Shooting with the Indie Dolly System (includes video test)

This is the set up we made up!

Last Saturday we had a great day shooting the Public Service Advertising "Oil Splash", where we used an Indie Dolly System and a Canon EOS 7D we rented from Adorama.

It sounded like a great idea. Except that none of us had ever used an Indie Dolly before. Alex, the director of photography, was very confident about it. I was too. How hard can it be to put together an Indie Dolly after you have worked with plenty "not-indie" dollies before?

Well it turns out it is harder than we thought! This thing is modular, the tracks fold in a way that makes look as if the pieces were put together wrong.

We ended up creating our own "stable" set up, on three wheels, not for, but three wheels. Two on one track and one on the other. It was stable to get a shot, but it couldn't take anyone on the board, so the focus puller had to walk by the camera. (there is a video that for some reason non of us found when we where trying to put this together).

Even with our weird set up, the dolly worked wonders. I would probably not use it with anything heavier than an HVX-200 or a Sony Z1. Here is some of the footage we shot.

Now, I still think the Indie Dolly System is a great tool. I would probably rent it again. But next time I will do ten times my research before hand.