Dolly Grip

What they do

The dolly grip is half of every moving shot. They set the dolly, lay and level track with the grip crew, then rehearse the move with the camera operator until the two of them share one timing: where the push starts, how it accelerates, where it slows, where it stops relative to an actor's step or a line of dialogue. During the take they are operating with their hands and their feet, watching the frame on a monitor or watching the actor, driving the boom arm up or down while pushing forward, and hitting marks that are often written on the track in chalk. They work the crane and the remote head with the same discipline, and on a Steadicam or handheld day they are the person who takes the rig, sets the marks and clears the path. Between setups they are laying track for the next shot, cribbing it level, and moving a two-hundred-kilo dolly through a doorway it was not designed for. The craft is felt rather than seen: an audience never notices a good dolly move and always notices a jerk at the start of one. In IATSE this work sits with the grip department, Local 80.

What they decide

The calls that belong to this role and no other.

• How the move is executed: acceleration, timing, where it starts and stops
• Track layout, levelling and where the marks go
• Whether the move as designed is physically achievable in that space and in that time
• Boom arm height and timing on a combined move
• When to call for another take because the move, not the performance, was the problem

Principles of the craft

• The move belongs to two people: the operator's pan and the grip's push are one gesture, and it only exists after enough rehearsal that neither is waiting on the other.
• Ease in and ease out: a move that starts and stops abruptly reads as machinery, and the whole craft of a push is hiding its beginning and its end.
• Level is everything: a dolly move over an unlevelled joint puts a bump into the middle of a take that no stabilisation in post will fully remove.
• The move serves the actor's rhythm: marks are cued off a step or a line, not off a stopwatch, so the camera arrives when the performance does.
• Know the geometry before you agree: whether the dolly can physically get there, with that lens, in that doorway, at that speed, is the dolly grip's call to make early rather than during the take.

Common mistakes

• Starting a push with a visible lurch because the wheels were not already loaded
• Rehearsing to a count instead of to the actor, so the move is right on rehearsal and late on the take
• Laying track quickly and skipping the level check
• Watching your own feet rather than the frame or the actor
• The competent version: a technically smooth move performed at a pace that has nothing to do with the emotional tempo of the scene

How to learn it

Exercises and routes in, not a reading list.

• Push a dolly or a loaded skateboard rig at three speeds along the same six feet and watch the starts back frame by frame. Practise until the first ten frames of the move look like the middle.
• Rehearse a combined move with an operator where the camera pans as the dolly pushes, cued off an actor standing up. Shoot ten and count how many landed together.
• Lay track over an uneven floor twice, once carefully cribbed and once quickly, and shoot the same move on both. Keep the comparison.
• Do a doorway exercise: get a dolly and camera from one room to another, on marks, during a continuous take, without touching the door frame.