You know what, that last blog entry I just made, I was holding out. I'm gonna just go for it a little bit here and give it all to you guys. No business facade or anything I'm gonna keep it real. This blog and my business meant a lot to me 5 years ago when I started this Blog and it still does and I have been working A LOT! in some crazy ways for the last long while since I made a blog post. So lets just jump right in but lets give you a little in between too so its personal.

This, is my Vacuum Form Machine that I built. As some people know I have been dreaming of doing these two shows since I was in high school and the shows are, it turns out, kind of ambitious in what they call for. So I have been doing whatever I can in between running my grip company to build the stuff I dreamed of for my show. 

This is my Vacuum Form Machine, I built this in the garage here. Cut the wood on a table saw, I bought that aluminum sheet and drilled it. I actually have invested a lot in having a super awesome mobile art/creature making shop that rivals even my Grip company and is actually a part of my grip company.

 Heres another look at the Vacuum Form machine. It has a vacuum inside. I had to learn wiring to build this.

 The frame I had welded at one of the equipment places I go to but since then I am set to start learning welding and I should have a welding set up very soon.

 This is an example of one of the creatures I am building for my show. Creatures like this I am gearing up to be able to provide to productions.

 This is an airbrush collection. These are Paasche single action air brushes that we'll use to paint mostly silicone rubber appliances and skin.

 I use these Husky Container cases. You see 6 here but I actually have 16 of these now all filled to the brim with stuff for my mobile creature shop.

 I know I'm showing you some gear and bragging on what I have going but it took a lot just to learn how to do what I am doing and then acquire the tools. One of the first things we started building was Marvin the Medical Robot. Greg Lazcano and I were shooting at an emergency room in San Bernadino and we saw these cool medical machines and Greg said "you could make a robot out of that just add arms" so I talked to one of the Doctors, and she got me this broken machine. And we started to add arms. It is a process. I think I have more pictures of this later in the blog here.

 This is a process trailer that we used in a shoot recently. I key gripped this and I am now set up to work process trailers any time. In fact I built a special kit just for this. Just ask me about it.

 I have been working with Aluminum a lot lately and I built this Kino Flo Square "ring light". This thing works really great and this one piece of equipment can get a shot in a music video. In other words out of all the thousands of dollars of lighting equipment we bring out, with just this one you can turn everything off and BOOM, you have "a shot".

 Here is a behind the scenes picture of a recent shoot for Pilates. We used a lot of my equipment on this and it was a lot of fun. Vanessa Williams was in it and we made her look beautiful. I learned a lot about this DP's techniques of doing beauty lighting.

 I have gotten REALLY into electronics and I have learned how to use an Arduino and step motors & servos. One of my Grips, Aaron Pong, I have gotten into electronics and I have a lot of projects coming along down the line that we are going to build and work on.

 This is a behind the scenes shot of a cool video we did for Nordic Track where we filmed this amazing dance crew, dance on treadmills in preparation for America's Got Talent. This was so fun to shoot and really cool.

 This is my Spec Sheets book. I got this book and I have filled it with papers I printed with my AVisual company logo and the name of what I am going to design. Almost every day that I can I sit at my desk and draw schematics of the things I want to build. I ended up taking all of the classes at The Stan Winston School online over the course of 6 months and that is really where my education started for Fabrication. One of the things I learned there was that you really can't build anything unless you first draw it. I could never draw but since I learned about vanishing lines and about mechanical pencil's and these nice erasers, I have been able to draw. As I go through my journey of building things I start to acquire catalogs that have very specialized parts in them and I can now interpret the drawings and even recreate my own to describe what it is that I want to build. And now that I am designing things, I am already reaping the benefits of actually being able to build them. It is something that amazes me and actually does make me feel a sense of pride sometimes because I really never thought I could do what I am doing and my dreams are coming true. I think that you have so many dreams when you are younger in life and you honestly don't know what is going to happen but what I have learned from life is that ANYTHING you can get to happen, is a blessing. You could have the biggest plans in the world, you could write all of these stories that involve one of your best friends being the star actor. And you can even go out and film some things with that friend in preparation for bigger things.

But then, something can happen that you never expect because this is life. What happened was my friend passed away. All of the things that I had hoped to film with him for our show, are no longer able to be done. However, things, even like a book of spec sheets, are a blessing. You really have to be thankful for whatever you CAN do. It is so magical to work towards things but then to be able to look back and say "well what did we really do" and to see the actual work that you were able to do. I am trying to share with you now just a sliver of the behind the scenes work and honestly I don't know what will make it to the screen but I think it will be so good when it does make it to the screen. And I will be thankful for whatever happens.

Haha okay I got a little deep there. Sorry, it happens. But uh this is just a catalog of Gears and mechanical stuff that I have been scouring!

And you know what that Logo IS its AGrip! You know about AGrip! You should Hire AGrip because oh man on the day of your shoot and a day or two in prep your shoot is ALL we think about! My calendars in the office are filled with plans and to do lists but on the date of your shoot all it says in RED dry erase, is that I'm 100% working on YOUR PROJECT.

 Here is a pot set up that I rigged for the Arduino. I thought it was pretty cool.

 This is is a thing I came up with. I wanted badly to learn electronics but I know that I, like many other people suffer from (or benefit from) ADD. I need to control my mind. I set a goal of studying electronics at 100% concentration for 100 hours. I prepare my work area and then I set a timer on my phone for 1 hour; until that timer goes off, I focus on learning electronics. This has helped a lot. On this picture you can also see another set of bubbles. I set a goal of studying Gearing for 5 hours. So far I am up to 28 hours on Electronics. I have actually taken some what of a break from Electronics because I learned enough in order to move over to another area of fabrication and then I will need to come BACK to electronics probably in about 2 weeks.

 Okay THIS, is "Greeble" my teacher Fon Davis said so. What this is is a shower brush thing that you hook a brush up to and it shakes in the shower.. My grip and Electrician Aaron Pong brought it over when we were working on Electronics for a day. Things like this we can break apart, learn from and then also use them in props in the future. If anybody has ANY broken electronics, please, let me know. I'll either come get them or also maybe not come and get them!

 This is a preliminary spec sheet for my Waldo Unit. These are two cases that stack. Today actually I went down and looked at the parts for this in preparation for the build. It has monitors in it, wireless video, wireless signal to control movement of creatures.

 This is Eric Ballew on the Left and Aaron Pong on the right. Here we are in my garage working on electronics. Eric is helping me a lot with the cabling, and lots of electronic tasks. This guy is smart. Aaron, he's Chinese, so he is kicking ass on these electronics. We really learned a lot on this day.

 This picture is a picture of Aluminum. UM..... Well I learned how to use a Milling Machine and I am set up to start financing a Milling Machine when I want to. I have plans to open a shop in Valencia and build lots of different equipment including Grip equipment.

 This is part of my tool kit. I run double drills. always wear a tool belt no matter what I do and I always put on my headlamp and wear Eye protection. This 1 bag is filled to the brim with MANY of the tools that are mentioned in the Stan Winston Classes and honestly I feel an immense sense of pride and greatfulness that I was able to acquire these tools.

Okay This is kind of, obviously a blog about my company AGrip and AVisual.. But i've been sharing some stuff and honestly who knows when I will write another one of these.. At this point one of the main people reading this is probably just gonna be me in another 5 years. That or some crazy girl thats stalking me (sorry hun) (..... don't know who she might be tho..)

Anyways, well this is actually sad you know but this picture below.. That is Ray Rich. Ray Rich was a director that I worked with quite a bit. I think I hit him up in about 2012 maybe 2013 and I worked with him probably 15 times.. He would also rent equipment from me. He came to my house several times. I talked to this guy quite a bit and though I wouldn't consider him one of those friends you call up to go get a beer with, the truth is, I would consider him that type of friend its just that we never did that because we had a work relationship. But he was good to me and.. something bad happened to him. Well it is May 27th and Ray actually went missing just a couple days before I shot a video that he hired me for to shoot with his Mentor.

The first time I ever talked to Ray he told me all about this Director called Mr. Boomtown. I mean Ray was almost like obsessed with the guy he was such a big fan and he went on and on about how he was gonna be working with Boom Town and how he was gonna get me working with Boom town.

Well finally around February 6th or so, Ray hit me up and man was he excited because he was hiring me with my full kit to work with Boom Town. Well I was excited too but I don't get my hopes up about things like that because shoots get pushed and cancelled all the time but I did think wow thats pretty cool we're finally gonna work with Boom Town. Well, I thought Ray was gonna call me before the shoot and tell me all kinds of stuff that probably wasn't really that important but just get us psyched for the shoot but he never called and I thought that was weird. On the day of the shoot I showed up to this house in Compton and I was kind of Early but this make up artist girl was there and I didn't want her to stand out there by herself so I got out of my truck and pulled out an apple box and got her one too and we sat there and chatted and I was just waiting for Ray to walk up. My grips got there, and then, Boomtown Himself got there and we greeted. But then, Boom Town said "hey I have to tell you something; so, Ray.. he went Missing! I talked to his mom, yeah he's missing"

Well it is now May 27 and Ray is still Missing. I don't know why but for some reason I just KNEW he had been killed. It is very sad. Honestly I have not been sad about this because I have had a hard time really.. I don't know.. Earlier I was speaking about the death of my friend Alexander Avila who was probably one of my best friends that I have and he passed away 9 months ago, so Ray goes missing 6 months later; my mind is, or was, kind of consumed with this, death. It doesn't exactly seem real. By the way this picture in the poster, that was a music video that my crew Lit up for Ray. That is Fabian the DP behind Ray. I remember texting Ray about this video and telling him that he did a really good job on it. 

Like I said, this guy was good to me and he is a person from my life who I won't forget. He had a lot of hopes and dreams.. just like I do, you can see the work I put in to what I do and you can kind of realize, oh he's doing that because of his dreams; well Ray is a person that had dreams like that and he told me all about them and so when I think about life and how, some things kind of just happen and some things kind of just remain dreams, I think of Ray. It really is a tragedy because he could have achieved so much more. I'm at least happy that for that one day my crew and myself went hard on his video he was directing. With Ray, it is hard to have closure because he is "missing". Ray would always text me "roger" because I texted him "roger" one time.. lol. Also I would sometimes accuse him of playing for the Knicks and being J.R. Smith. 

Alright don't get emotional..

 Blog! Okay, blog, this is one of the Husky Containers that I have and I labeled this "Greeble". I figure, if something isn't worthy of a container then you shouldn't even have it at all. Greeble in a way kind of is "junk" but theres something special about it because you can tell when you are looking at something interesting enough to potentially be part of a prop later. So this container is just for me to throw pieces into that could be rummaged through later and added to a prop. We will see how this works out!

 These are these other Husky Containers, I kind of like this kind because they are pretty rugged but modular. The top one is just for Grip Rigging gear, small parts that go to my car mounts and speed rail rigs. All that awesome stuff. The next one is filled to the brim with Electronics stuff. The next one is filled with special small materials for building props and fabricating things.

 This is a really cool store my friend Vincent and I went to called Reynolds Materials. Man they have great stuff. Vincent came to town for 2 days and everytime that guy and I get together which is usually in like two day stretches, the WHOLE TIME we focus 100% on learning and making our show. This store was on the way out of town for Vincent so the day before we recapped all our studies on sculpting and molding and we ordered everything online that we would need. In fact as we speak Vincent is Carving a beautiful Chicken to be the Genius Chicken whose just a genius as far as chickens go, for our show. I am very excited about that. I talked to Vincent today and he knows he is a great sculptor but you know I don't know if he'll read this but I detected something in his voice because; well, I don't know how to describe it but I think he is so excited to sculpt this chicken that he is scared because he wants it to be perfect. So he's in battle right now but man he is such a funny guy, whatever he sculpts is gonna be great! lol. I can't wait to see it.

 This is a behind the scenes shot of a music video that I did for RSM creative last week. This was a lot of fun to work on. This is our second video for this female artist. She is a really nice young lady. I think this video will come out really good.

 Another behind the scenes shot of the same video.

  Another behind the scenes shot of the same video.

 Heres my desk where I do my designs.

 This is a clay cutting board that I built for Vincent. I sealed the wood with Clear Coat. It has 3/4" aluminum bar on one side and 3/8" aluminum on the other side so that you can cut a sheet of clay to one of those thicknesses. The 3/8" side is the side we will use when we lay up clay inside of the molds in order to make the Skin for the creatures.

 This is a lazy susan that I built with an Armature holder mounted to it. I thought about this armature holder a lot. I wanted the strongest thing with the least parts and most articulation. I think that might be it.. I see other people using black pipe and that looks good too but the people who use that aren't Grips and I THINK.. this might be better!

What I did was I took this Husky Container and I just built this sculpting stuff I learned about from the Stan Winston DVD's and I through everything sculpting related into that container. Then, I drove it to where Vincent's family stays in LA for work and I loaded it onto one of their trucks and they took it back to our home town and dropped it at Vincent's house. I wanted him to have as much gear as I could get him so he could focus on sculpting and just get as strait into it as possible.

 And this, is a first generation frame for our Animatronic Chicken! It now has 2 legs on it and it is on an armature holder. I am going to drop this off for Aaron so that he can practice animating the walk. I am also going to build another one. I am working on frames, thats my job. We will see what Aaron can do, I don't expect him to fully code and do the electronics right off the bat I will probably end up doing it myself but down the line I am going to need his help or somebody else so that we can build these creatures because we're gonna make a lot of movies and TV shows that rival the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies and Ghost Busters too.

It has been a VERY long time since I did a post on this blog. I rarely post on here and I do not want to start every post by pointing out how long it has been since I have posted! But, I suppose that is the way it will be each time I wait YEARS to make a blog.

You know, I really planned on making a blog every week when I first started this..

We AGrip is still in business and we are going hard. This weekend we have 3 days of Music Videos followed by a couple Music Videos next week. I am trying to think of the new capabilities we have to tell you.

Honestly our capabilities go past putting them on a public blog. But maybe I can share a few things with you. Let me think..

These are some of the Gels I am going to use on my video on Friday. Still using Gels. LED lights are here now with RGB but Tungsten and Gels still live on.

Aside from buying Grip Equipment I have begun the process of making my own. Soon I will be moving into a warehouse and I have plans in motion to buy the equipment that I need to turn "AGrip" into not just a G&E company but also a company that sells grip equipment.

I have been taking classes ferociously on so many different topics and these skills are coming out more and more. I have lots of pictures. We shall see what I decide to do with this Blog.

Walki Talkis

From here on when you hire AGrip we will come equipped with these Walki Talki's.

We have 5 Walki Talki's. They are Digital UHF of the finest caliber. We have surveillance kits for each of them. (feel free to buy your own ear piece.)

Walki Talki's make everything much more convenient. These Walki Talki's used in conjunction with my AGrip Grip's custom Tool Belts that I put together make my AGrip team one of the most capable grip crews that there is anywhere. I am very excited to use this on your next project. With these Walki Talki's, we can accomplish more, faster.

These Walki's make a lot of the things that we do so much easier and faster by being able to have a grip at the truck or somewhere within a location and being able to contact them without having to look for them. If a grip is already at the truck he can pull out a piece of equipment and begin carrying it while another grip is already in route, they can hand off the gear, and the specific piece of equipment that we need can be put into use in no time on set. 

These are great for our run and gun shoots. They are also great for our shoots that happen on in multi story mansions or in shoots where production is spread out. Any shoots that take place out doors are GREATLY enhanced with the ability to use wireless communication. It goes without saying that Walki's are a GREAT addition and now you won't have to take care of renting them and returning them from a 3rd party rental house because your grip crew already comes equipped.

How to not be a Noob when hiring a Professional in the Film Industry:

[Adding this May 27th 2015.. lol, I originally posted this in March of 2014 and man I kind of took some flack for this from a couple Union Grips who said that I was out of my mind for posting this on the Internet where my clients could see it. They said I needed to have a script and I needed to do better lighting on myself since I am a lighting guy and I think they wanted me to be way less real. But you know what, I just watched this and I like this because its REAL! I just wanted to record it and get it down and get it out back when I did it. and it really is good information. Like, I wish somebody would have just told me this stuff in about 2009. Honestly some mentors DID tell me this stuff.

But I will say I really do not mean to sound like a know it all in this.. I mean I shoot all kinds of stuff that is cool to me but we all know there are levels to this stuff so I'm not the Gaffer of Avatar! lol but it is good info from a fundamental stand point. And I may be the Gaffer of an Avatar Like Movie some day okay! anyways, Enjoy my dehydrated poorly lit webcam face!]



This is my 4 Part Lecture on how to not be a noob when hiring a Professional in the Film Industry:


Valuable information gleaned from many years of experience.














At the end of this video I am talking about going to Multiple Locations; I just want to clarify: I have no problem going to multiple locations and literally unloading everything out of the truck, shooting then loading it back in. The work of unloading the truck is not the issue. This talk is really geared more towards younger or more inexperienced film makers and making them aware of the fact that if you have these ideas that you want to get all this footage and all these shots in the videos, but you are planning on going to multiple locations, then that can really cut down on the amount of footage you get if you did want to use lots of equipment in each location. I used to shoot sometimes more when I was starting out, and a really ambitious director would be so disappointed when he wasn't getting all the footage he wanted to get in multiple locations.

Battery Powered Blowers for some quick, portable wind effects.

It is great to be able to use wind for certain effects in your movie or music video; however, often times when people try, they fall short! The most popular way to FAIL with wind is to go and buy a cheap box fan and then see if it blows enough air fast enough to get the effect that you desire. Box fans… Don't put out very much wind.. There are of course larger fans that you can use and these fans do work for a lot things but, they don't always work. Fans have their limitations. 

Recently I saw these blowers which are meant to be used with Makita tool batteries that I already own. I realized that because of the small nozzle on these blowers they could put the wind where you want it at the right speed. Think of it like a Leko light vs. a broad open face: the Leko will be brighter because it is taking all of its light and condensing it into one point while the broad open face light is shining its light all around. Dual Blowers gives more power and control over the wind.

Director Ryan Spencer contacted me to work on a music video that he was shooting in the night and he told me the concept for his video so that I could provide solutions to the needs of his videos story. One of the things that Ryan wanted, was an Angel dressed in a flowy gown that is always kind of blowing and fluttering in the breeze. Obviously it is not always breezy so we needed to take our own breeze. This video was a run and gun video on the streets. I got these Blowers and used them, they worked well.

Here is a short story about wind: one time I was shooting a movie where a little alien girl is on top of a mountain and her world's Mother Ship is coming to take her back. It was important for her clothes to blow around from the power of the ship coming in, the director brought a box fan! I have seen this box fan failure many times because they simply do not blow enough air; however, in our remote mountain location we also had to carry a generator over into position and run a stinger from it to the box fan. After all of that, it didn't work. These portable Blowers that I use can blow air at 179mph.

Now, these blowers are limited when you start shooting a very wide shot. With a flowy dress you can blow and have noticeable air when an actress is as far as about 12 or 15' away from the blower which does allow you to have a decent sized wide shot. For an even wider shot you would need a much larger blower possibly a Ritter Fan. Ritter Fan's are great but they bring with them, obviously, a whole new world of wind! (its hard to even mention a Ritter Fan in the same sentence with these blowers but these blowers DEFINITELY fill an important niche in production)

The day after we used these blowers for the Music Video in the night with the Angel, I used them on another Music Video for the artist RA Rugged Man in a Green Screen Studio. We used these blowers to simulate the wind that would hit somebody when they are riding on a roller coaster.

These Blowers are great to add on to my kit, at $25/day this is a great add on to have to your project.

These Blowers do of course create noise when they are in use just like other fans, but they work great for lots of types of things especially music videos or slow motion shots. Hit me up and hire AGrip for your next project and don't forget to ask me to bring these blowers.

Slider with Mitchell Sticks is a GO for AGrip.net

AGrip has added lots of great new equipment and capabilities to its arsenal. This is one of our new ones:




The Camera Slider:

This is a top of the line very smooth slider set up that AGrip now offers. Call me: 818-738-3696 to book AGrip or get information.

This particular camera slider is great because it is fast, the height can be easily adjusted with the Ronford Baker Heavy Duty Mitchell Sticks and the slider has a swivel in the middle that lets you add 360 movement to your shot if you desire. The swivel also locks and the slider can be used as a conventional slider. It is very smooth and is great for large format cameras. I have 100mm mitchell to ball connectors as well as 75mm mitchell to ball. The slider also of course has a Mitchell Plate. Aside from giving you a great slider movement, this slider can save many shots by allowing the camera operator to quickly adjust his framing depending on how the actor lands on their mark. Many people that work in television believe that every camera on a show should be equipped with just such a slider.

AGrip is a company that excels at rigging so this particular slider can be configured in a number of ways, the slider can be underslung or rigged to a car mount.

Progress report on the AGrip Jib Crane 6/27/12

Today is June 27th 2012 and at this point we've shot quite a lot of stuff with the AGrip Jib Crane. Many people remember the first Blog Entry for this Jib. Since that time Ryan Spencer and I did a lot of shooting and we cut a reel; now I feel like we have finished what amounts to "Round Two", which is in my mind, another 6 month time period of using this crane, and getting more experience, and adding to our family of Jib footage.

We've done quite a few shoots. I am going to write about some of them.


Recently we did a video for the artist named "Kornbread", we used a lot of Jib in this music video. The location was a gritty factory that had a a couple two story sections with steel grates and pipes. I lit this set up really cool and then when we filmed with the Jib Crane... It just looked awesome!

Kornbread Video in post production right now

Post production time line of the Kornbread video that is Jib heavy

Another shoot that we used the Jib Crane on was on a music video for an artist named DeSaint Reed.

Behind the scenes Jib shot from Desaint's video

Here is a link to the music video:

http://youtu.be/neFNl0BjRkI

The Jib shots start at about 3:58

We were able to get these beautiful Jib shots BECAUSE, the AGrip Jib can be set up so fast. All you need is somewhat flat ground and a close place to park the van. If you have that, then the Jib can be set up quickly and using a generator, you can get your shots on location. Mixing this amazing Jib crane with locations is simply awesome.


The AGrip Jib Crane was also used for Rebecca Black's new music video. Here is a link to the video:

http://youtu.be/PEXgUdNGkts

 

Jib Operator Ryan Spencer operating on the Rebecca Black MV

There are Jib shots throughout this music video. As you can see, the Jib shots look really cool with the beach house location because the Beach house had an area that you could see over with the Jib. The Jib was a great call for this music video.

The AGrip Jib Crane was used recently on a music video for Fredro Starr from the group Onyx. We used the crane in a private parking area in an apartment building in downtown Los Angeles. The parking area required us to enter a gate and drive up 1 story where we were in a parking lot, yet not on the street level with street traffic. This was the PERFECT spot to use a Jib. We would not be bothered by the police yet, since it was a dangerous street below we got to see the police in our shots a lot. For this video we wanted police syrens flashing onto the Mercedes that Fredro was performing on so we used lights and gels to do this. The Jib Crane was able to look over the wall at the real police and then fly over to Fredro who appeared to have been performing near police syrens. This was an amazing shot.

The Crane was also used in this same area to film a performance shot of Fredro on a fire escape. This vertical area worked great with the Jib. This video is going to be awesome. Stay tuned.










A Director that I work with hired me to get Jib Shots for his music video and after the first day with the Jib, the director decided that he wanted every shot in the music video to be a Jib shot and so he started hiring me for multiple days. We have gotten a lot of cool shots for this music video. The directors name is Lightfield Lewis. The music video is starring Lightfield's father, actor Geoffrey Lewis.

Behind the Scenes shot in the Arts District of Downtown Los Angeles

Actor Geoffrey Lewis being filmed by the AGrip Jib

One of the memorable shoots that we used the Jib Crane on was the B.A.D. video for the Rap group called "B.A.D. Company",

Check out the video:
http://youtu.be/lAaa2wCfINk

This video is filled with Jib Shots. It was a lot of fun working in 1 location with vertical areas such as external stairways, and 3 story shelving. I think that the Jib shots added a lot to this video. One of the uses of the Jib on this video that I especially liked was how we mixed aerial overhead shots of the fight scene near the stair well, with hand held shots filmed on the ground inside the fight.