cinematography The Cheapest Dolly Ever

J

jeremyhung

I've read that tin foil stuck to the bottom of a tripod can get it moving and sliding with great ease.

Have anyone tried it? If it works it'll be such a great dolly replacement!
 
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I must be missing the "Glidecam" joke. I thought they were legit:

http://www.glidecam.com/products.php

Should I be putting different terms in Google?

Re: Tin Foil - NO. No matter the surface or the weight, it's just going to fail. Either a soft fail and you just get crappy dolly work, or a hard FAIL and the camera falls over and breaks.

Skateboard
Wheelchair
Hell, get a furniture dolly or other misc cart from Harbor Freight.

For that matter - Handles of choice + Platform + Angle Iron + Skate Wheels + PVC pipe == uber cheap DIY dolly, with straight track sections. Lightweight and fairly effective.

None of these will get the smooth, precise motion of laying real track and getting an experienced dolly grip to drive - but there are hundreds of no/low budget, legit options that involve one important factor...











.... wheels.
 
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that "glidecam thing" line got another out loud laugh.

I must be missing the "Glidecam" joke.

I don't get the joke either.
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The dude's askin' a legit question. :)

If one were to sum up steady-cams & dollies as "devices that stabilise a camera as it moves", then yah... they can sound very similar. 'Cos they both do that.

They do it differently, though.
 
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To the OP, I'm just going to stick with Robert Rodriguez's method of using a wheelchair. Particularly a stolen wheelchair from a nearby hospital. Not that I'm glorifying theft, but that's just me.
 
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you know, now that i think about it i bet if you put some plastic wrap down where you wanted the dolly to go, then put tin foil on the bottom of the tripod, and greased it with something, and were really, really careful.... it just might work.
 
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To the folks who are confused;

A dolly is some sort of trolley that rolls along. Usually, but not always, it runs on tracks.

A glidecam (or steadicam) is something you carry. It does not touch the ground and so you unlimited where you can go.

Both should provide smooth seamless tracking shots.
 
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I think the only place this would work would be a linoleum flooring...and yet...I think it would be better to put a blanket under the tripod because it would be quieter than tin foil.

There's no perfect substitute for a dolly than a real dolly with track...unless you build one well with skateboard wheels and such. Or you could rent one.
 
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sonofaresiii said:
you know, now that i think about it i bet if you put some plastic wrap down where you wanted the dolly to go, then put tin foil on the bottom of the tripod, and greased it with something, and were really, really careful.... it just might work.
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LOL... I've seen it all now. Foil, plastic wrap, and lube = dolly. Wow.
 
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Thinking to hard, or Sounds fishy to me

:lol:Just get little tiny skis on the bottom of each tripod leg then lay down a bunch of little fish where you want to slide the dolly. You know how slippery fish are and besides who doesnt love little tiny skis?
 
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MY RESULTS

hey everyone yesterday I actually tried the cheapest dolly ever and wanted to share the results with you. I will be hopefully posting the video of my results later , but have found other ways to dolly the tripod as well. Anyway without further ado i did 3 tests 1 on lamenant flooring, 2 on concrete driveway , and 3 on patio My results show that this is much more of a indoor method working pretty smoothy along the laminant flooring , however the sliding of the tin foil across the floor is very noticable so seperate sound would be needed for this to work. when i tried it on the patio and driveway the same result occured the tin foil became chipped away at and made for a horribly unsteady and undesirable shot , also the audio on both trys were horrible . now i did test a few of my own theroies using heavy duty clothing seemed to work great on lament . So in my opinion wheels may not be a must for a sucessful dolly i have found that socks are also a plausible method . well thats all for now i will most likely post my video results tonight

rock on
 
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Spend some money and buy something nice - a dolly is one of those things you can use with a variety of cameras and doesn't really go bad, but can make all the difference in your production - however - there is nothing worse than a bad dolly shot. If you're going to use a BS method, be prepaired to do a thousand takes... unless you don't really care what the footage looks like...?

In that case, just go handheld :) and you could either buy, or use an image stabalizing plugin for whatever it is you're editing on - FCP has one built in
 
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