Announcing Cinevate's "Ballare" Dolly.

You can do the curved track setup with 4 pieces of 10 ft pipe (2 couplers, one per each radius). All we do is tie the two ends together using about $15 of cargo straps :-) The radius is not important, as long as the two are reasonably close. The couplers are CNC machined/knurled out of solid aluminum which is not cheap...but they'll last a lifetime.

Any standard track, including flex-track would work. The cinema folks here locally have been using it on standard ladder track (steel) with the dolly's track width set to its doorway width position. Putting it down on concrete would be just fine as long as you remove any grit picked up...this would make your next dolly on track a bit crunchy if you didn't.

I think the message here I think I'm hearing is that we should be offering complete track kits too...if so, no problem :-)
 
Yeah, there would be demand for a track kit. Don't get me wrong, the PVC pipe solution is great for straight work, but something like Flex Trak would be useful for other situations. The biggest complaint I've heard about the Spider Dolly & Flex Trak is that it's hard to align, but the Ballare's design seems to address that issue.
 
What I'm seeing is that the current Ballare users who are in the run n gun mode love it (including use pvc pipe) and those in a serious cinema mode with long lenses want the conventional rock solid ladder track. I'd expect a nice compact, self levelling track system in short order :-)

There's more bts shots here, but the star of the series is the mommy possum..with babies on board: http://mikeks.smugmug.com/gallery/5017538_AMuW2#301189584_tDvNr
 
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