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!

(BARNA-ALPER DEC 07) a condor rigged by TALCO lights a Delta farm set

As the SAG situation and economy combine to create a slow start to the new year for us in Vancouver, we look towards our next projects…Any takers?

At the moment we are passing our time collaborating with Brant McIlroy and Martin Testa of the innovative Brant FX company (their website is being redesigned) on a unique animatronic project completely unlike the last film we met them on over a year ago. A photo to the left shows a taste from the past as TALCO illuminates a large night exterior using a condor flying above a rural landscape supported by fog and rain towers by the effects duo, BrantFX.

They created the rain somehow without a pump truck because this was a docu-drama, not a big budget feature and the show could not afford the $3000 it would have cost to have a pump truck. They couldn’t afford a pair of 40′ trailers either with seperate grips and electrics. That’s where we came in with a carefully planned, minimal set of subrentals and our basic 5-ton package truck. Together Trounce Alley Lighting Company and BrantFX created a big budget hollywood look on a docu-drama budget. In fact, we were able to work out an arrangement to have our truck for 2 months of interviews preceding this shoot. This allowed us to push a new standard forward as far as what cinematically could be done in the confines of a docu-drama structure.

We like Brant and Martin because they have the same “can-do” attitude as us. They can literally take on any challenge no matter how immense — and pull it off for relative peanuts compared to a large studio. Like us, they have built a truck for the motion picture industry and they have the equipment and knowledge to create anything out of electronics, chemicals, metals — you name it — they’ve done it — their workshop is something straight out of Ironman.

Personally we’ve seen them cut steel like butter, use explosives, build circuit boards, weld, and experiment with rare mineral oils, all to the blaring sound of heavy metal on their studio’s sound system!

Of even more potential: the studio space BrantFX owns — when teamed up with TALCO the possibilities are endless! Whether its music videos, commercials, or anything that needs special effects and lighting — together we raise eyebrows for a fraction of a cost of the big studio outfits! We can provide everything from 20′x20′ green screens to a camera dolly and gib arm — your complete lighting and grip needs. They can provide the studio, animatronics, and effects. Good things are in the future.

Who’s going to be the first to bring us together and create million dollar results for relative pennies? We’ll keep you posted as this latest collaboration develops.

In the vein of the extraordinary NYC documentary Dark Days by Marc Singer with music by DJ Shadow about an entire sub-culture living below the city in abandoned tunnels, I have discovered a local Vancouver documentary by wheel-chair bound director Murray Siple. It’s about homeless men running the gauntlet in shopping carts and presented to us by the NFB. We’re not affiliated with the project — and it’s on a much lighter note then Dark Days (view trailer) — but we get enough bottle collectors in Trounce Alley that we certainly enjoyed it. Perhaps a new sport in the making.

Thanks to a friend from Portland who first sent me a link to the Mercury’s thursdays morning blog post where I first viewed this documentary.

Reposted below, Carts of Darkness by Murray Siple:

TALCO first met Tony Dean of Red Rad Motion Pictures on a small Granville Island Market shoot for director Attila Luca. We have been able to follow Tony’s development of of his RADcam – Rapid Aerial Deployment Camera System now for several months and it is looking quite impressive. It is innovations like these combined with emerging technology such as the RED camera which is bringing independent filmmakers one step closer to their dreams. Tony has been around the indy scene in Vancouver for a long time now and it is hard to imagine anyone better equipped to deliver innovations at this level then Tony who has built his whole business around them. Look for the Red Rad ambulance / camera truck on sets near you- nice! 

Tony Dean's Rapid Aerial Deployement camera system by RED Rad

Will the real Trounce Alley please stand up? Witness this sneak peak as photographed through the lense of Christopher Wallace – who first suggested the idea of a blog-based TALCO website – from a window overlooking the real Trounce Alley in Gastown. Could this be the start of a series? Only time will tell.

The Original Trounce Alley Photo by Christopher Wallace © 2007

Farewell Geoff Browne

Vancouver loses one of its finest spirited filmmakers in writer, director Geoff Browne of Boundless Light, known around town for his Tibetan documentary, Kall it Karma. He has moved to Los Angeles to pursue directorial projects on feature length productions.

He may be gone for now, but his name, along with TALCO, will be appearing soon on a 2-month shoot produced by Academy Award winning documentary filmmaker Malcom Clarke. Look for this highly controversial feature length docu-drama to be released within the next year making headlines big time.

TALCO is pleased to have participated in 6 weeks of interviews followed by 2 weeks of big budget reconstructions which will bring this terrifying story to life.

In the mean while, you’ll have to see Malcom’s recently Oscar nominated, Prisoners of Paradise – or perhaps even more intense his 1985 exploration of  American Vietnam vets hiding from a society in which they are no longer fit to coexist with, Soldiers in Hiding.

As for us, we are happy to have had an opportunity to work with filmmakers of such high caliber and for an extended period of time. Thanks as well to Barna Alper from Toronto for organizing, producing, and distributing this very interesting production.We look forward to working on many more amazing documentaries and we wish Geoff Browne great success abroad until we may next work with him again.