Last Updated on May 14, 2021
Greg Flores is a Key Grip in the film industry and a social media influencer on Intellifluence. Greg runs a social media brand named Grip Rigs and also runs a website at gripsupport.com that has everything related to the Grip Industry worldwide.
Greg has worked on many prominent films and TV shows including Thor, Bring it On and Silk Stalkings, to name a few. As a Top Entertainment Influencer, Greg is interested in reviewing products mainly focused on media production, film and the video industry.
How did you get your start in the film industry?
I was in San Diego, California at the time and there was a studio called Stu Segall productions there. And at the time they were doing a bunch of movies and a bunch of TV shows. One was called Silk Stalkings, it was very popular at the time and I wanted to work on that. I just turned eighteen and I went in there for an interview and luckily I got the job. That day he hired me as an intern and he asked me if I wanted to do grip or electric and I asked him what the difference was. And he said a grip is kinda like a handyman on set and an electrician is kinda like a – they hung cable and do electricity so I was like I’ll be the handyman.
As a professional in the film industry and an influencer, how do you structure your average day, or is there such a thing as an average day in your line of work?
Every day is different, which is – that’s why this industry is so good because every where you go to film it’s always something different. So you have to kinda look at your schedule that they have set for you and the call sheet, they give you a call sheet and it tells you the schedule of what you will be shooting and you understand hoe to look at that so you know if it’s exterior or interiors and things like that or you’re prepping for that. And then from there that’s how you know what your day is going to be like. But most of our days are always twelve hour days. Ten to twelve hour days or more so it can be tough in our industry.
In checking out your social media accounts, you have a very engaged following comprised of fans and film industry veterans. Do you have a particular influencer strategy as it pertains to your industry?
Yeah my strategy is to help others. So when I opened my page grip rigs on social media I opened it on Facebook in 2012. And what I did was I opened it so that everybody could share their rigging on sets. What grips do is they do a lot of rigging and lighting on film sets and there was nothing at the time where I could find something where I could get a reference when I had to do something. So I built this page called Grip Rigs and from there everybody else can share their photos or their videos and I’d go through them and if I find – if I like what I see I would put them on. And it just started growing so big ever since then and what I started doing was giving people credit toward their work. So one- I figured out that once you try to help somebody and you give people credit for things they just want to keep helping it grow. They want to keep building it. So the social media count almost grew itself through everybody trying to show off their work and get credit for what they are doing because other than that nobody would know.
When did you get started as an entertainment influencer?
That came later. That actually came last year in January 2017. I was working on – I had already figured out the whole social media thing and it was working so good for me but then I said if you are tying to find anything from our industry and you try to Google it it’s so hard. Like if you want a camera crane or a dolly or anything in any city or state it’s so hard because now the video and photography has taken over also. So if you try to Google something for our industry, for the film industry, it’s so hard to find it.
So what I did was I found it took me like three years but I put everything in to organized albums on gripsupport.com so when you are looking for something related to the grip industry you could find everything there. And from there all the grip companies wanted to advertise on the front of that page. So we keep growing.
What’s the weirdest influencer request you have ever received?
You know what people they are consistently trying to get me to sell things and do things on grip rigs and it’s really hard to do that because it will mess with the brand and you can almost lose a lot of following if you try to help people do things. But people have tried to have me sell toilets and crazy things like it. It just doesn’t make sense for the brand. I don’t understand what they are trying to do but they’d say “we’ll give you a free toilet if you can put our toilet on your” and I’m like “what are you doing? I don’t understand”. But it is cool. I really appreciate the fact that people are looking out. They come out to us and they contact us trying to get us to help them because it shows that we are actually making a difference and they’re looking to us to help them out. So it’s really cool, right.
Do you see influencer marketing growing in your particular area of the entertainment industry?
Oh yeah. It’s growing a lot and I’m trying to help that right now. So what I do is I’m trying to go to every grip and every lighting company and see how we can help them. Because a lot of people they have a big following on social media but they don’t know how to follow it up. Like let’s say they could have a big following like a hundred thousand followers but every picture they post gets like ten likes so something is going wrong there. They are not showing the right content or they are not doing the right stuff or they are not – you know so it can just grow and grow from there. Now with Facebook ads and things like that you can target the exact market you are tying to get. All these companies instead of trying to go word of mouth or try to be on tv and show commercials or things like that they should be just focusing on social media cause right now before it get too expensive is when they should take advantage of it.
What has been your favorite brand partnership to date?
My favorite brand partnership has been Matthews Studio Equipment and Modern Studio Equipment. They’re grip companies in Los Angeles, California and all they – ever since I started in my industry twenty years ago I admired their work. They just try to help the industry and they make- they listen to what we need and if we need to put a camera on a car or things like that they’ll design the exact thing that you need.
So ever since then I’ve now partnered with them so we’re gonna start making things together for my brand. So they’re gonna start creating things for Grip Rigs which is really exciting.
A lot of influencers we’ve interviewed predict video to grow the quickest in the next five years. As a film industry professional, what advice would you give novice and aspiring influencers as it pertains to video?
When you’re doing video it depends on what platform you are gonna work on. But if you’re doing a video for let’s say Instagram you want to stay under a minute and then you’re doing something for YouTube it’s around three minutes. And what you gotta understand when you’re doing video is that everybody is short. They just want to get to the point right away nowadays because there is so much media out there, there’s so much content they just want to get – they just want to see what your purpose is and see what you’re trying to tell them and if it’s good content then they’re gonna listen to you. So what I would suggest is get to the point and, you know, don’t do long tutorials. Try to cut out all the things that make it too long. Like if you did a live video for thirty minutes you gotta think does somebody really have thirty minutes to sit there and watch your video. They’d probably rather watch it later and when they watch it they probably rather watch it cut. Like all the best parts of it instead of watching it for thirty minutes cause people like me, I’m really busy so to spend thirty minutes and to try and find the best parts is really hard. So I would suggest get to the point.
What movies have you done?
I did Bring it On when I first started. It’s that cheerleader movie. It’s a popular one. I’ve done so many movies it’s so fun to do. I got connected with the director of photography named Rachel Morrison and she started off with the movie called Fruitvale Station and from there every movie she did got awards. So we recently did the movie Dope like a year and a half ago and that got big reviews. But I’ve done so many. I did Thor I did- it’s really fun to do these features but you gotta also understand it’s a lot of time and it’s stressful on set. Because people you can only have them for a certain amount of time or you have kids or the sun’s going down. So it’s not a lot- a lot of people think when you’re on set it’s all glamorous or everything is like creative and you get the time to do things. No you’re running around like crazy half the time. You have a big team.
Andrew is the Head of Client Services for Intellifluence and has a background in communications. He is committed to helping brands get the most out of their campaigns and is the co-host of the Influencer Spotlight series.
