So we are working on a small stop motion project using some candies. In order to pull it off we needed to build some kind of rig to allow the camera to slide from one end of the scene to the other. We needed a Dolly.
We decided we would try to build this ourselves, the shot called for some zoom moves so we needed to rig on the follow focus from the HVX and used it to pull zoom. This test was only the dolly, the zoom was all done in the computer. Since the images from the Canon Rebel are so large we may just opt to do the zoom and camera moves all in After Effects.
Anyways we built the rig out of a few pieces of wood. Then we had a metal plate that sat in between the tripod boot and a couple pieces of wood. Attached to the bottom were those sliding helper for furniture. Ya know the things that let you move your couch around on the carpet with ease. We then covered our little ledge with some fabric, and amazingly enough the thing slide very nicely.
I took a small video on my iPhone of the rig and our setup, you can see it below along with the final product. We will admit we did some after effect’s stabilization to get it extremely smoothed out, but in the long run this process was very easy. We shot about 175 shots the candy animating around was just for fun!
So here ya go!
Behind the Scenes Video
Final Stop Motion Dolly Test
Hi i think you did a great job and it’s good that you built one insted of buy one becouse it would cost $6,500 if it was a pro site store i think good job for being creative keep up with the cool videos.
hell yeah! u are surely re-inspiring me to just f-it and shoot again. i love stop motion. and the ae plug-in you created is official. i am about to put it to the test. im tired of having to email xmls to the only person i know that could afford automatic duck. lol.
btw u have been officially bookmarked!!!
keep it up. peace!!
ps. string(2pull) and a ruler(distance) for the dolly. fuk hand pushing.
peace,
vic