Grip Services

Grip work in China is shaped by three big markets: mainland features, prestige drama, and high-end commercials. Think of Frant Gwo's Wandering Earth franchise and its tracking-shot photography, or Zhang Yimou period features where Zhao Xiaoding needs overhead frame and silk rigging at scale. Hengdian World Studios runs more than 30 backlots, with many shoots going at once each day. The Shanghai brand economy adds campaign photography through West Bund and the 798 Beijing studios.

Our key grips come up through the Beijing Film Academy crew program and the Hengdian rigging community, with credits across mainland features, NRTA-cleared inbound co-productions, Tencent and iQiyi original drama, and global brand campaigns shot at Shanghai Songjiang stages and Qingdao Wanda Movie Metropolis. The structure usually pairs the key grip with a best boy grip. Dolly grips work the dolly-track and crane days, rigging grips handle overhead truss and pre-rig work, and company grips cover general set support through the shooting day.

The picture on the ground gets more specific. Gear routes through Beijing RedStar, Jebsen Industrial, and Shanghai rental partners. That means Matthews and Modern Studio C-stands, flags, nets, silks, and bounce; Chapman-Leonard and Fisher dolly imports that run on ATA carnet next to locally built dolly platforms; Technocrane and Scorpio cranes for sweeping camera moves; and Action Group Russian Arm imports for car process work on Beijing and Shanghai expressway tracking shoots.

Productions come to us with all kinds of briefs. It might be a Hengdian Ming-Qing Palace overhead-frame silk rig, a Pudong skyline rooftop crane day, or a Bund waterfront dolly-track sequence under Shanghai night exterior conditions. It could be a Forbidden City heritage-permit shoot with an off-limits footprint, a Tibet altitude rigging job at 3,400 metres, or a Hainan tropical-coast process trailer set-up. For each one, we match a key grip to shot count, rigging complexity, and crew size rather than send a generic grip-truck quote.

A few details matter here. Our coordinators run tech scouts to plan rigging, camera moves, and the cross-department work that ties grip to the gaffer-led lighting team. They also write the safety forms for overhead installations under Chinese industry standards. Camera-car days run on Mercedes Sprinter, Yutong, and Iveco platforms built by the Beijing and Shanghai camera-car community. Complete grip-truck packages route through rental partners and come with a driver, full grip gear, and Chinese 220V/50Hz mains-fitting distribution as standard.

The same crew base is routinely cleared for shoots that claim NRTA approval and inbound 17% VAT treatment. That holds whether you shoot at Hengdian, on Roman heritage-equivalent permits at the Forbidden City and Great Wall, or across Yunnan, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia regional locations.