Doorway dolly design opinions

[Bob Gruen]

All,

I have a used doorway dolly that I am going to refurb for a friend and use myself. We are told it is a Peter Lisand dolly, but doing the normal Yahoo and Google searches and looking at the Lisand website (www.peterlisand.com) doesn't show any photos of the dolly properly set up.

The dolly has box frame construction with a non-slip plywood top. It has 2 pneumatic tires at each corner and an Ackerman steering system with a handle that is too short (it will be lengthened). For mounting accessories it has two sets of through holes for bolting down an Elemack style mount (similar to the one shown below). One set of holes is dead center and the other is on the edge opposite from the steering wheels. It has a 14 inch riser that has a Elemack mount on top and a 6" tall Elemack to 100mm bowl adapter. Dropping a tripod head and camera on the riser assembly puts the camera at navel level. It has no provisions for a seat, but it does have lugs on the side for additional wings which we do not have.

One useful configuration is to set up a Kessler Crane with the riser assembly centered on the dolly. Of course this is not a ride along configuration.

So here is where I am seeking opinions: I have decent fabrication skills and friends who can help me with metalworking. What mods can I make that will maximize the usability of the dolly? For example, I am guessing that I should get a Matthews seat assembly and weld in a few mounts on various locations around the dolly. Does simply tossing a floor spreader and tripod on a doorway dolly work well if the dolly has an articulated seat? That seems to be the modern intended use.

I am considering adding a small crane to allow vertical movement, but to properly do that I would have to relocate the riser a few feet off of the front of the dolly and the counterweight for the crane would hang past that. Big time mechanical dollies generally use a scissor mechanism, but that is beyond my skill set to build.

Opinions sought, and pictures of doorway dolly rigs in use would be really helpful.

Bob

 

[TroutPro]

Can't offer much help, but please keep us posted with lots of pictures, very curious to see what you end up with.

 

[floop]

I have a crane that mounts onto my matthews doorway dolly. Of course, its a bit more hefty than a kessler: http://www.regina.com/crane.jpg

My personal experience is that compound tracking crane shots (where the crane is swinging as the dolly is moving) are very very rarely needed, in addition to being remarkably difficult to pull off. With my rig the operator rides with the camera so backpanning isnt the nightmare it is w/ manual setups, but even still it presents a lot of technical issues that only rarely prove worthwhile.

99% of the time i use the dolly to move the crane into position, then block it, level it and shoot from a fixed base. I whip the push bars off the dolly and then i have 360 degrees to swing the crane. I sometimes will do dolly shots with the crane arm, but in that instance i'll limit the crane to a simple up/down motion. (if you dont swing the arm, you can use the camera bowl to level the camera and go up and down just great. if you swing the arm, you need the whole crane to be perfectly level, which means laying and levelling tracks and working out shots where the tracks arent visible, etc.)

Because I dont swing the crane as I dolly, the mount for the crane can (and should) be directly in the center of the dolly. If you want to reposition the base so you have room to swing the weights... I think you might be better served making a hinged pull bar so you can pull the dolly along from a low angle and swing the crane 360 degrees.

My crane uses a proprietary base that mounts to my (reinforced) dolly, but has an elemack mount at the end of the arm where the operator rides. I've been pricing risers and offsets for the elemack, but they are remarkably expensive. If you know of a reasonable source for elemack components/bazookas, please let me know.


One thing that caught my eye... on ebay a company called "california fusion" (account iefusion) is selling dolly seat kits. a swivelling dolly seat mount with 2 bar risers and top bowl. The risers look flimsy to me, so i've shied away from the whole rig, but their whole setup with pneumatic seat, swivels, risers and bowls costs less than one 6" elemack riser. Certainly has me scratching my chin. It might be worth you having a look, if for nothing else, inspiration. Search for dolly seat, or camera riser and they should pop up.



Ok, so i just went on a wild rambly tangent there. Rereading your post, i'll try to answer more directly...

If you are going to mount a seat, in my opinion you need an adjustable camera pedestal. Unless you can reposition all the way around, a fixed seat is too limiting with a tripod. Especially if you try to get low angles, a tripod can easily take over the dolly and you have to negotiate a place for the cameraman. A good pedestal would allow you to go lower and higher without having to negotiate the tripod legs.


A lot of the indy grips I work with are between big name films. Their common indy practice is to throw a tripod on the dolly and the operator either stands, kneels, or if he wants to sit, they chuck some apple boxes on. For low angles they use a high hat or just drill a hole into a full size apple box and screw the tripod head down onto the apple box. It seems primitive to me, but its fast, versatile and works.

From a balance standpoint, you want your weight as close to the center as possible. If you have a seat mount off to one side, the dolly will act like a skateboard and inch that direction as you roll, making multiple takes on the same line very difficult. If you end up with a rig that raises the weight of the operator/camera up high, a dolly can become surprisingly unstable. If you are gonna fly anything off center, it needs to be low, or counterbalanced accordingly. I've never tipped a dolly, but i've come close enough to be afraid.

A small on-dolly jib that can allow a couple feet verticle movement would be a good thing, but hard to control. I'd recommend against trying to swing the jib while dollying, but if you do end up with a seat/bazooka, you could definitely sit on a fixed seat and raise/lower the crane. If you are willing to cart enough weight around, you can use a center mount, offset in one direction with you and in the other direction with the crane base. A short crane can swing back towards the seat and allow you reasonable up/down motion with head control.

If you want to swing the crane around and the operator keep full control of the head? Wellsir, thats where a ride on crane comes to the rescue. Its big, its heavy, and nobody wants to use it because all film shoots are at the top of stairs with no freight elevator... but still. hehe

The biggest piece of knowledge i can say i've learned from the pro grips is that often they look completely ridiculous while shooting. Riding a chrome dolly with a swinging center column looks cool. The stuff the film grips do to get a specific angle/line often looks completely absurd... but the shot works. I know that we all want to look slick and pro and cool while working, but the real goal is to be able to put the camera anywhere, moving on any line and at whatever speed. I've had three guys on my dolly in a spaghetti of apple boxes, limbs and aluminum, doing completely unnatural things... handing off the camera, handing off focus pulling... passing props just out of frame to the actors. Its often nuts and looks more like a safari than a film shoot, but i'll be damned if the shot didnt come out.

So, i guess in summary... a swivel seat with bazooka adjustable down to high hat height... that would be useful. A couple bowls/holes around the periphery for ultra low angle shots over the edge, that would be useful too. I'm rigging up an elemack offset so i can get the camera out over the edge. The biggest most useful feature for a dolly in my opinion? A camera grip with a lot of creativity.

I dunno if any of that helped, but thats my ramble for the year.

cheers,
-andrew