The dolly

If you want that extra bit of "ooh" in your show, then this might well be what you need.

Where is it?

• You're looking for a slab of MDF with some aluminium bar & roller skate wheels on the bottom.
• You're also looking for some rails. They're made up of sections of white drainpipe bolted to wooden sleepers. There's also some more pipe to connect these sections together.
• If using the Sony HVR, we also have a follow-focus control. It's somewhere on the wooden shelves, has a long black wire coming out of it, and two shiny brass thumbscrews.

Contrazoom (or vertigo in some places)

This is the amazing shot that keeps your subject the same size in the frame, and their background moves into, or out of them.

Warning This is both addictive, and will take a lot of practice - and time.

• Place your rails going straight towards your subject, and stick the cart on.
• Add camera and tripod.
• SONY HDV ONLY Attach the follow-focus by unscrewing the thumbscrews, slide it onto the tripods arm, put thumbscrews on, plug the lead into the "LANC" connector. Fiddle until you're used to how it works.
• Roll right upto the target & zoom out.
• Adjust height of tripod until the part of your subject you want is exactly in the center of the frame.
• Roll back, zoom in, and do the same. remember, keep the camera head dead level!

• If you want the background moving in behind them:
  • Start at the front, zoomed out, and roll back, zooming in as you go.

• If you want the background moving out:
  • start at theback, rolling in, zooming out.

• Why is the focus all out?
  • The SONY HDV cameras autofoucus gets confused - try not to have anything with very well defined, straight edges in the background.