For indie filmmakers, using a wheelchair to sub for an expensive dolly system has been a longstanding tradition.  Usually this simply consists of a person sitting on a wheelchair holding a shoulder-mounted camera while another person pushes the chair.  And it works reasonably well for your standard dolly shots.  Put when filming miniatures, even the slightest wiggle in the camera gets magnified in direct relation to whatever scale your miniature is.  In other words, if you have a miniature where 1 inch equals 10 feet and your camera jiggles just 1/4 of an inch, then it’s as if the camera got jolted a whopping 2 1/2 feet.

So, I decided to see if I could make a camera mount for my wheelchair dolly that would be a little more stable than just holding the camera.   Mind you, this is still far from being a perfect solution...

First, I disassembled a couple of cheap tripods.

Then I removed the arm rests from the wheelchair.

I undid the bottom half of the backrest, and bent it up.  This will allow me to put my legs through (so that it can be operated in either direction.  This way, instead of building a mount on each side of the chair, shooting from the left or right side can be done simply by swinging the camera around and sitting in the opposite direction. 

Also, by folding the backrest up, it creates a nice little pouch where I can put my shot list, a copy of the script or possibly a Snickers bar...

Now it’s just a matter of glueing together various pieces of one inch PVC pipe.  NOTE: My local Home Depot was inexplicably out of normal 90 degree elbows -- so I had to do some improvising.

That pipe jutting out from the side is so I can add various attachments for different shots.  The tripod slides snugly into the PVC.

Obviously it would have been better to attach this to the handle on the same side rather than crossing over to the opposite handle.  But the Home Depot was really dropping the ball when it came to PVC fittings.  And I was feeling far too lazy to drive the extra five blocks to the next nearest Home Depot.

I drilled a hole through the handle and bolted the PVC to it.  This way it can be unfastened so the wheelchair can still be folded up for transport / storage.

I then built an attachment for low angle shots.

The attachments will allow me to shoot from lower angles and from further out from the chair. 

Again, this is still a less than ideal solution for shooting miniatures.  But when coupled with both in-camera stabilization and stabilization in post (as well as a smooth surface and a steady hand at the wheel), it can produce some effective shots.

NEXT WEEK:  Robot Monster (AKA Ro-Man)