C-Stand

What this is about

Almost everything the grip department shapes light with hangs off a C-stand. The staggered legs slide under a table or another stand, the gobo arm reaches sideways over a set, and two knuckles clamp anything with a pin or a flat edge. That reach is also the danger: an arm extended with a flag on the end turns the stand into a lever, so the rule is to place the tallest leg under the arm and hang a sandbag on the leg, every time.

A term only helps when everyone on set means the same thing by it — so what follows is how it is used, not a dictionary definition.

What runs differently here

Where this differs from the general case:

• The tallest leg goes under the load, and a sandbag goes on that leg — the standard safety habit on every set.
• Knuckles tighten clockwise following the direction of the load, so gravity keeps them closed instead of loosening them.
• Stand count is a scheduling number: each flag, net or bounce board occupies one stand and the crew time to rig it.

With TillyGen

TillyGen's equipment list counts stands and sandbags alongside the lamps, so the grip package matches the number of flags a setup actually uses.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.