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id 4 on a second unit and saw how good the arm was i noticed how i had let the arm action on my favorite dolly degrade without addressing it so a few weeks ago i started going into chapman and working with their tech conner to get her up to snuff before i start the next job i went over to a hybrid 4 tested the boom handle and told him this is what i want every dolly grip has his or her own preferences when it comes to the boom handle i like it very loose i don t like a lot of resistance i like a little bit of turn before it begins a slight feather conner felt the arm took my 34 over to the workstation and in about thirty minutes had it feeling like a new dolly this is the kind of service you should utilize from your dolly vendor chapman and fisher for that matter has always tried to make it right for me take the time believe me you don t want to spend four months with a machine you are not comfortable with i use the same dolly for every job not because it s necessarily the best dolly in the shop but mostly because i ve spent years with her i know what the dolly will and won t do when i walk up to put it to work we re comfortable together it just needed a little tuneup so don t settle that machine even though it belongs to chapman or fisher is your best friend for the foreseeable future make sure she s to your liking or find one that is then once your dolly is tuned up tune yourself up put some tape on a wall a laser pointer on the head and get reacquainted with your machine practice compound moves and keep the laser on the tape you re never too good for a little practice exercise courtesy of sanjay sami signed the captain posted by d at 8 22 pm 3 comments saturday june 28 2025 big vs little for years i used the biggest dolly that would fit in the space that s what we re taught right the majority of shows carry a two dollies a big one and a little one naturally the bigger dolly was the a camera dolly a camera stayed on the big dolly and when the space was limited you switched over to the small dolly it s been this way for years i ve recently changed my thinking on this i generally push a chapman hustler 4 this has been my dolly of choice for probably twenty years it s a masterpiece of engineering the arm is pristine the sideboard system is well thought out back when every operator used an eyepiece i could put them anywhere i needed to and they were comfortable then the film world went digital now an operator using a monitor can be on either side of the camera i rarely use sideboards and privately look disdainfully on operators who ask for one just kidding operators who know me will laugh at this so this still went on for years i tried to shoehorn the big dolly into any space it would fit into then something happened the film world went digital operators didn t use eyepieces as much so they were much more flexible on where they needed to be on a dolly then something else happened i did a movie with a director who forbade me to use a big dolly he insisted on the peewee he didn t like big dollies they take up too much space people lounge on them he s british and treat them like a big snack table that you can also sit on i grumbled but of course complied a few days into the show i realized something i can do everything with a small dolly that i can with a big one barring high offset shots or jib shots etc but actual moves are the same even easier it s lighter it takes up much less space i can get more move out of a given piece of track or floor stand ups sit downs compound moves i could do them just as well on the peewee as i could the hustler in reflection a lot of this has to do with taking the eyepiece out of the equation in any case it worked fine then i did another movie that required long runs down hallways ducking into doors and through multiple rooms again the peewee did everything i needed it to now i m finding more and more that my primary dolly is the peewee and my backup for certain shots is the hustler b camera uses it more than i do the worm has turned let me know your thoughts has anyone else experienced this anyway hope it s a good weekend for you all posted by d at 1 59 pm 7 comments saturday june 21 2025 lay of the land sometimes you just have to go with the lay two instances have come up in the last couple of weeks one underslung following feet of course the director location manager or whoever makes these decisions picked a huge slope on a street in a town that could have been anywhere in this case yes i had to lay on a slope so that the camera doesn t get higher as i go also yes i could have done a steady boom down as i went to keep the camera at ground level i ve done it many times i decided to save myself the dialogue of explaining that i could do it on a level track and just go with the lay same thing happened last night push in on a downward slope i was worried about the track being too high at the end and seeing it so i went with the lay i will suggest that you cheat a little as you do it though no one understands track laying so always bring the low end up a little so that you aren t struggling no one will know the difference and just throw out some explanation about side to side or something and they ll buy it at the end of the day i didn t pick the location and i have to manage a 300lb plus dolly it ll be fine stay safe cap posted by d at 6 53 pm 1 comment saturday june 07 2025 session players i m up in new england doing a tv series it s lonely it rains a lot and it s still cold a lot of the time i m going to talk about something that s been on my mind for several years now which may seem a little strange but i ve had a couple so hear goes i have a huge respect for the old school studio guitarists stay with me this does tie in to dolly grips steve lukather dan huff tim pierce i ve watched endless numbers of youtube videos on these guys these guys showed up for any given session in the 60 s through the 90 s often not even knowing who the artist was whose record they were making and they had to be perfect every time or they were gone just about any record you heard in those days from micheal jackson to boz scaggs had these guys on it and their parts were often made up on the spot the mastery of their instrument assured that they would be called back for the next record this is something that i ve recently tried to bring out in the classes i teach to young dolly grips you have to learn your instrument moving a camera isn t about going from one mark to another especially now in the digital world where we often roll on the first take you have to be able to interpret instructions on the fly and make the shot happen the first time you do it move right boom up push into a fifty fifty with no rehearsal that s your job often these days in the last few years i ve often thought about myself as one of those old studio guitarists learn it so well you can do it on the fly and nail it in the first or second take you re making music visual music but music just the same learn your instrument learn it in the meantime go to youtube and type in steve lukather or dan huff or even glen campbell and learn about people who mastered their instrument then master yours from rainy new england the captain has spoken posted by d at 8 42 pm 10 comments saturday march 08 2025 walk and talks here is a subject near and dear to my heart i realized that after hundreds of posts and thinking i had covered just about everything i never covered walk and talks i love them it s a way to knock out three pages of dialogue in one shot unless they want tighter coverage i did a movie last year saturday night where the first shot of the movie was a seven minute walk and talk on a peewee with a matrix head and we covered seven pages in about ten hours i love them almost as much as i love stand ups and sit downs there are a few things to know however rule one no matter what machine you choose to do it on use a monitor for years i have preached about becoming overly dependent on monitors i stand by that however in this case they are a valuable tool and i ve come to believe that they are really helpful for this particular shot before they were widely available i did what most dolly grips did and locked into a space between the actor s feet and the front of the dolly and held it and i was pretty good at it for the last few years though i have really relied on a monitor to help me hold a frame size now i didn t use one for the shot on saturday night the operator matt moriarity and i decided to use a combination of dead reckoning and headsets to basically talk our way through the shot but it was a very unique shot that required a little more finesse than a standard walk and talk but in general for a rickshaw or dolly down a hallway i use a monitor the technique is simple pick a size base a reference on the bottom frameline belt buckle first shirt button knees whichever you choose and hold it be warned these moves are almost always faster than you think they will be don t be too proud to ask for help good luck and don t hit any of the extras the captain posted by d at 7 18 pm 10 comments tuesday july 23 2024 specialization or specialisation for our british friends today s motion picture industry is light years different from even 10 years ago it doesn t take a genius to see that with the advent of streaming in addition to the other outlets theatrical cable and network up until 2020 or so there was more work than there were technicians i turned down as many jobs as i took there just weren t enough days in a year to do it all as a result the industry took in a huge influx of people suddenly it wasn t that hard to get started and work almost constantly even if you hadn t developed the skills you would normally need to be successful then with the collapse of the streaming bubble corporate mergers strikes and pandemics the industry ground to a halt people with only two or three years of experience found themselves suddenly out off work for a long time this would be a normal correction except for the previously mentioned factors the business has always gone through periodic purges work is cyclical and if you want to survive you put aside money for the lean times those that don t that become heady with being in their twenties and making thousands per week fall by the wayside the veterans of the business know this and plan accordingly this time is a little different even the old timers suddenly found themselves unemployed for months on end as work is slowly beginning to crank back up notwithstanding the teamster contract talks i decided to speak up on a couple of things it s not enough to just show up anymore if you really want to continue in the business you have to be exceptional for dolly grips this means if you are still developing your chops you have to practice there are a lot of dollies sitting around rental houses gathering dust it s a prime opportunity to get some practice in most rental houses are happy to let you come in and play around at least they were when i was starting out call them ask for a couple of hours to go in and mess around with a dolly claim a space put some marks down and do some compound moves get a friend and a chair and practice stand ups and sit downs the moves seem daunting at first with practice and experience a lot of it you will reach the point where the setup of a shot or finding the best most efficient way to do it is the most challenging part the moves you ll just walk up and do take some classes from your union local if they are offering them i teach a couple a year and sometimes the majority of students aren t even dolly grips to succeed in this field you have to specialize that means you aren t a best boy one show and a dolly grip the next and a rigging grip on another specialization is something i ve harped on for years and you ll probably find another post on it somewhere in the archives work towards it become a master of your craft any decent set grip can lay track and go from one to two it s the dolly grips who can effortlessly do a six point move with two booms and land it by the second take who will be in demand anyway i ll step down off the soapbox i hope everyone is hanging in there the captain has spoken d posted by d at 3 59 pm 14 comments saturday april 06 2024 one fire at a time i have a philosophy called one fire at a time it started with doing dance floor moves basically it states that when faced with a seemingly insurmountable set of problems you don t look at the whole daunting pile at once you break it down into a set of smaller problems to be solved in sequence a dance floor shot with multiple floor and boom marks can be terrifying to a new dolly grip but if you don t think of the whole and separate it into individual moves based on actor movements it becomes much less daunting once you have put down marks and get into the actual execution of the shot you just think of it as separate dolly moves based largely on actor movement he moves to there you look and see where your previous mark is and it makes sense after a couple of run throughs it starts to become clear this mindset has helped me get through a lot of complicated shots and a lot of life problems that seemed huge upon first look but when broken down become manageable put out one fire at a time believe me it will make a huge difference in how you not only approach complicated shots at work but complicated problems in life the captain has spoken have a good one posted by d at 9 16 pm 6 comments older posts home subscribe to posts atom total pageviews subscribe to posts atom posts all comments atom all comments search what we do here the art of dolly gripping is like no other job in the world it falls to us to work out the mechanics of a particular shot as well as offer a smooth aesthetically pleasing move which makes the shot work and delivers emotion to the scene it s the ultimate blend of engineering and art this website is a place for professionals in motion picture camera platform movement to meet and swap tips stories and gripe a little about the difficulties we often face but rarely get to talk about among ourselves it s also a place for aspiring dolly grips to learn a little something from the old pros so welcome look around and join our little community the site is run by myself d and azurgrip two guys who have each spent the last 20 years moving cameras around film sets but it also benefits from the readership and participation of hundreds of dolly and key grips from around the world men and women who have helped deliver some of the most memorable and beautiful moving shots on film so if you have any questions please ask you can ask questions or make comments on our message forum which is below just above the photos or email us at dollygrippery at gmail dot com we or one of the experienced grips who frequent this site will answer if you re looking for something in particular please check out the links section 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