Indie filmmakers spend and enormous amount of time and energy attempting to make their low-budget films feel like big budget productions. An essential difference in how big budget films differ from low-budget indies is the way the camera moves.
In a typical Hollywood film the camera floats, flies, and follows the actors with smooth precision. Your typical low-budget movie is either an ‘all-over-the-place’ hand-held affair or the camera feels like it has been bolted to the ground.
Moving the camera smoothly is one of the best things you can do to add that elusive thing called ‘Production Value’ to your independent films. On big budget productions a camera dolly is standard gear. They use them like you and I use a tripod. But those complex pieces of engineering are expensive, heavy, and require a trained operator to use.
Fortunately, there is a very low cost camera dolly alternative for the independent filmmaker that anyone with modest skills with tools and a few dollars (or excellent scavenging abilities) can create. It is:
Do you know of a top quality tutorial for creating your own Skate Wheel Dolly? Leave a comment below and share the link with us. We’ll continue to update this list as available tutorials change.
Very early on in my video production career I did a few personal projects to better learn my craft and also to capture some of the stories of the people in my life for future generations.
My grandmother made a meat, potato, and vegetable filled pastry dish called pasties that have been a family favorite since as long as I can remember. Over Thanksgiving dinner I talked her and my grandfather (he owned the camera) into coming over the next day and shooting the video.
My grandfather is the person who taught me all about photography which sparked my love of film, so this was a great chance for the both of us to work on something that also featured my grandmother too.
The next day, grandma showed up at the house with a bag of groceries and her hair and makeup done. We transformed my mom’s kitchen into a video set and spent the next 8 hours making pasties.
This fun little project really captured a feeling of who my grandparents were. Since they’ve passed on, it is the only way my children will get to know them as they grow up. It’s also a great way for my extended family to remember her and pass along at least one family tradition.
Bryan Tanori (the main guy over at The Tanori Group) is a good friend of mine and also the proud new owner of a Panasonic AG-HVX200 P2 based HD camcorder. I consulted with him during the purchase to help plan his camera package and he returned the favor by bringing his new camera up to my neighborhood this past Saturday so we could take it out in the field and get some hands-on experience shooting with it. More on Review: Hands-On Experience With The Panasonic AG-HVX200
I recently teamed up with director Dave Campfield to shoot a short commercial spoof to be used in a movie he is producing and directing. It turned out great and Dave posted it on YouTube.com.
I lit and shot the parts with Dave Rigg, the on-camera spokesperson. It took us about 3 hours start to finish. I used a 1k Arri Fresnel with a softbox for the key light on all of the spokesperson clips. A Lowel Omni Light was used as a backlight, another (shining into an umbrella) was used for fill, and third was gelled and aimed through a cookie for the background light.
For the dramatic “bad acting” shots, I took the softbox off of the 1k key and backed the fill light away to create a high contrast look. I turned off the light that was hitting the wall to let the background go black.
I think it turned out great. If you like it, vote for it and recommend it to a friend.
P.S. I also have a cameo as the ‘audition monitor’ on the right who can’t believe what he is seeing.
Our ability to perceive motion when viewing a sequence of still images is due to a phenomenon called ‘persitence of vision.’ There is a threshhold of frames per second (fps) where the human mind stops distinguishing between individual frames and begins to see motion (around 16 fps.) Film and video do not record and play back at the same number of frames per second.
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