Thanks for checking out the A-Grip Crowd Supply campaign! A-Grip Cinema is two things in one – it’s the first ever smartphone grip, so that you can create in-focus, handheld photos, and shoot smooth videos without awkwardly holding your phone or dropping it. A-Grip Cinema gives you the ergonomics of a dSLR or mirrorless camera at a fraction of the size and cost. Dedicated cameras always have some sort of grip, wrist strap, or neck strap to make sure your camera doesn’t bite the dust, why should our phones be any different?

A-Grip Cinema is also the best tripod mount available for smartphones. Why would you want to mount your phone to other equipment? It unlocks new possibilities for what you can make! Shoot in low light without a flash, create flawless panoramas, use a shoulder rig to make fluid video, make hyper-lapses of the clouds rolling in, or even mount it on a mini tripod on your desk to livestream or FaceTime with the family! The possibilities are endless.

Built with aluminum, steel, and titanium*, A-Grip Cinema is worlds better than those springy plastic solutions that are just as likely to drop as your phones are. It’s durable and lightweight, and A-Grip Cinema is designed to fit a phone as big as the Galaxy Note 4 with a heavy-duty case on, so no matter what device you’re using, you will be able to use it with A-Grip Cinema. Grab your friends and make the movie you’ve been imagining! All they’ll need to bring is their phone.

We designed A-Grip Cinema to be the tool we wanted to use as photographers and videographers to open up new possibilities for mobile creativity. We’re excited to share our passion for making inspiring images and movies with you. There has never been a better time to create with a phone than now because the whole world is your audience.

Getting to this point has already been an incredible journey, and we’re ready to start producing the A-Grip Cinema, so that you can get creating with it. Help us meet our goal of raising $12,000 over the course of this 30-day campaign by becoming a backer and getting an A-Grip Cinema. If we don’t meet the goal, you’re not charged a thing. Check out the different backer levels on the right to contribute your support, and thank you!

You can also tweet about us and like us on Facebook, so tell your friends about us. Spreading the word really helps us on our mission! Also be sure to follow us @agripinc on Twitter and Instagram, where we’re constantly keeping you up to date with what’s going on.

Backer Rewards

Here’s what you’ll get when you become a backer.

A-Grip Cinema and A-Grip Titanium

######*Only A-Grip Titanium has the blackened titanium stud.

##What Can I Use A-Grip Cinema for That I Can’t Already Do?

Easy. Use it as a desk stand for Periscope, Meerkat, FaceTime, Skype, or any other video streaming app. Use it handheld! It provides a very ergonomic and comfortable way to make photos and videos. Mount it on a tripod for photography, or a tripod designed for video too. Put it on a camera slider or shoulder rig to make a movie. Take it with you on your biking trip, and mount it to your handlebar, or you can use the strap and shoot handheld while you’re on your bike! Take it with you hiking, and use your pockets as a holster, which makes you able to shoot much faster, plus you don’t need to worry about dropping your phone on the trail. A-Grip Cinema is great for vlogging. Flip to the selfie cam and you can record yourself easily, and get added stability from the grip. It’s perfect for selfies, if you’re into that sort of thing (we are).

Take it with you to ski and snowboard. You can mount it to anything that’s got a tripod mount (like your helmet or ski pole), or you can use the included silicone straps to to put it on pretty much anything. Or just use it with your gloves on and shoot video down the slopes, edit while you warm up with some coffee, and share your experience by the time you’re off the mountain.

We love gifs at A-Grip Inc. We share them while we’re working, but most people share gifs that are already made. Why not get creative and make your own to share? Your phone has all the power you need to make a gif, so give it a go. Or take your A-Grip with you horseback riding, another great use for the holster-draw, and another place where you’d probably be too afraid to use your phone without A-Grip.

One of our favorite things to do with A-Grip Cinema is to host a movie party. Come up with an easily achievable premise for a short movie, a one-minute romantic comedy for example. Get your friends, a few smartphones, and make the movie in a night! It’s a ton of fun, and a great way to be creative.

A-Grip Cinema is also great for concerts and music festivals. We all want the photos and videos from that crazy night (well, most of them), but getting shoved and your phone getting stepped on might not be what you had in mind. You’ll be able to shoot with total control using A-Grip Cinema, and even if you get shoved, your phone will be still be in your hand.

There are tons of things you can do with A-Grip Cinema, those are just what we’ve already been able to do since we’ve been using it. We’re excited to see what you come up with. Make sure to show us what you create when you get yours.

Why Crowdfunding?

You’ve probably heard stories about some of the crazy successful crowdfunding campaigns. What excites us the most about running a crowdfunding campaign compared to traditional investing is that it makes you, the backer, our number one priority. We designed something that we want to use that didn’t exist until now, and crowdfunding is making that possible!

Will you deliver?

We’re confident we can manufacture A-Grip Cinema in a reasonable time frame, and ensure you get what you order if we meet our goal. All custom components are produced locally, and we have years of experience delivering actual real things. Producing locally also give us much more quality control than if we were producing overseas, and it will shorten the time it takes to get A-Grip Cinema into your hands. Plus, we’re supporting other local businesses here in Portland to make everything work. It’s a win-win!

A-Grip turns that awkward two-handed approach into a comfortable and controlled grip. {cs-image-update-3-road}

A-Grip’s own John Blalock shooting with no fear of his phone dropping.

A-Grip Cinema fits perfectly in your pocket, or in your bag.

The Story of A-Grip

The idea for A-Grip came when John, A-Grip’s founder and designer, was working as the artist-in-residence at Seattle Children’s Hospital, where he created art with adolescent and young adult cancer patients. Through photographic and film projects John worked with patients to tell their stories and provide a creative outlet for expression. Filmmaking and music videos were the most popular projects created by patients, and the work was incredibly successful. It went viral, getting nearly four million views on YouTube. But working with professional photo equipment in the hospital is very challenging, and to make a lasting difference, it was important that patients could create projects on their own devices that they’d be proud of, without the expense and logistics of a film crew. So John began developing what would become the A-Grip Cinema, the first in a line of professional film making tools that works with smartphones.

John is continuing to work with Seattle Children’s Hospital, his next project is called Cancer is a (Science) Fiction Movie, in which patients will create science fiction films using the hospital as a film set!

Photo to Video

When smartphones revolutionized photography, putting a powerful camera in practically everyone’s hand, people became the artists of their own lives. We think that the next revolution in smartphone enabled creativity is in videos and movies. We’ve already seen that happen with platforms like livestreaming, apps like Snapchat, Vine, and on the feature film side too, with Tangerine, which was shot entirely on the iPhone 5S, and is likely the first of many films shot on phones. But shooting video on your phone poses new challenges, and one of the most basic is that while your phone might be comfortable to hold while using it for the internet, or even snapping a quick photo, using it as a camera for any length of time becomes uncomfortable. For videos and photos, having the added control and stability that A-Grip Cinema provides is huge. You can get new angles, hold the phone far steadier, create shots without having to reposition the phone, and you never have to worry about dropping it. Even if you let go of your phone entirely, the strap will keep your phone from falling to the ground.

What’s that Thing on the Bottom?

That’s our patented mount, which combines the ¼-20” and Arca-Swiss tripod mounts. It’s unique to A-Grip, and gives you unprecedented compatibility with other photo and video tools. Even dedicated cameras don’t offer this kind of flexibility. We hate it when our gear doesn’t work with other gear we’ve already got, so we designed A-Grip Cinema to work with everything we could think of. Plus, it’s got a finger rest to make sure it’s stable and comfortable when you’re hand-holding your phone. Hidden in all of this is our secret weapon for the future. We’re planning on creating a rail kit, so you can rig it out into a full kit, with lenses, microphone mounts, hotshoe mounts, you name it. We’re really excited for the future, but the first step is completing this campaign successfully.

A-Grip Cinema next to its BIG cousin.

Compatibility

In the design phase of A-Grip, we tested phones as small as the iPhone 5, as well as the massive iPhone 6+ and the Galaxy Note 4 with a large case, and still had room to spare. A-Grip might even work with some small dedicated cameras, as long as they’re less than half an inch thick. We’re excited to see what people are able to do with A-Grip Cinema that we haven’t even thought of.

Delivery

Our target for delivery is September 2015. We promise to keep you in the loop as far as when you can expect your A-Grip, but you’re always welcome to reach out to us on Twitter, and you can see what we’re up to on our Facebook page and Instagram too.

Plans after Successful Funding

We want to create tools for a new generation of creatives. A-Grip Cinema is just the beginning for us. To find out more, sign up for email list on our website at <A-Grip.com>! We promise to keep you up to date with what we’re doing, not spam you.