Hi All,
I have a dumb question.
How does one get smooth moves in confined spaces?
We generally shoot on location. Many of those locations are houses and old buildings whose rooms, corridors and especially doorways can be quite restrictive.
We have a very cheap and cheerful dolly and track system using plastic pipe and a dolly with one of our Libec tripods on top. That's sufficiently cumbersome that we often can't cope with the set-up time or risk the antique furniture rearrangement we would need to make using it practical on our shoots.
We also have a 1 meter slider but this is actually more cumbersome because to support our rigged Scarlet we really need the slider to be mounted at either end, which makes for a large footprint (two tripods, or I guess two sawhorses or something).
Then there's jibs, which make lovely moves but which again may struggle in our confined spaces.
Is the professional answer Steadicam?
Or is there something akin to an old school pedestal system that might work OK on carpeted floors with some damped rise and fall control? And that doesn't way a ton (so it won't do through the floor!). We only need to support our Scarlet + 5" LCD + Battery + 16-35 mm lens. I wonder if some sort of fluid damped counterweighted system, with large cushioned rubber wheels, exists at reasonable price?
If not, anyone have experience of building one?
Or anyone got any better suggestions? A beefier tripod with a really good head to mount the slider on is obviously one way to go, but I'd really love to get vertical movement in as well. Right now we're getting best results with a Fig-Rig!
Cheers, Hywel
