Trounce Alley Lighting Company

Yesterday to our great delight, Tony Dean of RED Rad introduced us to veteran key grip — Peter Reynolds — the mastermind behind their RAD Cam. Peter showed us his light-weight aluminum fabricated towers which can suspend the rig overhead in no time to fly a camera affordably. He also offered us use of his privately owned Italian-made crab dolly to subrent on our truck! Read below for more details about his amazing hydraulic dolly. The deluxe model with beer holders is coming soon….

The Peter Reynolds Peewee Dolly can be pre-loaded on TALCO's 5-ton truck!

We’ve coined it the term, Reynolds Peewee dolly. This is a well machined Italian version of the American Peewee dolly, not to be confused with a cheap asian knock-off. In fact, this is the only one of it’s kind in Canada. Peter has done a nice job restoring it and it comes in sexy matte Black finish, with plush italian leather. That might be an exaggeration, but smoothness of the arm is not. In fact, the Italian Peewee dolly arm movement is much better then an actual Peewee crab dolly. We tried it ourselves and agreed.

Once the workhorse of Peter Reynolds fleet of grip trucks, the Italian crab dolly has been reconditioned like new to serve again. Thanks to him you don’t need to pay the standard $600/day for a hydraulic crab dolly. You can have a smooth hydraulic arm in a compact, full featured dolly; for less.

Reynold's hydraulic crab dolly soon to feature an 8-pack beer holder

For those not familiar with the hydraulic crab dolly — like everything American — they are a carefully controlled commodity which is only available by lease and never to own, by two manufacturers: Chapman-Leonard who makes the Peewee, Hustler, and Hybrid dolly, and J.L Fischer who makes the Fischer 11, Fischer 10.

These two giants control a monopoly. They only build so many units, so there is no supply, and it creates a demand. No one can own the dolly so there is no way to discount it. Even the rental house has to pay a lease to Chapman or Fischer every month for the privilege of renting the crab dolly to its customers. The design of the hydraulic crab dolly dates back to World War II. Originally manufactured to load bombs into airplanes, are these dolly’s really manufactured by Lockheed-Martin for Hollywood? It’s a conspiracy theory in the making.

Years ago an Italian company reverse engineered the Peewee dolly, rebuilt it with standardized machined parts for mass distribution, and outfitted it with a better hydraulic system. Chapman sued the shit out of them and banned sales in North America, crippling thier revenue and sending them out of business before they could establish a mass-production line and bring the hydraulic crab dolly to people like you and I.

Fortunately Peter Reynolds bought one of these units in their prime and brings the Italian crab dolly back to us now! In fact, TALCO can pre-load the Reynolds Peewee dolly on our truck today!

Award winning director Stephano Barberis posts  facebook notes on several music videos, including one we did with his production company Arkadia Pictures, for a country music video artist trio - The Higgins.

UPDATE 2009:  The video has been disabled for embedding (probably by the label)
UPDATE 2010:  It’s been reposted in HD and can be embedded again, here it is below:

And here are some photos Stephano had posted which happen to show off some of our grip gear:

ARKADIA PICTURES JAN 2009: GI Track & TALCO's 14' MSE Pipe Boom Kit (menace arm) for Ron Williams CSC

Above, our Modern Studio Equipment pipe boom kit (menace arm), which we built into a 14′ length using Schedule 40 Spec aluminum pipe. We placed this on a mambo combo stand with add on studio wheels. We use this thing on just about every music video we do because it is quick to adjusts with ratchets and glides around on a studio floor with ease. Cinematographers love it because it can easily boom soft light in close to the performers face for flattering sex appeal guaranteed to make their agent’s (and groupies) pleased.

You can also see the GI Track we laid for the dolly. This is the cadillac of track because it is rigid and all the parts, including the capping we ride on, is replaceable with bolts and screws without having to ship the whole unit back to the the manufacturer at great expense to us. The track is sturdy enough to lift 2 or 3 lengths connected together at one time for quick repositions, which is always important for the high speed shooting style of music videos.

The photo below demonstrates a lighting setup by cinematographer Ron Williams CSC (the rocket) utilizing several 20′ goalposts and a duvatyne teaser to slow the front light off the background. In this particular shot we keyed the performers with a 12′x12′ frame of Lt. Grid Cloth using 2 10K Fresnels. We wanted the biggest softest light we could create and the largest distance from the background to let it fall into darkness.

ARKADIA PICTURES JAN 2009: An example of goal posts and teasers for Ron Williams CSC.

TALCO provides a one-stop shop for all aspects of lighting and grip combined. We start with a base-package of equipment, tools, and expendables. We have active working relationships with the major rental houses and can sub-rent generators, electrical distrobution, HMI, and larger equipment on an as-needed basis. We have a lot of specialty gear, rigging, and custom tools to accomplish things many productions never even dreamed possible on their budgets. Our flexibility and resourcefulness allows a production to go places and film things in ways they never imagined possible.