From a car-trunk tabletop jib to a technocrane that needs its own truck
Introduction
Jibs and cranes add the one axis a dolly and a slider can’t easily reach: height. Both swing a camera up, over, or around a scene from the end of a boom arm, with the operator usually controlling the camera remotely from the ground rather than riding the arm itself. The category spans an enormous range, from a small tabletop jib that fits in a car trunk to a technocrane that needs a dedicated truck and crew to move.
Jibs
A jib is a lever arm, camera and a counterweight on opposite ends, pivoting on a fulcrum that’s usually mounted on a wheeled base or a set of legs. Swinging the arm raises, lowers, and repositions the camera through an arc, while a remote head on the camera end lets an operator pan and tilt independently of the arm’s movement. Smaller tabletop and mini jibs are lightweight enough for a one- or two-person crew to rig quickly, making them a common choice for a simple rise-and-reveal shot without the cost or crew of a full crane.
Cranes and Technocranes
Larger cranes scale the same basic idea up substantially, with a longer arm, a heavier counterweight system, and often a mounted seat or platform for an operator, used for big establishing shots and sweeping reveals on major productions. A technocrane adds a telescoping arm on top of that, letting the reach of the crane extend and retract at variable speed during a shot rather than just pivoting at a fixed length. That telescoping ability makes moves possible that a fixed-arm jib or crane simply can’t do, including arc compensation, extending or retracting the arm to keep a moving subject the same size in frame while the crane swings around them.
Technocranes are large, heavy pieces of equipment that need a dedicated truck to transport and a trained crew to rig and operate, which puts them well outside the budget of most productions below a certain scale. A closely related option is the Russian arm, a vehicle-mounted crane arm with a stabilized remote head that can move a camera at high speed alongside cars or other fast-moving subjects, developed in parallel to the technocrane by engineers in both Hollywood and the Soviet film industry in the late 1980s.
Choosing a Jib or Crane
The decision usually comes down to how much height and reach a shot actually needs, and how much of the budget and schedule can go toward rigging it. A mini jib can be set up in the time it takes to unload a car and covers a large share of the height-and-reveal shots a smaller production will ever need. A full crane or technocrane is a different category entirely, closer to renting a specialized vehicle than a piece of camera gear, and it’s reserved for productions where the specific move it enables is worth the cost and crew it demands.
Conclusion
Jibs and cranes exist to put a camera somewhere handheld, dollies, and sliders simply can’t reach. A small jib handles the occasional rise-and-reveal shot without much fuss, while a full crane or technocrane belongs to a different tier of production entirely, one where the size of the move justifies the size of the equipment and crew it takes to pull off.