Where am I? What is this? Well if you reached here because you wanted to, or if you just happened here, then you have reached the spot I chose to put my collection of pictures taken on sets and locations over the years I have been working in the Film and TV business. I have always liked taking pictures and kept a camera close by much of the time I have spent working as a grip on sets. I think it’s important that these pictures be put some where other than in a box on a shelf in my shop…. They need to be accessible to friends and others who were there or are just interested in “what goes on behind the scenes” day to day on a set. I was going to label these with fancy but decided to just group them by show and in “Boxes” just like they are on my shelf (nowadays on the flash drive)

These pictures are of course taken by me and from my perspective of life on a set so they are just my slice of the picture. Taking pictures on set is mostly something I do when the times is right and I feel it. There are many times on sets that it just can’t be done, should not be done, or there are always some shows that just plain suck and you wouldn’t want anything to remind you of it, so you shoot nothing! There is also the fact that “I’m working” and much of the time can’t take pictures!

The main reason I started putting these up was for all the wonderful people I have worked with over the years. The ones who I have laughed with on the sun filled beaches of Hawaii as well as those I have cried with under LA’s Fourth Street Bridge at 2 in the morning waiting for the call of “that’s a wrap!. Good times, Tough times, times we forget what an amazing business we work in. Take a look you might be here!

One never knows what the next day will bring on a set! I shovel popcorn off the Dolly track, a “Key Grips” job? It is today!…lol!

There is also a secondary purpose to have this site as a sort of a “Visual Resume” so to speak that when a perspective employer ask “what have you done? Can I see your resume?” I can point them here were they can truly see some of my work, not just a piece of paper with a bunch of things I “say” I’ve done. I never liked “Resumes” much, they never told me about whom this person “really” was, would I like to spend 12 hours a day with them? Yea more time than I spend with the wife, kids, or dog! The film business has grown from a fairly small community where peoples reputations, skills, work ethics were well known, where crews went from project to project staying together for years, and has now spread to a point where we don’t all know each other anymore and forced us to assemble “resumes” of these facts…a bit impersonal but a fact of life so mine will be here both visually in these pictures as well as a downloadable Word file or PDF file.

So what’s going onto this site? Well slowly all the pictures I have taken on sets for over 25 years, pictures I have from others, all the content from my old “Secret Grip Website”, plus my pages of pictures devoted to “the way it was” behind the scenes crew shots from long ago, what is a “grip” page, and whatever else I think rates a spot here. I am constantly not only still taking pictures on set but finding more in boxes. I’ll get them in here but they may not always be labeled, I will go back and do that as I get time. So this site will always be “under construction”

Bill Witthans

I post a picture of my father George “Fritz” Witthans on the set of (I believe) “Bonny and Clyde”! My dad was a camera assistant and later operator for many great classic movies made in the “60’s”. “Fritz” is kneeling on the left holding the cables and camera reports. I think the man in the cowboy hat is the well know Director of Photography Bill Clothier. What makes this picture so dear to me is the “Chapman Crane” they are operating of of, its a “Titian” and I piece of movie making gear that is still widely used today, a piece of equipment that as a dolly grip I have used 1000’s of times, in fact there is a very good chance that even 40 years later I have probably used this very crane before or may have it on set tomorrow!