Keeping your camera, lights, and most importantly your cast and crew safe while on set is the most important thing to ensure while on a film set, and one measure you usually take to do this is putting sandbags on the legs of tripods and C-stands. However, sandbags can be challenging to work with: they can get displaced, punctured, and require you to fill and empty them with sand all the time. But this new item called the StandDaddy aims at solving all of those problems while still securing all of the stands on your set.
The StandDaddy is essentially a ring with a tightening nut that you can slide over any leg or pole of your stand. Once it's in place, you can then add everyday round gym weights to your rig to keep it secure.
The cool thing about the StandDaddy is that it lets you put counterweights just about anywhere. With sandbags, you can try to place them strategically, but they're bulky and take up a ton of space; in other words, they're not ideal if you want to place them anywhere other than on your tripod/C-stand legs. You can use a StandDaddy to add counterweights to legs, booms, or pretty much anything else that you can fit through it, which means you can use it to secure your camera and lights, or to add counterweight to your jib.
The StandDaddy also comes with a carry handle accessory that makes transporting weights and rings easier.
Price
- Buy 1: $10
- 4 Pack: $35
- 8 Pack: $59
- Carry Handle: $18
Now, I can see a few issues that could come up when using the StandDaddy rather than a traditional sandbag. For one, when you want to secure a stand, using a sandbag is so easy; you just toss one on the proper leg and you're golden. In the same way, when you need to move your stand for whatever reason, you can remove the sandbag just as easily. With a StandDaddy, it looks like it takes quite a bit more time to secure stands, and if you want to move it from one side of the room to the other, you'd have to decide whether you want to lug a significantly more heavy stand the entire way, or if you want to take the time to remove all of the weights. (I'm lazy, and that doesn't sound very appealing.)
Furthermore, there are other, cheaper options out there that might do just as good of a job as the StandDaddy. Spring clips are around $3 and seem to work at the gym, so they'd probably work on a film set. O-clamps are a little pricier at $5, but might do the trick as well.
What do you think about the StandDaddy? Is it worth the cost or are sandbags still the best choice for securing your stands? Let us know in the comments below.
Source: StandDaddy
