Moderators Janice Arthur Posted May 1, 2012 Moderators Report Share Posted May 1, 2012 Hi all and maybe to Holly if she's still here. Yes you can make your own cables and save some money and I do sometimes. I've made hundreds. Cheaper connectors never pay off in the long run because it sits in your cases and gets treated like they all do in 1-15 yrs do you really have the confidence to use it? Now, with cheaper connectors, you start having back ups for your backups, just in case; now clearly not a cheaper choice. We work in the extremely high dollar world of 5,000 to 300,000. an HOUR of shooting expense. NEVER does a cheap part, even the chance of one, make sense. In early career choices it was something I did on simple cables but as the stakes got higher it simply wasn't worth the risk. I always ask myself; 'when Spielberg is standing there is this the time I want to even have to think about a cable?' No and every director IS Spielberg. I'm even leary of lending cables now because you never know how roughly they were handled and its simply not worth the worry or chaos on MY shoots. Its worth it to be selfish! Lastly, and this is for the laugh. As I read Holly's beat-down of Afton. Hasn't someone paid money to be yelled at that severely in technical jargon? Seemed like a moment to me that you'd have to pay money for! Amazing, life is a mystery!. Janice Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alex Kolb Posted May 1, 2012 Report Share Posted May 1, 2012 Janice, Eric, Afton, and the others, who exceed me in experience by years, word this much better than I will, but I'm just going to put it into a single sentence should some newbie revisit this thread with the same questions. The few thousand dollars you can save using components that will deliver the same quality signal, but are not designed with the intense use of steadicam in mind, are insignificant in comparison to the years of work and hundreds of thousands of dollars you could lose if a director or DP doesn't call you back after the weather on set proves too much for your home-built cable. It's the same reason why we pay thousands of dollars for center-posts. I can go buy an aluminium tube for $20, but what happens when it bends in the middle of a shot? I'll just send it in to Jack at GPI Pro. Oh wait... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alex Kolb Posted May 1, 2012 Report Share Posted May 1, 2012 Also Janice, would you mind sending one of those $300,000/hr jobs my way sometime?? ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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