The Dolly Shot

The Dolly Shot

The first thing we decided to shoot was the dolly shot as it was in college and seemed the most challenging. 

As we had planned in our storyboard, we wanted the camera to dolly past someone's head, ultimately giving the appearance that Ged (the teacher) had vanished when it came out the other side. 

We wrote out a shooting schedule to plan when we were going to film and who we would need to be there. Since the scene needed to represent a class, we had to ensure that we had a large amount of people willing to help. 

We thought a good room to use would be the lecture theater, within our college, as the seats are tiered and it has good room for us to work in.

 To set up, Iain put a History PowerPoint on the board and we sat Daniel down in one of the seats. Since we do not have a Dolly or any form of equipment that is similar, we decided to improvise and make our own.

By using a jacket, we found that the camera could run smoothly across the desk, creating a dolly shot. At first, we had difficulty finding the right pace, keeping the jacket off the lens and making the jacket quiet when we moved it.

We asked if we could borrow a class to help out and they agreed, allowing us to fill up the frame on the camera. Luckily, the class had Clare (Selene) in it so it added extra characters from our plot.

How the Dolly Shot worked:

1. The camera would start on the left showing Ged teaching
2. The camera would be moved right to go behind a student's head.
3. I would give the signal to Ged to move behind a wooden desk whilst the camera was behind the head
4. The camera would come from behind the head and Ged would be gone

We knew this would be a challenge but it became harder than expected. To make the Dolly run smoothly, we had to keep a quicker pace. However, when the camera came out on the right, Ged was seen moving (sometimes it was obvious and other times it was subtle.)


After almost two hours of filming, we still did not have a shot that had Ged disappearing as the many attempts always had Ged in shot. Therefore, we got some re-action shots, of the class, when Ged 'vanished'. Due to our unsuccessful dolly, we re-scheduled to shoot another day.

Corridor Shot:

After our unsuccessful Dolly, me and Iain decided  to film one of the establishing shots: the corridor.

For this shot, we needed to use a zoom as we wanted to experiment with camera movements. This only took a few attempts as we all took turns to try and zoom. One think we disliked was how bright the corridor seemed as it was not possible to turn the lights off. Therefore, we decided that we would edit it later during post-production. 

Re-Shooting the Dolly:
This time, we decided we needed more people to help to cover Ged's movements. Moreover, we decided that I should be in the frame and allow Clare to give Ged the signal. That way, as a main protagonist, I could be in the shot.

Another thing we changed, was the way in which Ged hid from the camera. We decided instead of him moving to his left and hiding behind a desk, he should just duck down. That way, the camera was less likely to see him in with the speed of the dolly.

After many more attempts, we finally got one shot that gave the illusion that Ged had vanished. This was great because many people were becoming impatient and we needed to move onto other shots.

Overall, I felt that we attempted a very challenging shot considering we did not have a Dolly or a track. The shot looks believable and works well to portray our narrative.

Here is a montage of a few unsuccessful attempts and the successful shot.