Over the last six months, we at Igniter Media have produced some scripts that required a few shots that went beyond just a stationary tripod. When we brainstormed “Strangers” back in August, the script was screaming out for a few long dolly shots. And thus began the creation of our 22-foot dolly track. I’d never built something like this before, so I hope you enjoy reading about my experience, and I hope you can use it to make something even better.
(Thankfully, we already owned an Indie-Dolly so we were fortunate to not have to go out and purchase rollerblade wheels as suggested here.)
CONSTRUCTION
Any time I hear DIY dolly tracks discussed, the first term that comes up is PVC. So, Trent Armstrong and I went to Home Depot, and after some brainstorming, came back with six 8-foot sections of what is labeled as 1-inch (but I measure it at 1-5/8-inch) PVC pipe, 1-3/8 inch wooden dowels, a few 10-ft 2″x4″s, and a bunch of 1/4-inch x 2 1/2-inch bolts.
At home I cut the 2″x4″s into 37-inch sections and drilled holes at each end, 33-1/2 inches apart. This measurement was taken to match the width of the original 8 ft Indie-Dolly track that we had. I pushed the 1/4-inch bolts through the holes so that they stuck out the other end of the 2′x4′. Because the bolts have a square shape underneath their head, the bolts stayed in place in the 2″x4″s. I would recommend, however, gluing them in, as we have lost one bolt already.
I then cut two of the pieces of PVC down to 6-foot lengths because we had to fit our dolly inside a 22-foot-long living room. I drilled holes in the pipe every two feet, starting one foot into the pipe section. Not to get all Bob Vila on you here, but be careful and take your time when drilling holes into PVC. It was a bit frustrating, as even when I lessened my weight on the drill, I still occasionally “blew up” the hole I was drilling.
Next, I cut the dowel down to about 5-inch pieces and stuck them in the ends of the PVC. The dowel was usually just big enough to fit very snugly inside the the pipe, and therefore helped to securely lock all the lengths of pipe together. NOTE: We went through some trial and error with selecting the dowel, to make sure we found pieces that fit tight. There was some variance in the selection at Home Depot.
Laying out the pieces of 2″x4″ like railroad ties, and then the connected PVC pipe like tracks, I could now drop the 22-foot pipes onto the ties by lining up the holes in the pipe with the bolts on the 2″x4″ (see Exhibit A — about 0:08 — in the video embedded near the end of this post). Voila!
USE
The long dolly allowed us to get some great moves that weren’t possible otherwise. We discovered that shims are very necessary when dealing with rocky ground. We also found that it is not possible to have someone ride the dolly, as the extra weight causes the pipe to flex in between the ties and the dolly falls off the rails. All in all, things came out pretty nice for $60. (See Exhibit B in the video below — at about 0:38.) Oh, and you can see a bunch of pictures of the construction and use here.
EXPANDING THE DOLLY
When Thanksgiving rolled around and we began talking about Christmas scripts, it was time to break out the dolly track again. The script for “After Christmas” seemed like the perfect opportunity to move through objects that supported the text in one continuous shot. This time, however, I thought it would be even better if we could track along the ground, especially when moving past things such as presents and ornaments.
First I tried gaffe-taping our Canon 7D to an “arm” I made from a couple 8 ft shelving supports I found around the office, and attaching the “arm” to the dolly by weighing it down with a couple sand bags. While this worked, it was pretty finicky. This setup couldn’t clear objects very well on one side because the arm was only about a foot off the ground, couldn’t be panned during the move, and finally, took up a lot of space. (See Exhibit C in the video below — at about 0:56.)
I decided it would be interesting to see if a tripod-mountable arm would be easy to make via another trip to Home Depot. After roaming around for a while, I walked away with a 10-foot “Superstrut” 12-Gauge Metal Framing Channel, a corner “angle slotted offset plate”, four 2-1/2-inch x 7/16-inch bolts, a few 1/4 20 (standard tripod mount size) screws of varying lengths, a 1/4 20 drill and tap set, and a whole bunch of washers.
I played around with a few different configurations, and what resulted was a pretty decent “dumb” jib arm. I call it dumb because it can’t really do jib moves — the camera does not stay level as the jib arm moves up.
I used the angle slotted offset plate (or for the sake of blogging ease: cheese-plate) on the front of the arm to offer multiple mounting options. I then attached two Manfrotto tripod heads together and screwed a 1/4 20 screw through the cheese-plate and into one of the tripod heads. Having two heads is convenient — it keeps the camera level on all axes and gives you more flexibility in setting up your shot.
After getting that all set up, I tapped two holes in the arm to allow for two places on which to mount the tripod plate. This gives the arm a couple different length options. With our Cartoni tripod mounted to our dolly, I attached the arm to the top of the tripod. Note: Be sure to use a tripod that can withstand quite a bit of weight. In this case, there was a lot riding on that Cartoni.
Finally, I attached the large bolts to the back of the arm as “stoppers” for our counterweights (sand bags). Et voila, encore! A dumb jib! (See Exhibit D in the video below — at about 1:28.)
USING THE DUMB JIB DOLLY
One of the locations for the “After Christmas” shoot was First Baptist Church Murphy here in north Texas. Working in the center aisle of the sanctuary, we set the track up as far to the right as we could, and moved the arm left in order to hide the track as much as possible. One huge advantage of having a long arm for dolly moves is the fact that your camera can hang several feet past the beginning of the track, and therefore allow you to do a move without ever revealing the track. The arm also allowed us to get very close to the sides of the pews and was very helpful for simply determining what kind of shot we wanted. For example, if we needed to frame up a shot any closer to our subject, we could just pan the arm instead of having to move the whole track. (See Exhibit E in the video below — at about 2:00.)
We did many takes of this move. Admittedly, it was rather difficult, as we ran across a few problems that I outline later on in this post. What we ended up doing was shooting the scene backwards and using gravity to our advantage, allowing the dolly to simply roll down the incline as we guided it. (See Exhibit F in the video below — at about 3:00.) Pony Clamps were used at the end of each pipe to keep the dolly from rolling off the track. When we got the shot we wanted, we removed the first section of pipe, and shot the last half of our scene, so that we would have a take that didn’t have dolly track in it at the end, which we then comped over-top of the floor in our original take. (See Exhibit G in the video below — at about 3:28.)
Here’s that video we’ve been talking so much about:
CHALLENGES
While the dolly/dumb jib served our purposes well during shoots, it wasn’t perfect. There were a few issues that we ran into that we have since corrected, or are still thinking through.
For one thing, because the 2″x4″s lay flat, they would rock when placed on un-level ground. To correct this, I added door-knob stops as rubber feet, lowering the number of contact points from infinite down to just two.
Next, while the jib arm is solid and sturdy, it is hanging almost seven feet past it’s fulcrum — the tripod — which only amplifies any bumps or wobbles in the track. The arm is only 1-1/2-inches wide, so it is subject to rotational wobble as well (you might be able to detect this at around 1:56 in the video above). I would guess this is why most professional jib arms are rather wide — to lessen this effect. I would suggest when choosing your arm: the wider the better.
Finally, another problem we have been having is that because of the weight of the dolly, when it travels over a gap between ties, the 2×4 acts as a fulcrum and lifts the pipe down the line off it’s bolt mount. Then, when the time comes for the dolly to travel over that section, it plunges onto it’s mount suddenly, causing a bump in the move. We have solved it on shoots by getting helping hands to hold down sections of track that are not in use, however, we feel there must be a better solution to this. One option would be to create a mount that actually holds the pipe down onto the tie, instead of relying on just gravity. But this needs to be something that is quick — we don’t want to be turning screws on 22 different mounts. Another solution would be to double our amount of ties so that there is more weight distribution across the ties. Perhaps we should rip the existing 2″x4″s into 2″x2″s, so that we still have the same amount of weight to lug around.
As with most things in life, our dumb jib dolly is a work in progress. But in the mean time, we’re having a lot of fun with it!
What do you think? Any brilliant ideas or solutions? Have you made your own dolly track or (dumb) jib arm before?
Steve Vanderheide is a creative producer at Igniter Media. In addition to photography and video production, Steve enjoys hiking, music, and being from Canada. He occasionally finds himself on Twitter: @svanderslice.