Where is a nice cheap place to buy a camera dollie online???

Buy? What is this "buy" stuff?

You can use a wheel chair, or a platform cart. You can use just about anything with wheels, that can roll smoothly. I even know people who built skateboard dollies with pvc pipe as track.

Be creative. Otherwise, im not sure where to look online. Might check e-bay.
R. M. McWhorter

And you shall know us by the trail of dead.

I just got done with my short "INFLUENCE", which will be up on the site in about a month or so and for my dolly/truck shots I used a tripod with tennis balls attached to the bottoms of each tripod leg.
If you don't have a smooth enough surface to glide it across, as I didn't have, then find a few smooth boards or what I did, was used an old fold up banquet type table but left it folded down to glide the tennis balls across on. It worked great! and I plane to use it again. Hope it helps!

"I don't have time for film school...I'm too busy making movies" lol

I use a wheelchair myself, alltough that tennis ball trick sounds intresting...


-Thomas Chalifour

Writer/Director/Actor Extrodinaire

Both of you are right, a smooth surface is exactly what you need. I would say to get some type of soft coated wheel (like rubber or a tennis ball) against smooth wood or tile surface. Have you seen those crazy off road skateboards with fat rubber wheels? You can expirement with those (if they sell them anymore)If you use plastic wheels, it'll make unwanted noise. Since most dollys have plastic wheels, i'l them up with cloth.. Setting up track such as the pvc pipe or tables only work for side to side shots. I'm sure they don't set up track when the shot is in front of the actor and moving backward, or else the track would be exposed(quick example..opening shot of saturday night fever) Does anyone know how they do shots like these (ex: out on grass or concrete?)

I'm not sure how the Saturday Night Fever shot was done, but there are a variety of ways. My guess is that they had the camera on a truck or moving vehicle. You can use a steady cam of course which I know isn't something we can all get a hold of, but there are cheap rigs that can be made to make a home made steady cam. You could just angle the camera so that the track isn't seen. Or you could just zoom depending on how you want the shot to look.

I built a small dolley and used HOTWHEELS track. I just bought 20 feet or so, put it together and it made a very nice, smooth track for straight shots. Very cheap too!

Mark M
Scooter Productions

There are a few links in here that might help.
There are two examples of home built dollies.
The HomeBuiltStabilizer link is loaded with ideas too.

Thanks for the links...I really think thay can help people out htere with special effects inerest!

"I don't have time for film school...I'm too busy making movies" lol

Someone mentioned the opening shots of saturday night fever? I am not shure if this is the way that exact shot was done, but I have been on the set of a few Hollywood films and watched them shoot a seen like you are talkin about... When they used tracks in these types of scenes, they acutally had a guy who was right underneath the camera who would collect the tracks right as the cameras wheels passed them... Sound hard to believe, well its true. I am sure it took some practice but it worked, I assume they didnt secure any of the tracks they had to pick up. Just an interesting little tip. Maybe we should leave that to the pro's.

Hudson
H Cubed Productions

Gentlemen,

For that tracking shot of Tony's feet, I believe that they placed the camera (probably welded!)on to the front of a shopping trolley; sure, this may be as noisy as hell, but you don't have to use the recorded sound.

In the mean time, for good low tracking shots, get a nice weighted tripod, place your camera on it, and close the legs together. Then invert the camera, so it is upside down. This, allows you to achieve relatively steady shots; but wait! Surely the captured footage will be upside down?

This is true, though easily rectified. Flip the video in your editor. Piece of cake. This also works the right way up, especially if wanting to track someones movements.

Try this too; get a plastic carrier back; as strong as possible. Cut a hole into a point at above one of the corners. Poke the lense through the hole. Start moving!