NEW FILM TECHNOLOGY OF CAMERA MOVEMENT TARGETING A NICHE
That Old Black Magic
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Maybe ten years ago, I bought a cool little filmmaking device. It was an electronic film dolly that could hold the weight of a small camera. It could act like a real (life size) dolly in providing smooth movement through the world of a film scene.
There are many things changing about filmmaking today. One of the things that few talk about is movement of the camera.
The Neewer DL400 offers a new method for heavy-duty camera movement on ground level. The 400 can be controlled from an app or manually. It is a solid unit and feeling its build quality and heft, one knows it’s a serious film-making tool.
DL 400 with a GoPro 11
It is a beautifully-crafted product and works well with the Neewer app. One of the big marketing questions on this amazing tech machine is what really is the market for this?
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I’m not in the industry but it seems to me that there are many high tech products today looking for the proper “place” or position in the marketplace where they can make the most money. In effect, many products are developed because, they can be developed.
The DL400 competes in the camera movement market which one might break down as one between straight sliders and dollies and dolly tracks. Interestingly, the powerful motor on the DL 400 can easily pull a fairly large camera at an even pace down a slider. This might be a good solution for the independent filmmaker since the cost of motorized sliders is so high. In other words, using the DL400 to pull a camera across a slider.
But what about a genre of making films using the DL400 as the key perspective in the film? On the unit, a camera (like a GoPro 11) is no more than five inches off the surface. Can a film be shot mostly from the perspective of the DL400? Or is the DL400 only to be used occasionally for special effects?
One interesting area is exploring the use of the DL400 as base for a selfie stick attached to the top of the DL400? What kind of surface can it run on and provide a steady picture from the camera with the camera raised from the ground level perspective of the DL400?
I’m not into movie-making, but I’m thinking it must have been the innovation of devices such as the DL400 that have made action scenes realistic. I enjoy watching old western movies where the camera is stationary and the effort is to create action by making the background move. It’s like watching Jimmy Stewart and Maureen O’Hara sitting on the top of a speeding stagecoach without a hair blowing in the wind, while Indians, the cavalry, horses, and arrows are flying past in the background. With the DL400, it is the camera that is moving with the background …, or something like this.