Humans take comfort in the familiar. We’ll stay at jobs we hate because they offer stability — a steady paycheck, routine, and work friends. Stepping into the unknown is hard. And if you’re a full-time freelancer in the film industry, you’ve definitely done it before. Will it work out? What if I fail? What if I regret leaving what I knew?

This might sound dramatic for a grip rig, but the idea of failure always crosses my mind. I don’t want to be the guy who balks at a challenge. I want to be known as the one who figures it out. When someone asks if we can rotate a camera 360 degrees around the outside of a car while it’s speeding down a freeway, the answer shouldn’t be: “Well, I’m not sure if that’s possible.”

Budget pending (especially with an ask like that), I want my answer to be: “We’ll figure it out.”

That’s the job. We’re paid to solve hard problems.

I’ve worked on big-budget movies where the solution is to throw money at the problem — and I’ve worked on indie shoots where the budget barely covers the grip truck. I enjoy both, but the low-budget builds? They’re usually way more fun. I like putting pen to paper and actually designing the solution. Calling rental houses. Frankensteining parts from different rigs. Even calling in favors from buddies to 3D-print a custom piece I need tomorrow morning.

Approaching something new can be intimidating — but it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. You just need a system. Here’s mine.

Tech scouts are crucial for clearing up confusion. You can talk through restrictions, physically see what’s possible, and start measuring things out.

And that’s exactly what I did. While scouting, I realized the stairs and escalator didn’t follow the same incline. That tiny mismatch meant I’d have to design precise heights on the stairs to account for the slope. Even a small elevation change at the top would make the framing inconsistency obvious. I measured the height from the stairs to the top of the escalator at multiple points - start, middle, and end - and banked those numbers for later.

I also measured the total length of the planned rig and mapped out where the start, end, and middle support points would land on the stairs. All of these measurements laid the groundwork for the build.

Do Research

Once I fully understand the problem, I start digging for ideas. I’ve done enough rigs by now that I can often pull pieces from past builds - even from ones that didn’t work. I also keep a running inspiration folder full of screenshots, reels, and BTS posts that I’ve saved over the years. If I’m stuck, I’ll scroll through that collection and see what jumps out.

Sometimes I find exact matches - rigs that solve the same problem in a different way. Other times I just spot a small idea that might adapt to my needs.

It’s not about copying a build - it’s about learning how other grips solved a similar physics problem and done it a different way.

For this escalator rig, I saw a mix of solutions in my folder. Some key grips had built motorized camera sliders mounted to box truss up stadium stairs. Others used small motorized slider rigs / components. And some had created more budget-friendly versions that used gravity and counterweights instead of motors. Seeing those different tiers helped me start narrowing down what was possible for our budget and timeline. And they gave me some ideas.

The basics work for a reason. A lot of seemingly complicated rigs are just creative combinations of basic principles. For this build, I realized early on that a motorized system wasn’t realistic. That led me to the idea of a counterbalance rig - a simple, reliable system that could be operated manually and still feel smooth. I had my core concept. Now I just needed to figure out how to actually build it.

Ask for Help / Opinions

I always ask for second opinions, especially when the scale is big and safety is critical. There’s only so much you can dig up online, and often you won’t find any examples of exactly what you’re trying to do. That’s when the collective experience of other grips becomes invaluable.

If you gave five experienced key grips the same 5/8” object rigging kit and told them to mount a camera to a water bottle, you’d get five totally different rigs. And that’s the point. Everyone solves problems in their own way, and I enjoy that diversity of thought. It’s not about ego - it’s about getting it done right.

For the escalator build, I blasted out some questions to a few of my grip buddies. I laid out the challenge - mismatched incline between stairs and escalator, budget constraints, and the counterbalance idea I was kicking around. I asked if they’d ever built something similar or had advice on how to approach it. One of them sent me a link to the Cinemoves Powerslider, which would’ve been a perfect fit if we had the money. We didn’t - but even just seeing that helped confirm I was heading in the right direction.

Even if I think I know the answer, I’ll still run the idea past a few people.

Grip work is team work. So is all of filmmaking. I’ve learned to value the people who are smarter than me and to listen when someone has a better idea or a smarter way to do something. Don’t force a solution to work just because you’re already invested in it. If it’s not clicking, it usually means you haven’t asked the right questions, talked to the right people, or gathered enough perspective yet.

Getting help isn’t a fallback - it’s part of the process. If I’m not learning then I’m not growing. Plus, you never know what could be helpful for a future rig.

Come Up With a Plan

This is where ideas start to take shape. I’ll sort through all the options, weigh what’s practical, and try to find the cleanest path forward - something that balances safety, efficiency, is budget-conscious, and doesn’t feel like I’m forcing a square peg into a round hole. This phase is about filtering: What’s realistic? What can we actually build? What’s going to work best for this shoot?

I started mapping out some ideas on pen and paper (or Vectorworks). I put my scout measurements to use and started to figure out what the height of each end support needed to be in order to maintain consistent rise. I iterated on various initial designs trying to find a solution that balanced weight with strength.

My first idea was to build the whole rig out of ModTruss - a mix of 6” and 3” extrusion. It felt like the right balance of lightweight and strong, and the extrusion had a small slider system that could adapt. I figured we’d run 6” truss down the full length as the skeleton, bolt 3” extrusion to the top and bottom, and use those as our camera and counterweight tracks. I pictured connecting the two slider plates together with some multi line - one going up while the other came down. Since we’d be on a remote head, I wasn’t too worried about the connection points of the extrusion being noticeable on the sliding components.

It made sense on paper. Then I priced it out.

Way over budget. Plus C&C (the ModTruss rental house) didn’t have 3” extrusion sliders.

When a plan hits the wall - whether it’s price, availability, or physics - I take it as a sign to revisit my assumptions. That’s part of the process. Back to the drawing board.

Since I planned to rent the ModTruss from C&C Studio Services, I called up Kevin Fahey, one of the owners, and a legendary rigging key. I asked if he had any ideas. He invited me to the shop, and we started brainstorming. He suggested ditching the truss and switching to aluminum I-beam. We'd build truss structures at the beginning and end, support the middle, and use two of their custom sleds built with skate wheels.

It was a solid alternate plan and much simpler and cheaper. But when we mocked it up, we found a new problem: the sled only worked when it ran on top of the I-beam, not on underneath. Since I wanted the camera on top and counterweight underneath, this killed that version of the build.

That’s the thing with planning - if something’s not working, you can’t be precious about it. You have to loop back, ask more questions, and revise the plan. That’s not failure. That’s forward progress.

Still looking for options, I called Aaron Brenner at Treefort Entertainment - another rigging and custom solution brain I trust. He showed me one of his custom I-beam trolleys: beefed up with more skate wheels on each side, designed to ride either on top or underneath. The increased skate wheel footprint meant that the I beam seams would be even more invisible. It was perfect for the camera side of the rig.

Only problem? It used a different size I-beam than the one from C&C. And Aaron only had one trolley so I couldn’t use another for the counterweight sled.

Instead of trying to force both systems onto the same track, I reworked the whole approach. I decided to run two parallel I-beams - one for the camera and one for the counterweight. They wouldn’t be one unit anymore, but it would still work well. The plan was to connect both sleds with multiline to each other through pulleys at the top. As one rose up, the other would descend. It wasn’t my original concept, but it solved the sled compatibility issue cleanly. This is exactly why I believe you should never be afraid to go back a few steps and rework the plan. It happens with almost every rig when you learn new information along the way. We adapt.

Of course, that meant renting two different types of I-beams from two different sources. C&C had what I needed for their sled and I beam to truss clamps, and Aaron connected me with a local supplier for his trolley’s I-beam. I rented 2x 25’ I-beams from each, plus the truss and sleds. I had everything else we would need in my grip truck.

In the end, it wasn’t the sleek solution I started with - but it would get the job done. It worked. And it came from sorting through ideas, asking for help when I got stuck, and being willing to go back and revise when the original plan didn’t hold up.

Identify Variables & Risks

With the plan locked in, I shift into what I think of as rig pre-mortem mode - looking for every variable that could throw things off, and making sure we’ve got a fallback for anything that might go sideways.

I had the structure mapped out: camera I-beam, counterweight I-beam, top and bottom truss supports. But I started asking myself, have I really thought of all the ways this could fail? One of the first challenges that came to mind was the rise. How would we guarantee the correct incline throughout the rig? I considered building adjustability into the end structures. But once the rig is built and loaded with weight, making those adjustments might be difficult.

The stairwell we were working in was actually wide - which gave us plenty of room to build - but we were still rigging on stairs, not flat ground. That presents its own challenges: tiered footing, inconsistent surfaces, and limited spots to plant stands or distribute weight. If our scout measurements were even slightly off, or our base structures didn’t land exactly where we expected, it could affect the entire rig’s alignment.

That’s why I decided to build adjustability into the base using speedrail goalposts. That gave us some vertical play without overcomplicating the truss build. On the day, we’d double-check our numbers and preset the top I-beam support height. And if something was still off, we’d gather the grips and make the adjustment with muscle. Not ideal - but it was doable.

As I kept thinking it through, I asked myself another critical question: What else in this plan could go wrong that I should think about now? Could the counterweight sled end up in frame? We were running the camera on the far I-beam, elevated on a remote head, so it should clear — but I flagged it as something to test during setup.

I also ran the plan through a technical checklist in my head:

• Could the gimbal sit at an angle if needed, or would it require perfect leveling?

• Would the I-beam splice plates interfere with the trolley or sled?

• Would the transition between beams be noticeable? (We ended up adding a vibration isolator to help smooth it out.)

• How long would this rig take to build and strike?

• How much counterweight would we actually need?

• What would the final lens height be after mounting everything — trolley, isolator, gimbal?

Finally, I forced myself to ask: What’s my backup if something doesn’t work the way I think it will? If the speedrail goalpost couldn’t handle the top-end load, we’d still be okay - most of the rig’s weight lived at the lower truss support, where gravity works in our favor. If the center needed extra support, I planned to wedge saw horses from my truck to the right height. And if, for some reason, our top structure didn’t fit on the stair landing at all? I had built it using 12”x12” corner blocks so we could remove one and drop the height if needed. The top base was to land on truss baseplates for a few extra inches of critical height.

That’s how I approach every rig: look for weak points before they become real problems. If I can break the rig in my head, I can fix it before call time. For this build, I had picked it apart from every angle, built in safety nets, and accounted for as many unknowns as I could. I felt confident we could walk in and get it done - on time, on budget, and without any last-minute surprises.

Develop and Execute

We came into the shoot day with a solid plan. If we hadn’t done the prep - the scouting, the research, the calls, the testing - this rig would’ve been a disaster. You just can’t make certain things up on the spot. Not when the entire concept of the shoot rests on one moving piece. This rig was the video. It had to work.

If memory serves, we built the entire rig in about 2.5 hours and wrapped it out in 1. The first thing I did when we got to location was re-measure all our critical heights - start, middle, and end - to make sure the elevation matched what I had in my notes. We adjusted the speedrail goalposts accordingly, dialed in our incline, and locked the I-beams into place.

We mounted the trolleys, double-checked travel clearance, and confirmed that the splice plates weren’t interfering with either sled. We loaded the counterweight gradually, tested the balance point, and ran a few full passes with crew walking the rig manually. It was smooth. We added a vibration isolator as a final precaution and mounted the gimbal at lens height. The slanted gimbal ended up working perfectly fine.

Every part of the rig had a job to do - and every backup plan we’d thought through helped make the final execution feel less chaotic. There were no surprises. Just small adjustments.