Camera Carts

The classic guerrilla dollies are wheelchairs and shopping carts. Shopping carts are usually no good, because, face it, you have to steal one to use it. Furthermore, after banging around in a supermarket parking lot, the cart wheels are rarely good enough for smooth moves. The four swiveling wheels are tough to control on any kind of slant and one of the four is sure to rattle. Let’s just forget about shopping carts, but it does illustrate an important point: potential dollies are everywhere.

Another option is an industrial cart. They’re great because they’re sturdy, have push bars and large, often pneumatic wheels for smooth rolling. Some examples of industrial cards include food service carts, library carts, factory parts carts, warehouse carts; a great many commercial environments have suitable rolling stock just waiting for you to use.

If you’re an entry-level professional, you might want to invest in a cart of your own. When not rolling along making shots, they’re invaluable for hauling equipment around a location. When buying a cart, look for these essentials:

While industrial carts are almost always better than shopping carts, they do have small hard wheels that work best only on really smooth surfaces. Even with a large cart, a tripod may be impractical, so bone up on your hand-holding techniques. Skate, snow and surf boards might be other options, but they can definitely be dangerous, to you and your camcorder.

More Exotic Transportation

On an industrial shoot, you can sometimes use big rolling stock like electric carts or working ATVs. I once pulled off a spiffy crane shot from a pallet on the prongs of a forklift (secured to the machine with a war-surplus web belt). Units like cherry pickers and such can be useful for bird’s eye angles, but their motion is usually too jerky for crane shots.

People movers, on the other hand, are smooth as a butter pat on a hot griddle. All you need is good hand-held technique. Escalators are great for massive crane shots and you can find them in many locations, such as in hotels, malls, department stores, terminals and garages. The only downside to escalators is that you are limited by location and the fact that they are very slow. You can use the same gag with airport-style beltways for dollies. Still, you are probably going to have a hard time hiding the fact that you are in an airport.

Glass elevators can be very dramatic, whether in multi-story atriums or on the outside of tall buildings. Because the windows use very thick glass, you can minimize the appearance of scratches and dirt by keeping your camera lens as close as possible without touching. If you have manual focus, set it to infinity to minimize imperfections. A circular polarizer can also help by dialing out reflections.

Shooting from Vehicles

Taping in a vehicle means either shooting outside it or inside it. The most common inside setup is the driver from the passenger’s POV. This is simple to pull off, as long as you don’t brace yourself on a firm surface like the windowsill or dashboard. The big problem is matching backgrounds from one shot to the next or from interiors to exteriors. To minimize background importance, you might try these techniques:

When shooting the world through a vehicle window, the big problem is reflections. This is especially true in a train or tour bus with fixed windows. Again, a circular polarizer will help tame reflections. For tinted windows, set the white balance through the window if you can. When you can open a window or sunroof, just follow good hand-holding practice and don’t touch vibrating surfaces (which is just about anything in a moving vehicle).

A monopod rig is good for safely moving the camcorder outside the car, most often to avoid including the car in the shot. You can also get closeups of the front wheels steering madly on corkscrew roads and similar dramatic effects. To preserve your camcorder, it’s absolutely essential to fit a clear glass filter on your lens. If you’ve ever had a stone hit your windshield, you’ll understand why.

Finally, forget about stunts like shooting from the bed of a pickup truck at all but the slowest speeds. It’s very unsafe unless you’ve been secured with a professional restraining belt and even then, most police officers take a dim view of these hijinks. If you need more flexibility than you can achieve from inside the car, consider getting a car camera mount system.

Contributing Editor Jim Stinson is the author of the book Video Communication and Production.

 

Sidebar: Shooting Tips

Whatever your transportation you use, you’ll often be hand-holding your shot. Here’s a recipe for smooth shots: