Announcing Cinevate's "Ballare" Dolly.

Looks good Dennis. Seems like an ideal dolly for a film style shoot, and the ability to add a jib is nice.

Do you think there's any value in adding a more portable dolly to your range? For those of us that are in that one man, run and gun mould. I've been eyeing the Wally Dolly...

http://www.wallydolly.com.au/

It's extremely light and portable and gets rave reviews for performance, but at $2500 it's a little exy for me (and I'm guessing many of us).
 
Steve, with the decking left behind, the Ballare folds up to a 24lb or so package about 28 inches long, and only 12 inches wide. It's 100% usable without the decking, and still retains the ability to hold several hundred pounds if required. The decking itself would take about 5-10 minutes to attach so for shipping it goes in a package about 5 inches high, and less than 2 ft square.

It's pretty versatile :-)
 
At long last, the Ballare seat is complete. I'll admit that what we started with and what you see in the catalog: http://www.cinevate.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=83 are two different animals. The biggest difference is that the dolly can now support up to 3 of these seats, and when you purchase the seat, you get something else too...a low angle/altitude shot kit! The seat post can be removed and the 100mm bowl attached in it's place giving you the flexibilty of a camera mounted from ground level, up to about 1 metre elevated. The 100mm bowl normally lives on the extendable center mast, but can be removed and attached in place of the seat in about 90 seconds :-) In other words, with our center mast in place, and no tripod or hi-hat in sight, you can achieve dolly shots with no other grip equipment, from ground level to over 2 metres up. Pretty cool :-)

Once our studio renovation is done next week, we'll have a neat little overview of the entire system up in video format.

seat.jpg


More dolly pics here: http://cinevate.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1929
 
Our studio renovation was finished today..so we'll have that review up very shortly. One of the reasons we did the renovation was to allow the 1000 sq/ft of space we wanted to do this demo, and others to come.
 
We did indeed send a pre-production unit to Matt and Kendall at FreshDV to give us their critique. These guys hold nothing back and we make a habit of sending pre-release stuff there for a look. All of the their suggestions (and a collection from our local cinematographers) have been implemented, including a totally rededesigned handle, quick release seat, low angle capability, acme thread integration, redesigned collars ( with lugs for easier grip), etc, etc.

We're shooting the dolly overview on Tuesday morning, after which the kit will be spirited off for use for two weeks shooting on "Undertow".
 
Hi Dennis,

The dolly looks great! I'm interested in purchasing, but I would like to start off with just the dolly at first and get the 100mm bowl column a little ways down the line. Will there be any problems using my Bogen 528X tripod legs on the Ballare? Also, does the dolly come with any kind of case, or is one available? Finally, what kind of lead time should I expect if I place an order today?

Thanks!
 
Just use them with a floor spreader on the dolly deck, or remove the deck and use the spikes on the arms directly. You can get away with 3 legs in this configuration so the dolly becomes super portable.

The dolly ships without a case currently but we're working with a "welll known" manufacturer of soft gear cases for the system. The cases are not ready yet, but the dolly's are shipping pretty much same day via fedex ground. We'd expect the soft case set to run $200 or so.
 
Great to see one of the usual suspects competing in this category. Do you have a picture of the seat and how it will work? And maybe one of the feet and wheels?

EDIT: Nevermind! Very nice! Adjustments for doors or wider stance! Nice!
 
Dang, Dennis. Did you say in the video that the track can vary in width up to about a foot and the dolly can still track on that?

That's a pretty cool feature, it would seem.

Later,
Jason
 
Thanks, Dennis. Are the skate wheels removable if you guys decide to offer floor wheels in the future for track-free dollying?
 
Yes, and you can expect a modular pneumatic tire kit to attach in their place :-) The unit has no less than 42 ball bearing modules, and the pod attachment points have two each...so the wheel kit will be very simple. The FreshDV guys made the same suggestion.

Jason, actual track flexibility in width is nearly 24 inchs between the doorway mode, and wider stance jib/crane mode. Once the wheels are locked into one of these two stances, you're correct in that the track can vary as much as 1 ft along a curve, straight path or whatever. This makes circular track very quick to setup as the track does not have to be evenly spaced at all. It's 100% essential for folks just dropping track for a shoot. There's no question that standard "ladder" track is still usefull for cinema work as part of the battle there is often a need for rock solid dollies when using longer lenses etc. We're working on a modular track system as on option with self levelling functionality.
 
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Thanks Dennis. Just a few more questions:
  • Let's say I've got my dolly all loaded up, but I need to move the track around. Could putting it down on the ground (e.g. a concrete surface) damage the skate wheels?
  • In the video, you've got a 360-degree loop of track, but how would you set up just a short stretch of curved PVC? Weighting it down (e.g. with sandbags)?
  • You mention in the video that your loop setup had 11 lengths of 10-foot pipe. Is that 6 on the outside track, 5 on the inside track? If I wanted to recreate that, would I need the two couplers that come with the dolly plus nine more @ $25 each?
  • I love the ability to use plain ol' PVC pipe, but I'm also tempted to get something like Porta-Jib's Flextrack. Is that the right diameter for the Ballare, or can you recommend any other ready-to-do track kits that would be compatible?
 
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