RONIN-S vs $50 DIY DOLLY

Hey, what's up guys. So recently I made a homemade dolly for about $50 and I'm going to be using it on a horror short film that I'm going to be making in a few weeks. So it essentially is just eight skateboard wheels attached to some corner brackets that are screwed into the bottom of a piece of plywood. And for your track, it's going to be one and a half inch PVC pipe. I also attached a Manfrotto fluid head onto the front, which is good for some low angle shots. And then pretty much you'll just take your tripod and put it on the piece of plywood and then just push it along the track. And there you go. You got a homemade dolly. So I've been practicing with it for the past week and comparing it to my gimbal, which is the Ronin-S and surprisingly they get some pretty similar shots depending on what you're trying to pull off. So right now I'm just going to put up some shot comparisons on the screen and let you guys guess which one's from which. I'm not going to show you, I'm not going to tell you which one's from the dolly or which one's from the Ronin-S. I'm going to let you guys see which ones you think is from what, so you can see how similar they are. So I'm just going to play those really quick. All right guys, so which one do you think was camera A and which one do you think was camera B? If you think camera A was the Ronin-S then congratulations, you are correct. And if you thought camera B was the homemade dolly, then you are also correct. So I thought this comparison was pretty interesting to show what a $50 do-it-yourself homemade build can do against something like a $500 professionally made gimbal. I know they're not the same tool. And of course they both are meant for different things. For instance, a gimbal is perfect for long tracking shots. If you want to go over a long distance following a subject, something like that, running shots, it would be pretty ridiculous to put all this track down for your dolly. You would need a bunch of PVC pipe and it's just, you're not going to do that. It's something like that. But it is a cool tool to have because you can get some of those nice slow pushing shots or pulling out from a subject and just a nice eerie ominous shot. And that's why I made it because I want to use it for a horror short film and it's perfect for something like that. And I have a gimbal, but I also thought that this was a perfect tool for the job because the gimbal honestly isn't the best tool for something like that. Uh, as you could see when I went on a, to a tighter lens, you can start seeing the horizon bouncing. Like when I was pushing in and you saw the table, you could see the table kind of bouncing. And then when I was going in on the doorframe, you could see the doorframe swaying a little bit like that. A wider lens, you'll be able to get away with it. But I think when you start getting on the tighter lenses and you want to do slow movements with a gimbal, it's gonna, it's not going to be the same look as you get with a dolly. And that's why this was a pretty awesome build because it's only 50 bucks and you can get a pretty professional cinematic look. So I also want to say that this isn't my build. I've been seeing this homemade dolly online for the past, I don't know, five to six years. And it's always been something that I've wanted to build and test it out to see how well it works. And I was pretty impressed with it. So I'm going to leave some links in the description below to videos to where I was inspired to make this build. So you can kind of get a more in-depth tutorial if you're interested in actually making one. I definitely think it's a useful tool to add to the arsenal. I mean, the more tools you have at your disposal, the better. You can get more creative shots. You can, you just widen your horizons even more every tool that you add. So if you don't have a gimbal, this is an awesome option to make and it's pretty cheap. And even if you have a gimbal, I made one and I'm honestly going to use it on short films coming up because you can get different shots with it that you can't get with a gimbal. But yeah, so that's it for today's video. Thanks for watching guys. And I'll see you next time.