Price drop on zero-emission battery power solutions

As we head in to 2024, we’ve slashed the prices across all our on set battery power solutions.

Why? Well batteries are still an expensive option compared to running. petrol generator on set, and we want to encourage as many shoots as possible to switch to battery, especially when power demands are relatively low - LED lighting, Digi stations, production offices, etc

We have a wide range of options from Ecoflow, Instagram, PessEnergy and OnPower, as well as V-lock / V-mount solutions from FX Lion, Hawkweeds, etc.

The PessEnergy Wattman is the largest option in stock at the moment, with 10kWh of power stored and a peak output of 6kW.

We have plenty of Ecoflow batteries in our rental stock, with the largest currently available being the Ecoflow Delta Pro, having 3.6kWh of energy stored and 3.6kW power on top.

One of the most popular rental batteries is the super portable Instagram One Max, still delivering up to 3.6kw it has a little less stored energy, but a still respectable 2.1kWh. More than enough to run a Digi station for 10 hours, and it'‘s super portable too.

Of course, for the ultimate run time, there’s also our Ford eTransit, with 2kW power delivery and over 60kwh of stored energy!

The rise of Aputure

Seemingly from nowhere, Aputure seems to have become one of the most in-demand lighting manufacturers in the lighting rental market today. The LED lighting specialist was founded in 2005 by a team of filmmakers and videographers who wanted to create high quality content, but struggled with the steep cost of equipment needed to do so. in an attempt to create professional-grade equipment at an affordable price, they started Aputure.

For us, it was the launch of the Lightstorm 600D in 2020 which really propelled Aputure from a prosumer brand, in to a real contender to replace and complement both HMI and Flash on the commercial sets we work on. As Todd Blankenship of Premiumbeat hypothesised, with the 600D and its stablemates “[Aputure] will truly usher in a new era of film lighting”.

With its 720w max draw, the Aputure 600D has a comparable output to the Arri M12 or D12 on flood (600D = 100,000lux with hyper reflector 55º, M12 = 65,000lux at 62º, D12 = 70,000lux at 50º). Whilst the M18 offers more light from a single fixture, it’s possible to run more fixtures on a single circuit with the Aputure. Oh, and they can also run on batteries…

Rather than attempting to develop their own mount, requiring yet another speeding to fit common modifiers, Aputure opted to use the ubiquitous Bowens S mount, meaning it’s easy to fit modifiers from Bowens, but also Profoto, Chimera, and any number of number of others by using the appropriate Bowens speeding.

Aputure also developed their own line of Lightdome and Lantern modifiers, as well as the 2x and F10 Fresnel, and the very popular Spotlight Mini and Spotlight Mount adapters which allow Sputure Lightstorm fixtures to be used in a similar fashion to the ETC Source4 or Leko.

Part Time Equipment Technician / Driver

Description

This role would suit someone looking to balance regular paid employment alongside developing their own freelance lighting technician career.

The Role is based on 24 hours per week, across three days. These will include Fridays however the remainder of the days can be worked flexibly to suit the needs of the business and individual. Their will be additional hours and overtime available.

Salary will be at or above London Living Wage, dependent on experience

MAIN DUTIES

• Packing & Clearing equipment
• Testing and inspection of professional stills and motion equipment
• Driving company vehicles to deliver or collect equipment
• Stock checking equipment, consumables and spare parts
• General maintenance and upkeep of equipment 
• Reporting equipment issues to line manager

Training will be provided to the successful candidate.

Requirements

Skills

• Excellent communication skills, written and oral.

• Keen to learn and always be up to date with any developments within the industry.

• Passion for professional development.

• Excellent attention to detail.

• Team player

• Full, Clean Driving Licence

Experience

• Undergraduate level education, equivalent, or relevant experience.

• Minimum 1 years of experience in a professional photographic / film equipment rental house or similar.

• Knowledge of professional flash / continuous lighting equipment.

Salary & Benefits

You will be paid at or above the London Living wage depending on your experience. At the lower end this gives a FTE (based on 40 hours per week) salary of £22,568. Your base salary will be 0.6 of this amount. with overtime and additional shifts available as operations require.

• Cycle to Work Scheme

  • Many of the team and freelance crew at Gripvan are keen cyclists - it's also the easiest way to get to Hackney Wick for those early call times! Our cycle to work scheme allows you to purchase a bike from your pre-tax salary, saving around 30% on the cost of a new bike. We also provide indoor secure cycle storage to keep your pride and joy safe during the working day.

• Flexible Shifts

  • The industry doesn't always keep normal hours, we know that life sometimes doesn't either. Where possible we'll always try to accommodate requests to start late, finish early or work remotely.

• Free use of equipment

  • Gripvan is a team made up of passionate creatives in their own right. When kit isn't booked on a job it is available to our employees to use on their own personal projects.

• An extra day off to celebrate your Birthday

  • With a few big birthdays happening at Gripvan lately we can appreciate the benefit of a day off to celebrate (or recover). We'll also make sure you celebrate with us at a Birthday lunch.

• Regular team lunches

  • Speaking of lunch, we like to eat together, whether by whipping up a massive salad to share, or by treating the team to a midweek lunch out.

• Tea, coffee and snacks on tap

  • An army marches on its stomach, Gripvan is no different! We'll keep you well caffeinated or if Peppermint is more your thing we're good for that too.

Apprentice Equipment Technician / Driver

Description

This apprenticeship is being offered for 30 hours per week with 6 of those hours being spent working toward your apprenticeship qualification - Live Event Technician. Additional hours and overtime will be available on an ad hoc basis. 

Duration of the apprenticeship 

18 to 24 months.

We particularly welcome applications from those under represented in the stills and moving image advertising industry. 

Duties and Responsibilities 

• To assist with the preparation, repair and maintenance of lighting and associated equipment for hire and sales contracts.

• Loading and unloading of vehicles and the checking in of equipment. This gives our apprentices the grounding in our equipment and its maintenance and use- vital to a technical role in our industry.

• In the first few months you will be working in the warehouse in order to gain an understanding of the equipment, its maintenance and use. As you progress and gain experience, you will begin to attend shoots with our on set crew then streamline into a specific Technical Department towards the end of your apprenticeship, based on a potential chosen career path.

• You will have the opportunity work on set at live events to ensure you cover the full range of work experience required.

• Delivering and collecting equipment, in vans and on our e-assist cargo bike.

• Daily contact would be to the Supervisors/Managers in the Warehouse or on set.
  
  

Requirements

• This job will involve driving long wheelbase vans in a built up area. It is essential that you have a valid and full drivers licence and are happy to drive long wheelbase vans. You will be given formal and informal training to ensure you are safe to drive and this will form part of your probationary assessment.

• Timing is everything in our industry, we look to exceed our clients expectations and never show up late. It is therefor essential that our team are punctual, reliable and dependable.

• The role will involve lifting and carrying equipment, some of which may be heavy. Full training and assistance will be given.

• You will be required to make smaller collections and deliveries on our electric assisted cargo bike, full training will be given but the ability to ride a bike will make this much easier.

• This is a warehouse-based position. Although it will include some site work and venue placements. It is shift work and although the normal shift for apprentices is expected to be 8.00 to 17.00 or 09:00 to 18:00 we may ask you to do other shifts including 07:00-16:00, 13:00 to 21:00 or others. If you are asked to do work on set this may be late at night or even overnight. Transport may be arranged by us to get people home if working extremely unsocial hours and working time directive breaks will always be given.

Salary & Benefits

You will be paid at or above the London Living wage depending on your experience. At the lower end this gives a FTE (based on 40 hours per week) salary of £22,568. Your base salary will be 0.75 of this amount. with overtime and additional shifts available as operations require.

• Cycle to Work Scheme

  • Many of the team and freelance crew at Gripvan are keen cyclists - it's also the easiest way to get to Hackney Wick for those early call times! Our cycle to work scheme allows you to purchase a bike from your pre-tax salary, saving around 30% on the cost of a new bike. We also provide indoor secure cycle storage to keep your pride and joy safe during the working day.

• Flexible Shifts

  • The industry doesn't always keep normal hours, we know that life sometimes doesn't either. Where possible we'll always try to accommodate requests to start late, finish early or work remotely.

• Free use of equipment

  • Gripvan is a team made up of passionate creatives in their own right. When kit isn't booked on a job it is available to our employees to use on their own personal projects.

• An extra day off to celebrate your Birthday

  • With a few big birthdays happening at Gripvan lately we can appreciate the benefit of a day off to celebrate (or recover). We'll also make sure you celebrate with us at a Birthday lunch.

• Regular team lunches

  • Speaking of lunch, we like to eat together, whether by whipping up a massive salad to share, or by treating the team to a midweek lunch out.

• Tea, coffee and snacks on tap

  • An army marches on its stomach, Gripvan is no different! We'll keep you well caffeinated or if Peppermint is more your thing we're good for that too.

The Colour Balance

In these times of huge uncertainty, corporate greed and discrimination, it is with immense pleasure that we have started working closely with diversity initiative The Colour Balance. To do our small bit, we are working with an incredibly talented group of up and coming assistants. We offer time in our warehouse, learning from the GV team about kit, how to load vans, all with the aim of becoming part of our regular freelance crew. For this we pay London Living Wage (we are accredited after all!) to do this training and, of course, we get great crew joining the GV family.

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

The GV team also get so much out of training these talented aspiring entrants to the photo industry; there is nothing more motivating than really making a difference in helping people take the next step in their careers.

As well as this, working with the founder of The Colour Balance Virgilia Facey and photographer and lead workshop facilitator Tom Cockram, we will be running training workshops that will involve an on-set simulation through the eyes of a Lighting Tech. We are putting together the program and will report on how we get on.

A Long Winter!

A Long Winter!

It's been a bit of a long winter, most of it, it seems, in lock-down, but we are delighted to have continued to work regularly on some great projects throughout.

Here, we teamed up with LouLou Productions, Process Photography and Kat Herbert for Sage Accounting. Working with these great teams really has helped us through tricky times.

Now, we are all longing for Spring!

Team Training to become Pro Riders!

We have spoken before about the incredible benefits of using a cargo bike in London to help speed up deliveries and collections, not to mention the environmental benefits.  We are, however, well aware of the possible dangers to the team from riding this sort of bike in a busy city like London.  

Cycle infrastructure is improving all the time, but, I think it’s fair to say that there is still plenty to do on that front.  So, in order to turn the team into confident, professional standard riders, we called on the experts, Pedalme, to run a full City and Guilds training programme to get everyone professional cargo bike rider certified.  

The whole team went through the programme, and we have plans to train up our regular freelance team, so that they also can help with deliveries and collections when they are with us.  It’s a pretty testing programme, with a full assessed ride at the end of it all; but worth the effort and stress as you are presented with a very special C & G certificate - a proud day!!

On the Beach!

By Spring 2021, we will all be looking forward to getting back to the beach for the summer! This project working with photographer Marco Mori and Producer Ben Hills, called for the team to create the ultimate beach scene! The brief was to shoot someone enjoying that amazing holiday feeling of completely relaxing on a fine sandy beach with the sun just beginning to dip in the sky. This was the end result!

This was for On the Beach, and was part of their award-winning campaign, launched at the start of the year. The idea was to ship the entire crew, clients, talent out to Capetown for a few days in order to really capture a sense of the ultimate beach holiday.

But Marco had a better idea; why not shoot in a cold studio in East London, therefore saving the client plenty of money and air miles?

We used an Arri M90 for the main sun simulation, warmed up with ¼ or ½ CTS depending on the execution, as the brief was for a shot to feel like it was later in the day.  We broke up the light a little with a cucoloris and bounced two 2.5k fresnels into the cove for fill.  Front fill was taken care of by two S60’s kept a little colder into a white bounce behind the camera.

The results were very impressive; you may have seen them on various billboards and London buses earlier in the year. Looking at the image, you can genuinely feel the sun on your back while chilling on a beautiful sandy beach.

Of course, to help perfect the shot, Andrew was very happy playing the part of the holidaymaker, fast asleep having just had a large liquid lunch - very convincing!

Cycle to Work!

This is such a good initiative and something that we are taking full advantage of.  Out of a team of five full-timers, four are regular bike commuters, and of those, three have taken advantage of the cycle to work scheme.  

It has been so positive for team morale - it gives those a chance to get their hands on a dream bike, and is a great incentive to actually ride the bike to work, especially important now.  The vast amount of commuting miles are now done by bike, keeping everyone fit, healthy and happy!  

Here’s Joe on his brand new Rondo Ruut, a fantastic ‘do it all’ bike he got through the cycle to work scheme.  He’s now a regular at the weekends too, out on the beautiful trails in Epping Forest!

Serious pace!