I was stuck with this a year ago too. Build it yourself! It's really easy all you have to know what a camera dolly is. It's a tripod secured on a tough wodden bottom you can sit on. I think everyone here has a tripod, and the wodden bottom, just go to a building site and ask for a small piece of wood, they always got some extra. So there you go you got your first part of the dolly done for free. The thing thats gonna cost some money are the wheels. I'd make the wheels from this site:
http://www.jorenclark.com/studentfilms/dolly/dolly.html
Thats gonna cost some money where I live 16 nice skateboard wheels cost about 100 bucks. And the PVC pipe you can get from a building site again (if your lucky) or just buy them from the store, I don't think they're that expensive it all depends were you buy them.

So the only think that really cost something here are the wheels.

Have fun Building!

H.A.

To be honest, unless youve got a perfectly level surface a DIY dolly's probs going to make your production look a bit. Personaly I hate dollies, they always tend to seem shakey. I think that you would do better to build your self a steady cam.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/?johnny/steadycam/

If you go to this site theres footage of the results, theres also one of the camera low to the ground tracking some one, which I presume is the effect that you wish to achive. Cleary.

www.myspace.com/b31_productions not complete

Apple's composition program SHAKE is suppossed to be able to remove a bit of camera shake (according to the box) amung it's other features. Has anyone tried this and was it worth the time (assuming you've already paid for the program that is).

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

i bought a cart from home depot that had very large rubber wheels. The cart is big enough for me to fix the tri-pod in and still be able to sit comfortably. I placed two wooden planks down as my track and everything runs smooth, without any shaking. The shaking that most of you are referring to comes from several things: Wheels that aren't smooth and sturdy, not enough material to absorb normal bumps (not heavy enough), tripod not secured properly, and mostly from just a cheap tripod that isnt steady to begin with.

You can go to youtube and search almost anyhting filmmaking and get homemade designs. I know for sure their are good cranes and dollies.

I'll post a link to help anyone else with a question like mine.

Thanks everyone. I found a fairly cheap way to make one on this site:

http://www.digitaljuice.com/djtv/segment_detail.asp?sid=186&sortby=&page=1&kwid=0&show=all_videos

It works really works nice and smooth.