How to make a budget diy dolly for video and film making

This article explains how to make a free d.i.y budget dolly for video and film making, to save money, a dolly being a piece of equipment that is used to transport film and video cameras smoothly and easily around a film set or outdoor location.

The reason it can do this is, it is mounted on wheels which usually (but not always) run along a track.

Please note; the dolly is only free if you can obtain a free office chair or typists stool, the kind that can be swiveled around because the wheels are mounted on revolving castors. It’s quite easy to find a chair like this that has been discarded for some reason, usually because the seat of the chair doesn’t stay upright*.

However, this doesn’t have to be a problem; as long as the castors revolve freely it can still be used as a dolly.

Discarded office chairs and stools can also be used to make lighting stands, which are of course used in film making and photography for supporting lights.

For these two reasons it’s really worthwhile to look out for a discarded office chair or typists stool, and even if you have to buy a used one they don’t cost very much.

*I’m not quite sure what happened to the office chair in the photo (which I acquired for free.) I’ve never seen one with the seat bent at such an angle.

Maybe it was designed by a crazed inventor  who was in the process of designing  a revolutionary kind of ejector seat that ejected the pilot forwards instead of upwards.

Whatever..

In the next article entitled ‘how to make a free d.i.y budget dolly for video and film making part 2‘  I’ll explain the next step.