Gallery
Gallery
Case Study
Frames, Ladder Pods, and Westerns On This Commercial
by:
Brendan Riel
Lots of fun on this 3 day commercial shoot with a couple of different locations for a well known popcorn brand. Our first location was at Air Hollywood. We shot both inside in an airplane buck and outside in the parking lot. For our first setup outside in the parking lot we built a Modulus-X 9” truss rig and secured it onto a 12054 telehandler to hang a hot air balloon basket. I wanted to get the pick point out a little further away from the carriage which is why we didn’t just pick it off the bottom hook of the carriage. We used Modulus-X 9” because I co-own Division and we have it readily available. When building a rig that sticks out further than the telehandler it’s generally good practice to integrate a vertical member into your rig. This distributes the force in the components (in this case a singular piece of truss) sticking out. We secured the vertical portion of the rig to the carriage as well with both a basketed 2” ratchet and SK clamps. The load rating of 9” ModX is insane, so it was never really a worry, but it’s good practice. A 6’ stick of the 9” boasts a roughly 15,000# uniform center load WLL just to give you an idea.
The hot air balloon company took care of attachment for the balloon to the telehandler - they have a special rig they use all the time with film productions.
It was overcast and drizzly but we set up so that if the sun did peak out it would be backlit. Popped a 20x20 chroma blue behind the basket for vfx as they were supposed to be way up in the sky. Whenever I’m worked with a 20x20 frame that doesn’t work tabled I like to put it on either black bird cranks or long johns. It makes it way more manageable to work with. We shaped in some negative fill with a 12x20 water solid and angled a 20x20 water solid swatter overhead. Gaffer Mathias Peralta key’d talent with an M90 thrown through some color and diffused through a 12x grid. He backlit with an 18k on a 60’ articulating boom and blasted through some color on that too.
After we got rained out we finished off a bit of the balloon basket inside still against blue screen and transitioned over to the airplane. We lit with more warm sun to match the hot air balloon look and injected some day blue ambience into the cockpit to simulate the clear sky.
top
rig breakdown
Par Can Condor Rig
by:
Brendan Riel
Par can array rigged to a JLG 1250AJP. 3 rows of 5 par cans each, spaced out 33” apart. Uniformed height and width distances for a balanced look.
This lighting apparatus played in shot and was meant to simulate a fictional ship yard practical.
Frame built out of 1-1/4” speedrail and attached to the basket with steel pipe. Hollaenders for the frame connection points and cheeseboros for the condor connection points. Kickers on the ends added more rigidity and safety.
rig breakdown
Counterbalanced guitar rig
by:
Brendan RIel
Counterbalanced guitar rig with auto-tilt.
The goal was to rig the camera to the end of the guitar to see the tuning knobs and the neck. We couldn’t drill into the guitar at all which left very limited options for rigging. Couldn’t bite onto anything on the neck because we’d see the clamp.
To rig a shot like this traditionally you would rig a few points off the neck or body of the guitar to the camera and support the weight of the camera. This makes it hard to operate the shot because you need to support the camera and awkwardly maintain the angle as the guitar moves around. Controlling the movement of the guitar is tough in this instance.
For this rig we created an inner ring and an outer ring both built out of speedrail. Almost like a dumb version of a gimbal with no motors. The inner ring was free to pivot on the x axis to allow the camera to tilt up and down independent of the rig’s vertical movement. This meant that as the rig got higher, the camera would tilt down. If the rig got lower the camera would tilt up. The tilt was in relation to the angle of the guitar - it wasn’t something the operator had to control.
You could raise and lower the rig by holding onto the outer ring without having to worry about whether you were aiming the camera straight down the neck of the guitar - it did it for you.
Ran a pulley from the top of our rig up and over to some counterbalance to make up and down movement effortless.
project BTS
Camera Rigs to Objects
by:
Brendan Riel
Bunch of object camera rigs on this job. Directors Jordan and Nicholas Aucella always give us a fun challenge when they come into town.
The main request was to rig this yellow pair of sunglasses to the camera. They wanted people to be able to pass them around, put them on and take them off. Connor Colby and I conceptualized a few ideas before the shoot and played around with 3D printing some sort of clamp on adaptor for 3/8 rods. Everything seemed like it would work when we tried it in prep but once we knocked off a shot on the shoot day the rig just fell apart. It was way too bulky and didn’t have the right clamping pressure and overall strength. Luckily I brought a backup solution. We instead used 3/8” armature wire and taped it right to the sides. Only thing visible from the front was the armature wire running to the sides of the glasses. The wire went back to mounting points on the camera rig.
We ended up iterating on this method down the road for a different job and I think we came up with a pretty good glasses rig solution.
Case Study
Tents & Camera Rigs
by:
Brendan Riel
This was a 2 day spot for a live event company. We scouted a few days before the shoot and felt pretty good coming into it. We shot 3 different spots in 2 days.
Day 1 we shot in a restaurant. Our main artist talent for the day was only going to be with us for 45 minutes max when she showed up. We had 2 hours to set up and then we shot her out. We shot with our other talent the rest of the day and wrapped after 10 hours. Since we were shooting in an active restaurant we kept all our lighting on the ground. For our key light we employed the use of a Matthew max menace arm. We went for a stage lighting look and rigged some movers to 2x 10' sticks of black 12" box truss on base plates. Electricians brought in 2 more par trees with some additional small moving lights. All 4 of those blended into the background nicely. The rest of the day involved moving around the max menace arm and employing some ground units with 4x diffusion.
rig breakdown
Water Bottle Camera Rig
by:
Brendan Riel
Water bottle rigged to a Sony FX3. We used 5/8” rods & hardware to secure this water bottle to the camera for a series of shots.
This rig lived in 2 variations: the handheld variation and the handheld variation rigged to a bike. We wouldn’t normally do bike rigs like this but we kept the handheld rig together so we could match the same exact frame for match cuts in post.
Utilized an end jaw cardellini to clamp the bottle, 5/8” rods and modern studio hardware, 9. Solutions 5/8 gags, and LA Rag House 2” mighty mini grip heads. Secured into the camera with stubby baby pins, making sure not to protrude into the camera body.
Case Study
Frames, Ladder Pods, and Westerns On This Commercial
by:
Brendan Riel
Lots of fun on this 3 day commercial shoot with a couple of different locations for a well known popcorn brand. Our first location was at Air Hollywood. We shot both inside in an airplane buck and outside in the parking lot. For our first setup outside in the parking lot we built a Modulus-X 9” truss rig and secured it onto a 12054 telehandler to hang a hot air balloon basket. I wanted to get the pick point out a little further away from the carriage which is why we didn’t just pick it off the bottom hook of the carriage. We used Modulus-X 9” because I co-own Division and we have it readily available. When building a rig that sticks out further than the telehandler it’s generally good practice to integrate a vertical member into your rig. This distributes the force in the components (in this case a singular piece of truss) sticking out. We secured the vertical portion of the rig to the carriage as well with both a basketed 2” ratchet and SK clamps. The load rating of 9” ModX is insane, so it was never really a worry, but it’s good practice. A 6’ stick of the 9” boasts a roughly 15,000# uniform center load WLL just to give you an idea.
The hot air balloon company took care of attachment for the balloon to the telehandler - they have a special rig they use all the time with film productions.
It was overcast and drizzly but we set up so that if the sun did peak out it would be backlit. Popped a 20x20 chroma blue behind the basket for vfx as they were supposed to be way up in the sky. Whenever I’m worked with a 20x20 frame that doesn’t work tabled I like to put it on either black bird cranks or long johns. It makes it way more manageable to work with. We shaped in some negative fill with a 12x20 water solid and angled a 20x20 water solid swatter overhead. Gaffer Mathias Peralta key’d talent with an M90 thrown through some color and diffused through a 12x grid. He backlit with an 18k on a 60’ articulating boom and blasted through some color on that too.
After we got rained out we finished off a bit of the balloon basket inside still against blue screen and transitioned over to the airplane. We lit with more warm sun to match the hot air balloon look and injected some day blue ambience into the cockpit to simulate the clear sky.
top
rig breakdown
Par Can Condor Rig
by:
Brendan Riel
Par can array rigged to a JLG 1250AJP. 3 rows of 5 par cans each, spaced out 33” apart. Uniformed height and width distances for a balanced look.
This lighting apparatus played in shot and was meant to simulate a fictional ship yard practical.
Frame built out of 1-1/4” speedrail and attached to the basket with steel pipe. Hollaenders for the frame connection points and cheeseboros for the condor connection points. Kickers on the ends added more rigidity and safety.
rig breakdown
Counterbalanced guitar rig
by:
Brendan RIel
Counterbalanced guitar rig with auto-tilt.
The goal was to rig the camera to the end of the guitar to see the tuning knobs and the neck. We couldn’t drill into the guitar at all which left very limited options for rigging. Couldn’t bite onto anything on the neck because we’d see the clamp.
To rig a shot like this traditionally you would rig a few points off the neck or body of the guitar to the camera and support the weight of the camera. This makes it hard to operate the shot because you need to support the camera and awkwardly maintain the angle as the guitar moves around. Controlling the movement of the guitar is tough in this instance.
For this rig we created an inner ring and an outer ring both built out of speedrail. Almost like a dumb version of a gimbal with no motors. The inner ring was free to pivot on the x axis to allow the camera to tilt up and down independent of the rig’s vertical movement. This meant that as the rig got higher, the camera would tilt down. If the rig got lower the camera would tilt up. The tilt was in relation to the angle of the guitar - it wasn’t something the operator had to control.
You could raise and lower the rig by holding onto the outer ring without having to worry about whether you were aiming the camera straight down the neck of the guitar - it did it for you.
Ran a pulley from the top of our rig up and over to some counterbalance to make up and down movement effortless.
project BTS
Camera Rigs to Objects
by:
Brendan Riel
Bunch of object camera rigs on this job. Directors Jordan and Nicholas Aucella always give us a fun challenge when they come into town.
The main request was to rig this yellow pair of sunglasses to the camera. They wanted people to be able to pass them around, put them on and take them off. Connor Colby and I conceptualized a few ideas before the shoot and played around with 3D printing some sort of clamp on adaptor for 3/8 rods. Everything seemed like it would work when we tried it in prep but once we knocked off a shot on the shoot day the rig just fell apart. It was way too bulky and didn’t have the right clamping pressure and overall strength. Luckily I brought a backup solution. We instead used 3/8” armature wire and taped it right to the sides. Only thing visible from the front was the armature wire running to the sides of the glasses. The wire went back to mounting points on the camera rig.
We ended up iterating on this method down the road for a different job and I think we came up with a pretty good glasses rig solution.
Case Study
Tents & Camera Rigs
by:
Brendan Riel
This was a 2 day spot for a live event company. We scouted a few days before the shoot and felt pretty good coming into it. We shot 3 different spots in 2 days.
Day 1 we shot in a restaurant. Our main artist talent for the day was only going to be with us for 45 minutes max when she showed up. We had 2 hours to set up and then we shot her out. We shot with our other talent the rest of the day and wrapped after 10 hours. Since we were shooting in an active restaurant we kept all our lighting on the ground. For our key light we employed the use of a Matthew max menace arm. We went for a stage lighting look and rigged some movers to 2x 10' sticks of black 12" box truss on base plates. Electricians brought in 2 more par trees with some additional small moving lights. All 4 of those blended into the background nicely. The rest of the day involved moving around the max menace arm and employing some ground units with 4x diffusion.
rig breakdown
Water Bottle Camera Rig
by:
Brendan Riel
Water bottle rigged to a Sony FX3. We used 5/8” rods & hardware to secure this water bottle to the camera for a series of shots.
This rig lived in 2 variations: the handheld variation and the handheld variation rigged to a bike. We wouldn’t normally do bike rigs like this but we kept the handheld rig together so we could match the same exact frame for match cuts in post.
Utilized an end jaw cardellini to clamp the bottle, 5/8” rods and modern studio hardware, 9. Solutions 5/8 gags, and LA Rag House 2” mighty mini grip heads. Secured into the camera with stubby baby pins, making sure not to protrude into the camera body.
Case Study
Frames, Ladder Pods, and Westerns On This Commercial
by:
Brendan Riel
Lots of fun on this 3 day commercial shoot with a couple of different locations for a well known popcorn brand. Our first location was at Air Hollywood. We shot both inside in an airplane buck and outside in the parking lot. For our first setup outside in the parking lot we built a Modulus-X 9” truss rig and secured it onto a 12054 telehandler to hang a hot air balloon basket. I wanted to get the pick point out a little further away from the carriage which is why we didn’t just pick it off the bottom hook of the carriage. We used Modulus-X 9” because I co-own Division and we have it readily available. When building a rig that sticks out further than the telehandler it’s generally good practice to integrate a vertical member into your rig. This distributes the force in the components (in this case a singular piece of truss) sticking out. We secured the vertical portion of the rig to the carriage as well with both a basketed 2” ratchet and SK clamps. The load rating of 9” ModX is insane, so it was never really a worry, but it’s good practice. A 6’ stick of the 9” boasts a roughly 15,000# uniform center load WLL just to give you an idea.
The hot air balloon company took care of attachment for the balloon to the telehandler - they have a special rig they use all the time with film productions.
It was overcast and drizzly but we set up so that if the sun did peak out it would be backlit. Popped a 20x20 chroma blue behind the basket for vfx as they were supposed to be way up in the sky. Whenever I’m worked with a 20x20 frame that doesn’t work tabled I like to put it on either black bird cranks or long johns. It makes it way more manageable to work with. We shaped in some negative fill with a 12x20 water solid and angled a 20x20 water solid swatter overhead. Gaffer Mathias Peralta key’d talent with an M90 thrown through some color and diffused through a 12x grid. He backlit with an 18k on a 60’ articulating boom and blasted through some color on that too.
After we got rained out we finished off a bit of the balloon basket inside still against blue screen and transitioned over to the airplane. We lit with more warm sun to match the hot air balloon look and injected some day blue ambience into the cockpit to simulate the clear sky.
top
rig breakdown
Par Can Condor Rig
by:
Brendan Riel
Par can array rigged to a JLG 1250AJP. 3 rows of 5 par cans each, spaced out 33” apart. Uniformed height and width distances for a balanced look.
This lighting apparatus played in shot and was meant to simulate a fictional ship yard practical.
Frame built out of 1-1/4” speedrail and attached to the basket with steel pipe. Hollaenders for the frame connection points and cheeseboros for the condor connection points. Kickers on the ends added more rigidity and safety.
rig breakdown
Counterbalanced guitar rig
by:
Brendan RIel
Counterbalanced guitar rig with auto-tilt.
The goal was to rig the camera to the end of the guitar to see the tuning knobs and the neck. We couldn’t drill into the guitar at all which left very limited options for rigging. Couldn’t bite onto anything on the neck because we’d see the clamp.
To rig a shot like this traditionally you would rig a few points off the neck or body of the guitar to the camera and support the weight of the camera. This makes it hard to operate the shot because you need to support the camera and awkwardly maintain the angle as the guitar moves around. Controlling the movement of the guitar is tough in this instance.
For this rig we created an inner ring and an outer ring both built out of speedrail. Almost like a dumb version of a gimbal with no motors. The inner ring was free to pivot on the x axis to allow the camera to tilt up and down independent of the rig’s vertical movement. This meant that as the rig got higher, the camera would tilt down. If the rig got lower the camera would tilt up. The tilt was in relation to the angle of the guitar - it wasn’t something the operator had to control.
You could raise and lower the rig by holding onto the outer ring without having to worry about whether you were aiming the camera straight down the neck of the guitar - it did it for you.
Ran a pulley from the top of our rig up and over to some counterbalance to make up and down movement effortless.
project BTS
Camera Rigs to Objects
by:
Brendan Riel
Bunch of object camera rigs on this job. Directors Jordan and Nicholas Aucella always give us a fun challenge when they come into town.
The main request was to rig this yellow pair of sunglasses to the camera. They wanted people to be able to pass them around, put them on and take them off. Connor Colby and I conceptualized a few ideas before the shoot and played around with 3D printing some sort of clamp on adaptor for 3/8 rods. Everything seemed like it would work when we tried it in prep but once we knocked off a shot on the shoot day the rig just fell apart. It was way too bulky and didn’t have the right clamping pressure and overall strength. Luckily I brought a backup solution. We instead used 3/8” armature wire and taped it right to the sides. Only thing visible from the front was the armature wire running to the sides of the glasses. The wire went back to mounting points on the camera rig.
We ended up iterating on this method down the road for a different job and I think we came up with a pretty good glasses rig solution.
Case Study
Tents & Camera Rigs
by:
Brendan Riel
This was a 2 day spot for a live event company. We scouted a few days before the shoot and felt pretty good coming into it. We shot 3 different spots in 2 days.
Day 1 we shot in a restaurant. Our main artist talent for the day was only going to be with us for 45 minutes max when she showed up. We had 2 hours to set up and then we shot her out. We shot with our other talent the rest of the day and wrapped after 10 hours. Since we were shooting in an active restaurant we kept all our lighting on the ground. For our key light we employed the use of a Matthew max menace arm. We went for a stage lighting look and rigged some movers to 2x 10' sticks of black 12" box truss on base plates. Electricians brought in 2 more par trees with some additional small moving lights. All 4 of those blended into the background nicely. The rest of the day involved moving around the max menace arm and employing some ground units with 4x diffusion.
rig breakdown
Water Bottle Camera Rig
by:
Brendan Riel
Water bottle rigged to a Sony FX3. We used 5/8” rods & hardware to secure this water bottle to the camera for a series of shots.
This rig lived in 2 variations: the handheld variation and the handheld variation rigged to a bike. We wouldn’t normally do bike rigs like this but we kept the handheld rig together so we could match the same exact frame for match cuts in post.
Utilized an end jaw cardellini to clamp the bottle, 5/8” rods and modern studio hardware, 9. Solutions 5/8 gags, and LA Rag House 2” mighty mini grip heads. Secured into the camera with stubby baby pins, making sure not to protrude into the camera body.
project BTS
Softbox with Three Quarter Sides
by:
Brendan Riel
12x12x6 softbox with magic cloth hung on 1/4 ton motors. Modulus-X 6” skeleton and 8x skypanel S60’s inside.
We wanted some light to spill out on all sides to help illuminate the cyc walls so we went with sides that dropped 4’ and not the full 6’. Gaffer Dimitri Christoforidis didn’t rely solely on the spill from the softbox for illumination, he also used space lights.
Played with a Fisher 11, helped set lighting offset one of their lights on a road runner, and hung some space lights.
rig breakdown
Top Thrill 2 Roller Coaster Rig
by:
Brendan Riel
Rollercoaster rig for Top Thrill 2’s media day. This ride went 120mph and was Cedar Points newest and baddest ride. Camera pointing forward and another pointed backward at the news reporters.
Flew in with gear packed into pelicans. Travelled light but efficient with DP Jeff Nolde’s complete coaster rigging package.
Ratcheted all our parts to the coaster multiple ways, multiple directions. Coaster had holes under the seats we slid speedrail through and ratcheted it down. Hard mounted off that for added security. Ball leveling heads for the cameras and obviously an extreme amount of triangulation.
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Legacy Grip 2025 All Rights Reserved
By subscribing you agree to with our privacy policy and provide consent to receive updates from our company.
Legacy Grip 2025 All Rights Reserved
By subscribing you agree to with our privacy policy and provide consent to receive updates from our company.
Legacy Grip 2025 All Rights Reserved
By subscribing you agree to with our privacy policy and provide consent to receive updates from our company.
Legacy Grip 2025 All Rights Reserved