 Hello I'm Daniel and welcome to today's session. Over the lifespan of my career, I've always tried to find ways to improve the way I try to interpret imagery, to be able to bring things into the vision and to the space I see them. And one of the limitations I had was the ability to be able to move the camera through space because there were just very limited options which left us with options like the tripod, the running, and also there was like steady cam, there was also other skateboard dollies, sliders, and all the while they were very fantastic and great. It lacked precision because we couldn't do repeatable, deliberate movements. The running was a great tool that allows us to move cameras through space. I remember the first time it came out, everything we could think of was trying to do a one hour go through stuff every door. There was even a project I did that was 98% of it was shot on the running. It was an interesting experience and while that was amazing, I kept falling back on the backbone of there was something that was required that needed repeatable solutions, precision, and high predictability that would afford the interpretation of delivering a proper camera in motion that surrenders itself to the flexibility of the story. What I mean by this is that some of these equipments, for example, the basic tripod had the limitation of heights because on a tripod you have the high, the medium, and the low boy, right? Right at it's like three ranges, there are in-betweens you can get with those tripods or at the 16 hour of your production day where you're already getting tired and you want to go low, you just go to the basement of where the tripod and just like that's low enough you get and you can't really get to that framing you would have been able to truly maximise should you have explored other solutions. And that was like one of the headaches I kept coming down to. Another one was the ability to be able to move the cameras deliberately through space in a repeatable manner that could always land on the same. So I assume we are cutting between takes, we'll be able to like get repeatable performance to be pointed by we can actually get perfection and which keeps everybody in sync and these were like some of the compound problems as we move. The Danadoli was great, but it had the limitation of the tripod, which also means that for you to like go low and actually do in-between moves between coming from a high character that's framed from a face like go to like a tableware bar, you have like a child, you get. That was just like one of the challenges. So I worked on a project called When Love Happens Again, it was my first experience with a PD51 dog you get and it was interesting. The dog was quite limited in terms of the payload that you could do, but I began to experience the freedom I craved for in how to be able to like move cameras through space, vertically, horizontally, using what was available. Over the course of experience with that movie, using that When Love Happens Again, it was my first experience with a PD51. It was actually possible and that sparked of curiosity in my mind that set me up on a very wide genre that took me years to accomplish. But fast forward to the point whereby I was able to like get a solution, which was the CineTek dog and I reached out to them. We had a couple of exchange, we spoke about it and even up to the point that I was even invited to Rome to go into their factory, which was an amazing experience like Rome is quite a beautiful city. But that aside, the factory in Rome is quite an intimate experience because this is a company that made things out of passion. Amanda, who's the owner of the company, has a couple of family members who are integrated into the companies and they create these designs and create this solution that blew my mind, to be honest, because we went there, spoke to the engineering team, got on a lecture of how to uncouple the entire dolly like back to the pieces and how it gets back together and how those structures could be achieved and limitations, the fact that it had low maintenance. And we even had some fun, which because it was somebody's birthday on that very day and we got like, I had the experience of being with Italians and actually lending their ways and understanding much of the culture that actually led to this. It was quite interesting for me because it became apparent that they have this philosophy of everything has to be done uniquely. No two things can be done the same way, which prohibits the discourage the attitude of copying because what they do is try to push the priority and make it as unique as even if they're trying to bake a cake and the same recipe goes and bake a cake, they strive to say, how can they make this process more unique that can contribute to the excellence of it? And all of that is neatly brought together in this entire family intimate experience. And we all had this educational experience that took us on this trip from technicalities to seeing the machines that actually made this thing possible to seeing the people who dedicated their time day and night to actually make things out of love, things that are built specifically and rigorously tested to be able to stand abuse and be able to stand most of this solutions that we're supposed to deploy them for or the train. Also understanding the mind and how things work. It was an amazing experience all throughout that journey and throughout all I could just keep doing was to soak things up as a sponge and learn as much as I could. Most of it were captured or all throughout my experience and my stay with them. And that brought me to my ownership of this dolly. The same tool which I had once experienced, this was one of the PD-51, but this was a Zenitech dolly, but this time the entire dolly experience of being able to move camera through space in deliberacy of having certain reviews done vertically, they having certain reviews done diagonally to be able to go from a high character to a low character. The precision of being able to take that stability that the entire equipment brought into the camera space and transfer them into my own cinema language. Now the Zenitech dolly is quite a unique solution that is very robust in being able to move a payload of a camera up to about 50 KG through space. And this equipment requires like a team to be able to like work with it. It's not something that can be done for like a one man band. You get these are solutions that you as a cinematographer would have to design the intent, visit the space, plan. It's not one of the tools whereby you can just take like a handheld gimbal or even as flexible as a steady cam that could just go and take through spaces. There are deliberate tools. These are tools that have been deployed by Hollywood creatives. And one of my favorite David Fincher to watch all his movies. There is deliberacy and repeatability in all his movies. That precision, that strive for excellence of control. You can see it when he did Gun Girl. You can see some of it when he did the killer which is like his most recent work. You can see it in how he actually takes that through even when he did the Zodiac. Being able to achieve the excellence and perfection in framing, in camera emotions, in it becoming some of the language of cinema that's been introduced and the flexibility it brings. For example, there was a favorite scene I watched from killer aliens. It was the two conversations between a lady and an alien and there was like a reveal and how they passed up the conversation using like a 360 secular movement. That could have been captured differently but you could tell that the camera emotion was designed specifically for that scene to be able to move the emotions of that scene. The vulnerability, the fluidity, the how the conversations the camera could pass as though it was an onlooker that listened to one party and transferred to the other party and that's how that experience was captured. What makes you think I am an outsider? Because wherever you learn to do that stuff back there it wasn't around here. You're just different. Again, the same type of dolly that's behind me has opened up a platter of ways for me to become expressive in some of my own projects on commercials, on things that I've done as there was a recent project I did on the product work whereby you would not believe how difficult it is for you to get like a smooth tilt and a smooth boom whereby the camera does a vertical reveal as opposed to like it angling its head mimicking the tilt motion. So on this project, one of the requirements was to get the vertical reveals that actually do as if somebody was squatting and actually slowly coming up to full height. And this was like the emotion that's required and some of this were achieved on using the macro lens whereby the tiniest of vibration would show. Now, this does not have any of such vibration of jagged characteristics that you may have to use post stabilization for but it requires a robust team to be able to do that. And at Ashley Dolley, there are several modifications and solutions you can use to be able to expand the entire solution because it's built to be operated by two persons. One could be a camera operator and the other one could be like a first AC who could both sit on both sides or you could have like a director and a cinematographer who operates both have the conversations with themselves while they're actually on the dolly while you have like your key grip and the key group member team who orchestrate how to move the entire packages and it's very narrow that could fit through doorways and light enough that it could go into spaces whereby you would not have certain problems because there are bigger versions of this that are way more robust and way more heavy but they come with larger crew because the larger the payload of the camera you're dealing with, the larger the gripping you would need to be able to manage that safely and the larger, it just keeps increasing you get. So for example, an IMAX camera would never go on a small tripod or a Leibach tripod because or a tripod that is a 100-meter ballhead because the payload of the camera is massive. The same thing applies to if you take an Alexa LF you would require a robust crane, you would require robust solutions, you get. So depending on the payload of what you're working would determine how robust the solution you're looking at to work and this falls in between the midsection. Not lightweight, not super heavyweight so it's not built to like lift an IMAX camera, you get but it's built to take anything from the red ecosystem, the Canon ecosystem, the Arri, the Arri LF and all of it with the Kono heads. So it has other accessories that are built into it that can take more tripod solutions whether that from the 100-millimeter ballhead tripod solutions to the 150-millimeter ballhead. You could also attach a slider to it that would make you, that also gives the flexibility of your left and right, apart from the track that would give you forward and backward which also gives you freedom in framing and you can optionally attach a bazooka to the head itself that would give you extra height to be able to boom higher should you need that to be able to do more significant booms or overheads that you require but you could also perform overhead offset by using the offset that comes within there couple of offsets that are made available. These offsets are available in three feet that can be safely done but if you require more that require you protruding through there are also optional accessories that allows you to use a two inch pole that could be up to about 10 feet as fast as you balance the entire camera payload within the 50KG limit and you'll be able to do reveals whereby you're going through doorways or coming out through spaces or doing far offset across a dining hall over people's head or like a plate of food and all of that, those kind of unique shots you can actually achieve with it. And the dolly is actually beautiful both dance floor and also beautiful tracks. So if you have like a smooth floor you may not in the track to be able to like work it in because sometimes you could also rig the dolly in such a way whereby you could put a gimbal on it and use like a shock absorber and you use it on a bare floor whereby you be able to like take out all the shakes that comes from the unevenness of the bare floor which would be absorbed by the shock absorber that's going to be mounted on the dolly and the gimbal takes care of the less of all the micro-stabilizations and the jitters that also now lead to more smooth moves. In all, it's a versatile tool that allows you to do a lot. It helps you to free you as much as you can free your mind. The first problem that most cinematographers run into is because they do not yet even understand the scope and the capability of the camera language that they will try to deploy as a result. They just see that it holds the camera and what else can you do? I could do that with my slider by raising it up and tilting it up but there's something I've experienced. The in-betweens that happens with doing the tripod height that you cannot achieve going from a super low angle, the easiness, the speed actually that it actually brings between moving between spaces and camera and being able to like reset the room or reset the frame, that speed, it's something that you would have to experience for yourself to know how it can actually allows you to move your vision and actually keep less strain on your crew and it's something that actually moves the entire conversation forward when you're in film. All this adds up to the entire time of tired filmmakers trying to just get through the day and mark the box and filmmakers who are enjoying the creativity of what they're doing to be able to deliver the best visual possible that is true to the creation of that scene and the intent of the scene. Didoli also have several accessories that lent itself to more flexibility to adapt it to different scenarios that the creator or the grip team or the director of photography may require and all this makes it a more capable solution and make it a proper tool for those who have designed it for proper intent. One of the don'ts that it's very, very, very much not allowed to do on the doll is to build rigs without being conscious of the weight ratio of everything that you add on. As a key grip or as a director of photography who will be in charge of that head of department, right? You, it's your total responsibility to be weight conscious of the payload of your corner heads, your cameras, your lenses, the mounting, everything that you put on the dolly because dolly has an internal piston that's responsible for the weight. So to avoid hazard or failure, everything has to be built under the capacity of the advice payload that it's supposed to use your dolly from even when you're using it in interesting scenarios as such as getting overhead shots or getting shots that requires you to like go into spaces and like come out or tricky shots that are designed to go through like the back of a car whereby you have to like take out the windshield and go through the car to like reveal a passenger and like do like a boom out. All of those things has to be done in accordance to the limits respecting the payload limit of the dolly itself. Another done is it's a robust rig that can handle the abuse of proper cinema filmmaking but that doesn't mean that you should not be clean with it because the equipment always loves to stay free from dust out of its crevice of its nooks and crannies. So it's advisable every time to polish or when you're cleaning use liquids like the WD-40. Please resist the temptation of using engine oil or condemn engine oil and say that's how you want just to wipe because also lubricant resist the temptations. Place you should also not do is also do not allow the team be on demand because during the 14 hour of the day, right, two people can manage it but it's always advisable to have four man team in your grip team because during the, I assume you're running very long there the 18 hour, somebody gets tired, something sleeps, accident happens, it becomes a problem for the production. So it's also advisable to actually have proper team man the entire equipment to be able to like make it move and actually work in the way it's supposed to do. In terms of operations, there are several shots that we've discussed that it has lent itself to. The entire possibility or the creativity of how you use the tool because it's just a tool at the end of the comes to you as the creator what you have designed in mind, how much you've studied how much you've designed the camera language and how you intend to use the tool to be able to bring your vision to light. Please reach out to us if you have any questions regarding how to use this tool. It's also available for rent out our own rental space. Should you have any need to actually consult us for a demo, please reach out in the comment below or reach out to our DMs and we'll be able to schedule like a demo day for you to be able to understand how these things work because the better you understand them, the better you'll be able to use them and I'll be happy to see this in your production as it gave me more freedom to express myself. It also gives you more freedom to be able to move your entire vision to the next level. So until next time when I see you, don't forget, improvise, adapt and overcome.