Dolly

Dolly shots can also focus attention on one character or that character’s actions as we’re pulled along with them, or can create a sense of frenzy when it follows multiple characters or actions in the scene. Especially when used to follow a single character in close-up, it can emphasise realisation, suggest feeling or thought, or illustrate isolation, as in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X (1992) The earliest examples of dollies were simple wooden planks mounted on wheels with a hand-cranked camera planted on top. Early film cameras were anything but the sleek, high-grade machines used now; they were heavy, cumbersome, and difficult to operate.

Mounting one on a moving platform was probably one of the most meaningful innovations ever made in cinematography. It freed up the camera to move within the scene and transformed the viewer from a voyeur to a participant. Cameras are still fairly heavy, and human hands shake, so dollies are still very much in use.

They’re usually mounted on what look like miniature train tracks made from steel, aluminium, or even rubber, but can also have non-tracked wheels. The platform is outfitted with a pneumatic system for lifting the camera operator and the camera, and the whole device is moved along the track either by a dolly grip (‘grip’ is a term meaning operator or technician) or sometimes by the camera operator on those dollies that feature an integrated control system.