Olympia-cart winged
I started out with an Olympia tools Cart (85-188), which I moved to an Azuma cart (same dimensions as an Olympia cart only made better), but quickly found that while the cart was incredibly useful, it was just that little bit too small to house everything I wanted for my AS cart, often leaving it a little over-stuffed (see last picture below). Then after a revelation from the American sound branch, I discovered there was in fact an Olympia Cart XL (85-189) which had twice the weight capacity, was just a little bit bigger in all dimensions (comparison picture below), & so after some degree of searching I managed to find (I think) the only one in the UK.
The XL has served me very well the last 3 years, being sturdier than the smaller sized model & allowed me to transition a large portion of my AS centric kit to purposeful Peli cases (1450), but I’ve constantly found myself & my AS bumping up against its limitations, that being space. Having somewhere to store kit cases with easy access to work from, while also having an actual area to build mics, radios, plant rigs etc, has proven to be a luxury, as often the AS would have to play musical-chairs with the cases, placing one on the side of the top shelf, loosing half of that shelf space, leaving only half to build radios & mic setups from. It proved to be a bit of a log jam, especially when two AS attempted to work from the cart, often forcing the 2AS to prep IEM’s from the case on the floor (something I hate) but after some head scratching, I think I’ve finally cracked it.
I’ll call it “Olympia Cart Winged”.
I think this will be a definite improvement of workflow for my assistant sound, giving lots of room to work from, while facilitating easy access to pretty much the entire arsenal, & finally folding down completely into a flat storeable unit. The concept behind it is what i call “active storage”, in that the cases used to store the kit (radio mic case, IEM case, mic basket case) are able to live on the folding-shelves, with lids open. This leaves the top shelf entirely as work space to pull onto the composite parts needed & work on, uncluttered, with plenty of room to space out all the small detailed tools we use. When the cart needs to move, all that’s needed is to shut the lids, & then wheel to the next desired spot. The lips on the top shelf discourage stuff being lost also, as we run a rule of only ever placing sound kit on sound carts, that way, even if something does get lost, It’s lost within sound department, & pretty much always turns up during final packdown.
These modifications fall in line with my work flow ethos of “grab & go”, the idea being to strip away as many obstacles between the operators & the kit needed to do the job as possible. This allows for mics & radio rigs to be built as fast as possible, with the setup encouraging this, instead of getting in the way, allowing for more time on set for better application of the tools, which is a far more productive use of our time, Leading to better results, & superior sound!
P.S please forgive the mucky work space In the pictures & video.
