Department guide · Grip and rigging
Grip and rigging, the least documented department in the industry.
Grips move the camera and hold up everything that is not a light. Dollies, track, cranes, remote heads, car rigs, scaffolding, negative fill, and the endless business of clamping things to other things safely. It is skilled, physical, well paid at the top, and almost entirely absent from the internet.
That absence is an opportunity. Grip is one of the easiest departments to get a first day in because so few people think to ask, and one of the hardest to research beforehand. This list is short because there is not more.
Where to start
Names, then physics, then safety.
01
Learn the vocabulary first
A grip department runs on a vocabulary of stands, arms, clamps, heads and plates that sounds like nonsense until you have seen the objects. Manufacturer catalogues are free, fully illustrated, and the fastest way to attach names to things.
02
Then the dolly
Dolly gripping is the craft at the centre of the department: moving a camera smoothly, hitting marks, and matching an actor’s pace without being asked twice.
03
Then load, leverage and rigging
Everything a grip does is a physics problem about weight, leverage and failure. Learn how things fall over before you learn how to hold them up, because that ordering is what keeps everybody safe.
ScreenSkills publishes a free skills checklist for dolly grip and camera grip. Print it. It doubles as an inventory of what you do not yet know, and as a set of words to use in an application.
The list
The short one, and every entry links out.
We have not padded this. Where free material does not exist we say so at the bottom of the page rather than filling the gap with something mediocre.
Dollygrippery (opens in a new tab) · Free · blog · anyone considering the department
A long-running blog by a working dolly grip on technique, dollies, cranes, remote heads, crew politics and what a good day looks like. Posts are occasional now; read it as an archive. The only sustained first-person writing on this craft anywhere, and it is about judgement rather than kit.
ScreenSkills — grip skills checklists (opens in a new tab) · Free · no account · UK grades
The competences the grade is expected to hold. Print it. It converts a vague ambition into a list you can work through, and the language in it is the language a hiring conversation will use.
ScreenSkills — grip job profiles (opens in a new tab) · Free · no account · before you apply
What a grip, a dolly grip and a key grip each do, what a day looks like, and how people get in.
American Cinematographer (opens in a new tab) · Free articles · paid magazine · deciding between camera and grip
The Shot Craft column has covered the dolly grip: what the job is, how the move is planned, and the relationship with the operator and the focus puller. The best short introduction before you commit to chasing it. Some pieces sit behind the subscription.
Matthews Studio Equipment (opens in a new tab) · Free to browse · product data · day-one juniors
Over a thousand stands, arms, clamps, plates and heads with their specifications. Avenger, Kupo and Modern Studio Equipment publish the same kind of listings. Knowing the correct name and the safe working load of an object is most of what a junior grip brings on day one.
Meet The Gaffer (opens in a new tab) · Free · YouTube · US practice · below feature scale
Grip alongside electric: truck packing, stands and rigging on smaller units. On most UK jobs below feature scale the two departments overlap heavily, and this is what that looks like.
Crash Course Film Production (opens in a new tab) · Free · 15 episodes, about 10 minutes each · still choosing
One episode places grip and lighting in the machine and says what each does. Useful if you are still deciding between departments, and useful for the relative who keeps asking what the job is.
Every link here goes to the owner’s own page, in a new tab. How we treat other people’s work · Last checked September 2026.
Money on it
Very little, and that is the point
There is almost no paid grip training worth recommending either, which tells you something about how the trade is transmitted. It is an apprenticeship craft that has never been written down.
A recognised rigging or working-at-height ticket
Not film specific. Where your grip work involves scaffold, truss or height, the relevant vocational training is a real qualification with real regulation behind it, and it is portable outside the industry.
Paid, sometimes funded
The Mark Milsome Foundation — online production safety course (opens in a new tab) · Independently certified · about an hour and a quarter · check the cost on their page
Created after the death of camera operator Mark Milsome on set in 2017. Grip work is rigging work, rigging work is where people get hurt, and this is the cheapest evidence that you take that seriously.
The book
One, and there is no competition.
| Book | What it is for |
|---|---|
| The Grip Book — Michael G. Uva | Equipment, rigging and terminology across the whole department. There is essentially nothing else, which is the point: this trade has never been written down, and this is the nearest thing. |
Where you are
The same list, sorted by what you have already done.
| If this is you | Do this, in this department |
|---|---|
| Never been on a set | Learn the names. Work through a grip catalogue until you can identify every object and its load rating. |
| You have a first day | Watch where the track goes and do not touch anything you were not handed. Ask before you lift. |
| Building a career | The skills checklist for your grade and the one above it, then read Dollygrippery from the beginning. |
| Changing department | Grip says yes to people who know the names of things. Learn the catalogue, then ask every local production company. |
| Running a department | The Bectu cards, the published safety guidance you sign for, and a rigging ticket for anybody you put on truss. |
The grades
What each rung actually does.
Any word on this page you have not met before is in the glossary, in UK terms.
Where the gap gets filled
What we can do instead.
The trade is transmitted on the job, and the qualification sits behind two years of paid grip work. What we can do is put you on a unit where the grips are working, on Set Ready or Production Simulation Week. Neither counts toward the diploma.
If you cannot get to us: use the skills checklist, read Dollygrippery from the beginning, learn every item in a grip catalogue by name, then ask every local production company whether they need a hand. Grip is the department most likely to say yes to somebody who knows the names of things.
Practical Filmmaking — Workshops, Training and Mentoring
Not yet published.
