantial part of the budget had been used to purchase a car rig that wound up not getting used much in its expensive configuration). But its suction cups became the basis for a cheap setup that Erick rigged to allow the camera to move with the car (which was jittered by someone pushing on the bumper — subtely, to make it seem as if it was hitting minor road bumps).

Car Rig and Rear Projection Screen with Emma, Dani, Austin, Danielle

You can see above that the car rig involves a long straight bracket (actually, two of them) bolted to the suction cups and stuck to the car. The camera is then mounted to the bracket with a metal L-brace, and reinforced by being strapped to the bracket by the handle (one strap holds the long, heavy homebrew 35mm lens adapter Emma built, so it doesn’t torque off). The image below has the straps outlined in red so you can see the basic idea (assume one of the straps runs down and is hiding the bracket, which is the case in that bad photo):

Me and Erick hamming it up for the camera, next to the Car Rig and the Rim Light Rig (and Danielle, Brandon and Austin)

To keep the camera from jittering/swinging side-to-side or front-to-back, a simple counterweight and stabilization system can be added to the rig: a tripod.

The bracket also helps prevent this — if you only had straps and no L-bracket in your rig, you’d need the tripod even more. But even with the bracket, because of some of the parts not fitting together perfectly, the whole rig was a bit loose. So the tripod also generally served to help generally maintain the camera angle even though the bracket was also doing part of that job.

Loosening the vertical lock to allow the camera to travel vertically is the trick, and the tripod does the rest in terms of helping maintain camera position, preventing swing and saving your camera if your rig fails (ours didn’t).

Car Rig with Dani, Danielle, and Austin

You may be wondering: “What is that mess at the opposite end of the rig bracket?” Part of it is a jacket taped to the bracket with masking tape so nobody injured themselves on the bracket. In building the bracket, we forgot to include any kid of safety cap. Oops. Another part of what you’re seeing is a clever and obviously no-budget lighting solution. Here is a close-up:

Rim Light Rig on Danielle

Dani, the DP, wanted a rim light on Danielle to give her head some separation from the background. Fair enough, but we didn’t have the most appropriate fresnels. We had no 150s at all, and a 300 was just too bright (we had used up all our C-stands and modifiers elsewhere). However, we did have these little Ikea accent lights that had been purchased to create a dashboard lighting effects.

They weren’t all being used, because a dimmed, diffused Kino Diva was quite adequate to get most of the particular look that was desired in the conditions at hand. Had it been a higher contrast lighting setup lighting Austin and Danielle’s faces with nothing but small, dim, focused lights could have been quite useful, but as it was, only two of the several little lights we’d purchased were being used — one taped to the windshield on Danielle’s right side, and one taped to a piece of PVC pipe beneath her to fill a shadow on her neck).

I took a piece of scrap PVC pipe, and taped it to the “safety jacket” on the bracket, creating a perpendicular support. Then Erick and I used masking tape to attach 3 of the little Ikea lights to the pipe. Two are seen in the image above, and here is the third (outlined in red so you can see it — and with an arrow indicating where the light is actually pointing):

Me and the Rim Light Rig

We positioned the lights in 3 ways: by their position on the crossbar, by controlling the length of their cables (how low they hung), and by angling them into precise position at Dani’s request. That was done quite simply: we ran masking tape along the cable and taped pieces of it together until it twised the cable into the necessary position. Note the twisted tape on the middle light:

Me, Erick, the Rear Projection Screen and the Rim Light Rig

(We’re repositioning the crossbar in that photo. It wasn’t held up by someone out of frame in the actual shoot. That was considered, but even something very light starts to cause discomfort or even pain if you have to hold it up for a long time.)

The entire procedure took about 30 – 45 minutes, starting with the request for a rim light, deciding the Arri 300 would not work, telephoning someone that I know who has Arri 150s (but wasn’t home), my spotting the scrap piece of PVC, presenting the idea, and then Erick and I rigging the entire crazy solution. It was possible because we were both luck enough to have some equipment in the kit that could possibly be made to work (the little lights) and we were willing to “think outside the box” to come up with a nonstandard solution.

I think it worked so well that I’m going to buy some of those little Ikea lights, PVC piping, and clamps (using tape was annoying) to permanently keep in my own kit. Versatile gear, even if it’s not “proper” film gear, is a no-budget shooter’s best friend.