I gave the indie dollie a test run last friday

Deuceofspades

Deuceofspades

Veteran
12/28/07 - adendum: yes! I now have footage to share

http://www.bettatalk.com/dvxuser.htm

Since their warehouse is only 20 minutes away from me, i decided to go and try the Indie dolly system last friday. I brought my HVX200 and my tripod.

My feelings:

1. It was easy to set-up the tripod on the dollie.

2. The dollie seemed pretty solid, except for the seat which seemed always "lose", like it needed to be screwed on tighter or something. Seemed there was quite a bit of play in it, I was told they are working on that. The seat can be placed in two spots, but there isa little bit of screwing, unscrewing involved to relocate it.

3. I sat on it and had the girl push me but she did not do a very good job at it, resulting in somewhat jerky footage.

4. I then got off of it and just moved it myself and got very smooth footage that way, just pushing the dolly. I even performed a pan while moving the dolly (that will take some practice).

5. I did not care much for the curved rails. They made it harder to get a smooth move.

6. I did like the straight rails.

7. I did not hear any sound at all coming from the dolly. It seemed very quiet.

8. The points where the rail sections connect together seemed seemless. I never felt them or heard them, and footage was 100% smooth.

9. It packs in a couple bags that come with wheels and a handle to drag like a plane suitcase (cool, cause girls can't haul heavy stuff)

10. It is easy to assemble.


ALL IN ALL

I really liked it. Then of course it is the only dollie I have ever tried so I have nothing to compare it with. At around $1,500 seems a good investment. Comes with 12 feet of rails and carry bags included, and the seat.

I just thought some may find this post help[ful. I am curious to get feedback from people who actually OWN one and put it to the test (in action, filming on location, outdoors etc...). Are you happy with it? What other comparable systems shoudl I check next? Before I take the plunge?

As I watched my test footage on my big screen TV I was pleased with the results. I can't imagine filming a full feature without a dolly so I know I am going to buy one and get that PARALAX :).... yeah baby! Any input appreciated.
 
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I love the Indie Dolly, we own one too. It's a great dolly and for a great price -- if you pay ten times as much you won't get better dolly shots. You'll just have a more expensive dolly. I've used the Fisher dolly, for what we do it's not any better than the Indie Dolly. Actually it's worse -- too big, too much of a headache, useless basically.

The only correction I was going to make is the dolly itself doesn't normally come with track, you pay $1,200 for the dolly, $500 or straight track, and $600 for curved track. That's how I bought it, anyway, it all came as separate products.
 
The indie dolly is sweet, especially for the price. Quality results on a budget. I'd say lose the curved track and get some straight track... I've yet to need it myself.
 
You are right it dfoesn not come with tracks, you add the tracks and can chose betwwen curved or straight, I believe the later are cheaper. But I think both dolly and straight tracks came a little under $1600.

How did the dolly perform outdoors on uneven terain and what's the tricks you used to make it go smoothly (level the ground)... Please share :).
 
Deuceofspades said:
2. The dollie seemed pretty solid, except for the seat which seemed always "lose", like it needed to be screwed on tighter or something. Seemed there was quite a bit of play in it, I was told they are working on that.
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I have pretty much decided to get the Indiedolly and track early next year, and am particularly interested in your comments on the seat's looseness as you described it. It would seem that it could have a significant impact on the shooter's ability to move the camera smoothly - if the seat is woobly, so might the shots be.

I wonder what your impression was as regards this. Was it wobbly enough to make smooth tilts and pans harder to execute? Also, did they say what they were planning on doing to fix it? And when that fix might be in production?

I'll ask them as well about this, but your first-hand experience as a "neutral party" would be most valuable.

Thanks
 
I've shot a few scenes with the indie dolly so far, as my school owns it and even with wear and tear of a few years of use it still performs great! I'm definitely buying one when I can get it. I'll try to get some footage online when I can of it in action.
 
Ted Spencer said:
I have pretty much decided to get the Indiedolly and track early next year, and am particularly interested in your comments on the seat's looseness as you described it. It would seem that it could have a significant impact on the shooter's ability to move the camera smoothly - if the seat is woobly, so might the shots be.

I wonder what your impression was as regards this. Was it wobbly enough to make smooth tilts and pans harder to execute? Also, did they say what they were planning on doing to fix it? And when that fix might be in production?

I'll ask them as well about this, but your first-hand experience as a "neutral party" would be most valuable.

Thanks
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I don't remember it being a big issue. I am trying to remember how it felt once I sat on the seat. It obviously was less lose once you sit on it. I put my feet on each side of the seat on the dolly base and I did not feel like I was about to fall off or anything. I don't even remember the seat moving while I was sitting on it but I only did one run that way. As I mentioned the only test I did with me on the dolly was done with the saleperson pushing me and she did not do a good job at it, so my footage was not smooth. I then got off and did the rest pushing the dolly myself so I was no longer sitting on it.

To answer with any kind of accuracy i would have to go back and try again. And you know what? Maybe I will, cause I am seriously wanting to buy this.

This time I will bring my own help, and hopefully get him to push me nice and smooth. I'll sit on teh seat and see how it does. And I will use the girl as a model. I'll see if I can do this this week. Friday afternoon might work real well.
 
Deuceofspades said:
This time I will bring my own help, and hopefully get him to push me nice and smooth. I'll sit on teh seat and see how it does. And I will use the girl as a model. I'll see if I can do this this week. Friday afternoon might work real well.
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Thanks for your reply, Faith. I'll look forward to reading your comments when you've tried it again.
 
OK, made an appointment for monday. I did ask about the seat and their plans to improve it. I was told that what they will do is have it screw on to the base more tightly, but that this is no priority for them and that they have no target date to have the alteration done. I was told that they have not received any complaints from current owner regarding the seat being the way it is (aka: It dies not pause a problem while shooting), and that is why it is not a priority. I guess they probably want to improve it to avoid the kind of "?" like the one we are discussing right here :).

However I plan to test it to make sure it is , in deed, not an issue while filming. Will let you know. If I can figure out how to render footage for internet I will post some footage too.

Currently using Vegas 8.0 with Raylight and today I rendered a 2 min clip, to avi, no problem looked great. I am however confused about how to render for internet, I tried MGP2 and it looked like crap, I must ave done something wrong (but what?) and need a little time to figure it out. If anyone willing to help me PM me please.
 
Hahaha oh that gave me a good laugh. Sorry I dipped into my "gamer" mindset as I think I was playing WoW at the time.

But in heinsight, FTW = for the win. H.264 is a quicktime plugin that is pretty much the sex for compression, unless you're using ProRes, but I haven't experimented with that yet
 
We didn't even have anyone sit on the seat of the dolly, there was no need, we just moved the tripod on the dolly, pulling it along, and our first A.C. could still pull focus if necessary but we mainly kept what we wanted in focus and that was that. Sometimes I think people make things a bit too complicated when they don't need to be quite that hard. It was very simple to use, and we didn't move the camera from one direction to the other. Sure, that's necessary I suppose sometimes, but not always or even often.

Also, we used it outdoors on uneven terrain on a desert, sand everywhere, it was still fine. We bought a bunch of wood pieces from the garden department at Home Depot or something to prop up uneven parts and make it as smooth as we could. Again, though, there's no need for the dolly to be perfectly level, you don't have to spend hours leveling it. As long as you're close enough it will glide perfectly and you'll get great shots. It's not rocket science, I promise. ;)
 
JonathanLB said:
We didn't even have anyone sit on the seat of the dolly, there was no need, we just moved the tripod on the dolly, pulling it along, and our first A.C. could still pull focus if necessary but we mainly kept what we wanted in focus and that was that. Sometimes I think people make things a bit too complicated when they don't need to be quite that hard. It was very simple to use, and we didn't move the camera from one direction to the other. Sure, that's necessary I suppose sometimes, but not always or even often.

Also, we used it outdoors on uneven terrain on a desert, sand everywhere, it was still fine. We bought a bunch of wood pieces from the garden department at Home Depot or something to prop up uneven parts and make it as smooth as we could. Again, though, there's no need for the dolly to be perfectly level, you don't have to spend hours leveling it. As long as you're close enough it will glide perfectly and you'll get great shots. It's not rocket science, I promise. ;)
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Well I have a question: the above seems to indicate to me that you guys simply moved the camera from point A to point B without reframing, correct? Because if you are reframing, you kinda need to sit on the dolly. I tried to reframe while not sitting on it and it becomes difficult, as you are likely to push accidentally the dolly while you are applying pressure on tripod head to reframe.

So how did you guys go about it?

If you are using the dolly integrated in your blocking, as one of the backbone cameras, reframing is pretty much always necessary, say you move from a key frame to another keyframe and now end up in keyframe 2 in an over the shoulder for ex., then you can bet you will have to reframe during your move...
 
PS: I currently have my computer upgraded so I don't have anyway to download, edit and upload the footage taken at my second test, but I will soon.

I looked at it and could see imperfections. I guess it depends just how picky you want to be, so I'll let you guys be the judge when I post footage.
 
Hmm

Hmm

Well, we aren't doing narrative filmmaking with it either, though. We shoot mostly music videos or pieces where we are using just parts of dolly shots, so there is no need to reframe anything. We set up all of the dolly track in a sort of elliptical setup, where the ends were curved track and the middle straight track, around the band performing, and the dolly either mostly caught all of the action we wanted it to catch, or we literally moved the tripod in the middle of the dolly shot to capture something else, because in editing of course we're never going to use a dolly shot that long from one end of the band all the way to the other, the video was going to be (and was) very quickly cut, so we were more looking for some nice moving shots around one band member, around several, or around an object (zoomed in), rather than a long establishing dolly shot, for instance.

Different uses call for different techniques, of course, but what we often use the dolly for is not particularly difficult it's just to add nice camera movements to our shots. To have the dolly moving *AND* the camera panning at the same time is not necessary for most of what we've done. We also were primarily using the dolly for wider shots, and when we wanted closer up shots and for the camera to stay on someone, we were just going handheld. But of course if you want a smooth dolly shot let's say focusing on a stationary person, well, yeah, you need to have the camera panning smoothly and staying framed on the person.
 
I suggest you guys also look at the microdolly. We've been working with those (borrowed, tough), and its simply perfect. The best thing is, in guerrila shooting, that track can stand any type of abuse people trow at it- people standing on it, motorcicles going over (!), etc.
 
The setup time on that Micro Dolly is amazing! It looks flimsy, but I bet it's actually very durable because it probably is tough to break since it's so small. I love how easy to use it seems, that would be perfect for run-and-gun filmmaking. I really have enjoyed using the Indie Dolly but the Micro Dolly seems like it would be a nice alternative if you were looking to bring less gear and have setup be even faster. Who knows, we may consider buying it in the future if our rental business takes off a bit more, because clients may want to use something like that too. It's good to have options.

I'm excited because I have a Porta-Jib coming at month's end, so that'll be a fun new toy. At the start of this year I had an XL-1s and a Sennheiser ME-66 boom mic with no boom pole; that was it. Now I have an HVX200 with 4 16 gig P2 cards, XL-2, Porta-Jib, Indie Dolly, 12 Arri lights (150w to 2K), c-stands, flags, grip equipment, a 17" pro monitor, matte box, follow focus, three generators (2x20 amp Hondas and 1x65 amp Honda), M2 35mm lens adapter, 4 35mm Nikon lenses, a decent tripod (Bogen), plus a bunch of extra stuff (apple boxes, walkie talkies, gels, filters for the matte box, etc.). Then next year the RED One, most likely I'll be buying the set of RED Primes, a pretty expensive tripod, all that good stuff. I always love new toys! ;)
 
JonathanLB said:
The setup time on that Micro Dolly is amazing! It looks flimsy, but I bet it's actually very durable because it probably is tough to break since it's so small. I love how easy to use it seems, that would be perfect for run-and-gun filmmaking. I really have enjoyed using the Indie Dolly but the Micro Dolly seems like it would be a nice alternative if you were looking to bring less gear and have setup be even faster. Who knows, we may consider buying it in the future if our rental business takes off a bit more, because clients may want to use something like that too. It's good to have options.

I'm excited because I have a Porta-Jib coming at month's end, so that'll be a fun new toy. At the start of this year I had an XL-1s and a Sennheiser ME-66 boom mic with no boom pole; that was it. Now I have an HVX200 with 4 16 gig P2 cards, XL-2, Porta-Jib, Indie Dolly, 12 Arri lights (150w to 2K), c-stands, flags, grip equipment, a 17" pro monitor, matte box, follow focus, three generators (2x20 amp Hondas and 1x65 amp Honda), M2 35mm lens adapter, 4 35mm Nikon lenses, a decent tripod (Bogen), plus a bunch of extra stuff (apple boxes, walkie talkies, gels, filters for the matte box, etc.). Then next year the RED One, most likely I'll be buying the set of RED Primes, a pretty expensive tripod, all that good stuff. I always love new toys! ;)
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Ahhhh Sounds like you are splurging :) ... It's amazing how easy it is to cough up major dough when you are excited about filming hehe... I'm on the same boat. In my case I have a lot of pressure because my film is getting so much press / internet attention that now I'd better deliver. Take a deep breath Faith!!

OK, I will check out microdolly, wonder who carries it (has it on the floor) in LA? Anyone knows??

PS: I do not have my PC back yet. Should have it by mid week - will try to post footage as soon as I am able.
 
SPZ said:
I suggest you guys also look at the microdolly. We've been working with those (borrowed, tough), and its simply perfect. The best thing is, in guerrila shooting, that track can stand any type of abuse people trow at it- people standing on it, motorcicles going over (!), etc.
Click to expand...

Does it have a seat (aka: Can one sit on the dolly while moving it)?
 
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