Crane Building

By Brad Leong

Hey everyone this is Brad, the director of this film. First off let me apologize for not posting anything before this, I’ve been slacking. Production is crazy and I didn’t have much time to do more then focus on the next day ahead. But now that production is over and everything is slowing down a little I’ve got no excuse.

Here is a series of pics of the construction of the crane that I built with Eon Mora our gaffer and friend who I construct a lot of random filmy stuff with. It took us a week or two right before production to get the crane built. Basically I knew I wanted huge arcing crane shots, but we didn’t have the budget to rent any crane gear so we constructed our own. Unfortunately we didn’t have the time or know how to create a remote head so we have to build something big and sturdy so that it could support a 35lb camera plus a 150lb operator.

First we made a bunch of rectangular boxes out of metal square tube.


Then we reinforced the metal rectangles with smaller pieces. Basically the main inspiration for the design was looking at pictures of oldering metal bridges.


From here we then made rectangular boxes out of the piece


Connection points to attach the pieces


Our failed first attempt at a base….


The center axis points. We went to a bearing shop and asked about getting some bearings for these axis points. They quoted us hundreds for them, but luckily we found them at a junkyard for 35 bucks.


It’s getting close


First test run


Cool pic of me


The final product after paint