From the January/June 1998 issue of the Operating Cameraman

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As the old adage goes, Denny and Terry Clairmont were born into the movie business. Their father, Leonard, emigrated from Stockholm to Hollywood in the early ‘20s and worked as a DP until the late ‘60s. He was close to his boys and introduced them into the business when they were each six months old as extras and stand-ins. You could honestly say that they were teethed on Hollywood filmmaking. During their formative years, most of their time was spent "hanging around the movie studios" as they worked on over a hundred motion pictures when they were children.

As the boys entered their adolescent years, their interests turned towards girls and cars, and like many young boys "Auto Shop" caught their attention in high school. Hot rods and sports cars became a way of life and they participated in drag racing and time trials at the local dry lakes. With their entrepreneurial skills, they opened a speed shop, which they operated until 1966.

Like many of us, the Clairmonts reflected on their upbringing and made a decision to follow in their father’s footsteps and become cameramen and they both found employment at Birns & Sawyer in Hollywood. Terry left after a few months to become a camera assistant, and by 1972 he had become a DP specializing in TV commercials and he continued to do so for twenty years.

Denny’s experience in modifying engines and cars for racing taught him a lot about high precision machining and engineering which he later applied to camera equipment. He remained at Birns & Sawyer and eventually became supervisor of repairs, modifications, and designed special items for the cameras and lenses in the rental department.

In a recent interview Terry said "As a camera assistant in Hollywood in the late ‘60s, I found that people working in commercials on one to three day jobs would often get bumped by camera rental houses for a longer rental. So you’re running around on your prep day getting a camera body from one place and a lens somewhere else…and I got frustrated, I bought a new XR35 camera and started renting it and my brother would do the maintenance on it."

The brothers pooled their resources and in late ’72 they made an agreement with Birns & Sawyer, and placed two brand new Arriflex BL-1 cameras into their inventory on a fee-split deal. Birns & Sawyer quickly became the place to rent the Arri BL from.

In 1976, Denny was discharged from Birns & Sawyer during a shake-up in their management. Denny and Terry, now with six camera packages, joined forces with Mr. and Mrs. Ed Engle and started a camera rental house called Clairmont-Engle. During the next four years, the company grew substantially. Terry and Denny had a parting of the ways with the Engles and started Clairmont Camera in 1980 with seven employees. Seventeen years later, Clairmont camera now has close to ninety employees in their North Hollywood facility, and the company has more Arriflex cameras than any other rental house in the world, with the exception of Panavision.

When the Clairmonts first began in the camera rental industry, the BNC non-reflex Mitchells were the cameras of choice. The Arri-2 cameras were just starting to displace the Mitchells as the preferred MOS cameras. The Mitchell cameras had either 110/220 synchronous motors running off the mains or a complicated system that ran on very large and heavy batteries that required a man to control the camera speed and a sync cable that ran to the recorder. There were Arri cameras with a governor motor and these also required a sync cable going to the recorder. There were no crystal motors.

Zoom lenses were just beginning to be used on the reflex cameras such as the Arri 2C and the few reflex Mitchells that were around. Prime lenses with a speed of F2.3 were considered high speed. Zoom controls had a single DC motor and its speed was controlled with a rheostat and it ran off a heavy 49-volt battery. The major studios had their own cameras and lenses and only rented when they didn’t have enough equipment.

The Clairmonts realized that they were at the right place at the right time, and as the studios disbanded their camera departments with their antiquated equipment, the Clairmont’s continued to grow at a brisk pace. They were in a two-story business complex for several years on Vineland in Studio City, first taking space in a few offices downstairs. As business grew, they eventually took over most of the building, which was never intended to be a rental complex.

The latest building Clairmont Camera calls home was built three years ago. The Clairmonts and their head staff members designed the three-story complex that yields over 32,000 square feet, almost three times the space of their old Studio City office. Each department has its own well thought out space, and the flow of equipment, from storage, to prep, to shipping is closely monitored, as is the inflow from the customer’s returned packages. The camera prep areas are state of the art, with plenty of staff to aid each camera package being prepped, and there’s a specially constructed soundproof room for testing the cameras in a totally silent environment.

Clairmont Machine Works, Inc. (CMW) is a corporation, separate from that of Clairmont Camera (CCI) and occupies the first floor of the CCI building in North Hollywood. CMW’s work is primarily for CCI but it also regularly does work for other customers who need custom machining done for equipment used in the motion picture industry. CMW was formed because Clairmont Camera found that finding a reliable outside shop for small rush jobs became increasingly difficult. Also, when an outside shop did a custom job, the shop would sometimes sell the item they machined to Clairmont’s competitors and take credit for the idea. While CCI patents some things, not everything is worth the trouble and expense of patenting. CMW is presently very busy making the new squishy lens, however, other parts are also currently being manufactured whenever there’s an available man and machine.

In the mid-eighties, a substantial amount of motion pictures and movies of the week began shooting in Vancouver. The Clairmonts found that a respectable part of their equipment was traveling over the border on a weekly basis and in 1987, the Clairmonts decided to make life easier for their long term and loyal clients. In a good business decision, they decided to open a branch office in North Vancouver British Columbia.

The Vancouver office is self sufficient with all the same equipment that is in the North Hollywood office. However this branch will have moved from the present 7,000 square foot location to a 20,000 square foot facility by the time this article is published.

The Vancouver business exceeded all expectations, and once again, the Clairmonts found themselves shipping equipment again, but this time to Toronto.

In June of 1996, Clairmont Camera opened its third office. The demand for equipment by Clairmont Camera’s Toronto customers had continually increased over the years, and the opening of this office afforded CCI the opportunity of being close to their customers and offer them service as well as equipment.

"Toronto has a source of very good film crews and we felt that they needed support with their camera and equipment needs. In addition to Toronto’s resident DPs, there usually are at any given time, several directors of Photography from Hollywood, London, and elsewhere filming in the Toronto area. Although CCI saw this situation as a business opportunity, it was also believed that the competition generated by the new Toronto office would cause other rental houses in the area to improve their services and modernize their inventories. This would be a great help to the Toronto camera crews no matter what rental houses they used."

CCI has introduced many pieces of equipment to Canada that had never been there before. To name a few- the Moviecam Compact, Moviecam Superlight, Clairmont Swing/shift lens system, Power Pod, Scubacams, Hydroflex underwater housings, Wilcam W-12 high speed cameras, Wilcam VistaVision cameras, Image shakers- and the list goes on.

"The marketplace for filmed products has been increasing rapidly the past few years and North American made films are in the highest demand worldwide. Production has been increasing in Canada as rapidly as it has been in the United States. Clairmont Camera’s intention is not to primarily take market share from its competitors but rather to help keep production in North America so that production here will continue to increase. This will keep all of us working."

With all of this business happening you’d think that the Clairmonts are inaccessible. Quite the contrary. Both Denny’s and Terry’s offices have large plate glass windows that face the prep areas in L.A.. More likely than not, you’ll find their doors are open, and they always have time to say hello.