"With the advent of new equipment such as AC-operated HMIs and so forth, and with the use of three-phase AC power, we ended up with a complete change-over of our equipment. As a result, the codes began to be changed to bring us up to the standards of the electrical industry.
"Not only did we have a change-over in equipment, but also in personnel. In the past, with the studio system, when technicians first started out they worked on a rigging crew for several years. They never saw a shooting set other than rigging and striking it. That way, they knew the equipment and how to hook it up well in advance of ever getting onto a set much less to a location. That's the way the system worked. But now that there is no studio system, and each independent production does its own thing, we no longer have a training base, and the need for a training program has really come to the surface."
There are currently four groups of about 35 technicians in the program. Every other Saturday, the groups convene in a classroom at Matthews Studio Group/Hollywood Rental Company. With the support of Carlos DeMattos, the CEO of Matthews Studio Group, and his own firm's management team, Hollywood Rental Company vice president of Kevin Stolpe insisted on creating an educational space within the new facility. He explains, "There were earlier plans to turn that area into a rec room, but I said, 'No. We need a classroom.' The way things are now, some wizard engineer designs a piece of equipment, and then some manufacturer builds it and sells it to a rental company. Soon afterwards, the equipment goes out into the field with no instructions or technical specifications; the equipment then comes back damaged or worse, and guys are getting hurt. There is no schooling for this kind of work. Guys go out to a set and they're told, 'Go rig a 10K on that Condor and put it 50 feet in the air' or 'Go run DC because we're going to have water on that set, but I need an AC outlet here.' A lot of the newer guys just haven't had the experience to know how to do these jobs. With the newer electronic ballasts for HMIs, for instance, if the generator is running three-phase power and there is a dimmer on the same line as the HMI, it can shut that light off because the harmonics going back to the generator cancel out the sync wave, shutting off the ballast. When that happens, we'll get a call in the middle of the night: 'Hey, this 12K doesn't work!' Well, the 12K works fine it's the situation that wasn't handled correctly, and that comes down to incorrect information. How do we solve that? We teach. When we built the new facility back in May of last year and added the classroom, I went to 728 and said, 'I have a facility for you guys.' They replied, 'Okay we want to do this,' and I told them, 'I will do whatever it takes and give you whatever you need to get this done.'"
"Everyone has been very supportive of this program," adds Williman. "The studios are very, very interested; Universal, Warner Bros., Paramount, and Disney have all given us anything that we needed. They've offered us stage space, even hot stage space. It's wonderful. In addition, Hollywood Rental Company has donated all of the equipment that we've needed for our demonstrations. We've gotten fantastic support from the industry."
The program focuses carefully on the day-to-day problems that arise on sets. In class four, which concerned the use of articulated lifts, the members weren't just shown the proper operation of an aerial lift, but were taken step by step through the actual physical rigging of two different Condors by veteran rigging gaffer Greg Cantrell (Demolition Man, Batman Forever, Desperate Measures, Star Trek: Generations). When the lesson was complete, the class members were fully certified in the operation of such lifts. In class two, which covered power distribution, Ron Dahlquist walked the participating technicians to the parking lot behind Hollywood Rental Company, where two different distribution systems were laid out: a DC system running a carbon arc lamp, and an AC run powering a prototype Mole-Richardson 12K Par HMI. "The 12K Par is a perfect illustration of the situation we're facing," adds Stolpe. "Mole-Richardson had just got dropped off four 12K single-ended Pars, and they're going out on rental to someone who's never used them before. These are prototypes. They're going on a truck, off to a location, and the technicians are going to pull them off the truck and say, 'Well, how do I use these things? Do I run single-phase or three-phase? How much amperage do these draw?' The only way to give them this information is to teach them."
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