Track And Dolly Workshop

On Monday morning I had a workshop in the CCi studio with several other course members on how to set up the track and dolly system. This was very beneficial because we would be using this piece of equipment on Wednesday to film the flat pack furniture challenge, and so understanding how to put it together and operate it was very important.

Lou showed us how to assemble the kit and then we all had a try with adding to the track and adjusting the tripod and the camera movement to achieve various shots.

The wheel configuration, two wheels on top and two wheels on each side of each of the tracks ensures a very secure fit with virtually no movement or wobble. The transition between each section of track is seamless thanks to the extremely high manufacturing standards (tolerance within +/- .001") used by Indie-Dolly. 

Indie Dolly IND-CTD Universal Dolly for curved or straight track use (EXCLUDES TRACK). (n.d.). Retrieved December 3, 2012, from http://www.creativevideo.co.uk/index.php?t=product/indiedolly_ind.ctd

Indie Dolly IND-CTD Universal Dolly

I wanted to try a low shot looking up at a subject, whilst travelling around the front half of them, and see what it would look like, because I believed this would be a nice idea for our commissioned show. This looked good when filmed smoothly, which was quite hard at times because of the separate camera movement to keep the subject central in the frame. I suggested this idea to Michael and Gareth and we may try to film a couple of shots of our presenters in this way if we have time.

Once we were done with experimenting with this piece of equipment, we packed it back up and returned it to the green room. I believe this piece of equipment can achieve some good-looking shots and we will try to use it in various other shoots and broadcasts when applicable.

Here are some photos from the workshop