How To Make A Track Dolly Low-Budget Fimmaking (Uk)

Try using a lubricant and it should be smoother
Mr Sheen or any grip lubricant will do the job

That's what me and my roomie are making, except we didn't think of using skateboard wheels. Everything else is spot on to what we're doing though.

Hi. hmm a bit of a mystery. If the wheels are brand new and the track is not dirty, I'm not sure why you would be getting such severe vibrations.
I am assuming your camera does not have OIS? (optical image stabilization). OIS must take care of any vibration on my camera which is why I've never noticed any vibration.
Do you think some squishy rubber feet on your tripod might help?

Any seams putting together additional foam tubing sections on the pipe cause a "bump." Was wondering if maybe my wheels are too rigid and skateboard wheels are softer? Awesome design, but even the slightest vibration shake and you're back to looking like an amateur.

I followed your design, but I used skinnier in-line skate wheels instead of skateboard wheels. It rolls perfectly on PVC. However, there is a vibration that causes camera shake. I put foam-rubber pipe insulating sleeve over the PVC and it helps quite a bit, but they don't make the foam tubing long enough to run 10-20 feet of track. Can you give any insight into why I may be getting the vibration? (They run high on the pipe and the wheels are brand new!)

see the notes field

Thanks for the reply very mutch!!!!

Please can you send us an inventory list of all the parts you used?
All so can you include all the measurements of the items of the parts especially the specification for the angle iron. Cheers for that and great idea by the way.

Great video, really in depth and useful.

A caterpillar bulldozer can run over your foot and not do any damage because its weight is distributed across whole area of its tracks.
The same principal applies to the dolly. having the weight distributed over 16 wheels on the track means no one single wheel is excessively heavy.
It might work, but you would be concentrating the full weight onto just 8 points of the track which may be too much for the PVC pipe to handle if you are using heavy equipment or people.
hope this helps.

would it work if i´d only use 4 wheels on each side?

not very well

very cool. I'll try and and use it for my next film. go check out my first one.

very helpful

This particular model will not do curved tracks (you would need to remove the center wheels and put the end wheels on rotational pivots).

Thanks for really valuable info! I was just wondering about one thing. Will it be able to do curved tracks?

thanks, looks like i could make on like this, or buy one from amazon for a pretty good price

Thanks alot for the help, I have a shot in my short film that needs a dolly shot, and what i did is, instead of using skateboard wheels, im using thick rubber (almost like what a trolley has) wheels.
It's great for sound, but is a bit slower than your one.

Thanks so much. I enjoyed the info and creativity in your video. Well done.

thanks, I'm a 14 year old filmmaker and I've always wanted one of these but (like most 14 year olds) I don't have the cash... now I know how to make one... thanks!

Noise only becomes an issue when the dolly is moving fast. Slow passes are fine.
I would always reccomend using a stationary microphone that is not traveling on-board the dolly.

Does the this dolly interfere with the sound recording at all? I was just wondering because it seems like the skateboard wheels would cause some background noise.

I made the dolly wide enough to hold a tripod with its un-extended legs locked open. Then I used a ratchet cargo strap to teather the tripod to the board. Some people use a heavy-duty hook screwed into the board as an anchor point. Others use place-cups to hold the tripod feet in place - this is useful if the board is not wide enough to lock the tripod legs open. Hope this helps.

nice video very helpfull, how did you go about attaching the camera to the dolly, you see i built the dolly and i am thinking about just attaching a tripod head to the top of the dolly..is that what you did?

thank you so much i gonna try to make some one for my own ! sure i give you some video responses i m hyped!