🚨Pigeon plate appreciation post🚨
Let’s keep the theme of under appreciated grip equipment going! This week we’re celebrating a very simple but versatile tool everyone should have in their kit. I can’t count the number of times a pigeon plate has helped me rig something in a tight space.
What is a pigeon plate, you ask? You may know it by another name, but basically it’s just nail-down plate (baby pin or a junior receiver) which is screwed to a piece of 12x12” plywood.
It’s the perfect tool for getting lights low to the ground or on top of cabinets, for example. You can turn it upside down and make a lil table for your producer’s coffee. You can take a turtle base c-stand off its legs and put it in the junior receiver - for when you need a stand with a small footprint to hide behind something in frame. The only limit to its uses is your imagination ✨
Swipe to check out some of the use cases for inspiration! (Unfortunately I didn’t take any bts from this setup.)
We had a lot of environmental circumstances working against us on this location: a small room with dark walls and glossy paint, low ceilings with no rigging points, and a window behind the camera.
Thank goodness for pigeon plates because we used two of them in this shot! One on top of the cabinet frame left to mount a Titan Tube on a 40” c-stand arm. A second pigeon plate with junior receiver and a 20” c-stand column was set on top of the fridge for the other Titan Tube. It was easy to hide the stand and base with some set decorating. A few MCs inside the fridge for some pretty light, and a B7C in the overhead fixture for just a tiny bit of front fill and the little highlight on the back wall. 4x4 floppy blocked the front light from the window.
There you have it. Pigeon plates are super handy. We should just change the name to bald eagle plate because they’re so badass. 🦅
DP @mrcooger
Director @mjburnette
Production @imagebrew
Key Grip @trevortietjen
Tyler Kaschke is a freelance gaffer with a grip truck based in Lafayette, Colorado serving Boulder, Denver, Golden, Fort Collins, Colorado Springs and the Rocky Mountain region at large.