Equipment Questions

[milltown]

I have been filming since high and through college and need to expand my filming. I saw all the neat and intersting ways to create dolly's, and different effects and just had some questions on them.

1. Does anyone know a good site or just know how to make a track dolly? when you are putting together the dolly, what type of bolts, and screws should I use. I know it varies on what your using but if someone could give me an example of what they did that would be very helpful.

2. Does anyone know how to create a jib/crane that's not too much money. I would like to try to make one.

3. As for lighting, I cannot afford to buy lighting equipment but I was thinking about using one of those clamp lights and clamp them to a tripod. If that's the best way to do it what type of lightbulb should I use? I currently have a sony handy cam (nothing to special but gets the job done). What lighting should be best of that type of camcorder?

Also should I try to get see transparent colored paper to get say dark blue for night time, or should I just buy a colored lightbulb?

I am trying to work on these things to see what works good, what I should and shouldn't do and see what is better. It couldn't hurt to try them haha.

Anywho, those are my questions for now.

Thanks!

Milltown

[ReelSplatter]

I can't help you with the dolly or jib, but as for lighting, use $5 clamp lights from Wal-Mart or Home Depot. The best lights I have found are Phillips Color Correct bulbs. They mimic sunlight and are fatastic. They are also called Reveal. They are incasdscent lights that look liken ormal bulbs except that they are tinted light blue. You don't even need to clamp them on a tripod, they're work lights, so they can handle being clamped to almost any sturdy structure without too much trouble. As for the night shots, try using colored cellophane from a craft or grocery store. Just make sure that the lights don't get too hot and melt the plastic. If that fails, buy some colored flood lights. Incandscent colored bulbs are too weak to light anything effectvily.

[milltown]

I started buying clamps lights because I heard they were a good to start from I just wanted to make sure. Thanks for your help! Now what about brightness, how bright or light should the bulb(s) be? Again thanks for the help I will look around for those things.

[ReelSplatter]

The Reveal bulbs I use are 100 watt, which for a mini DV camera works fine. The colored floods ar 85 watts so you need aa couple to really get a strong color. The brightnes of the bulbs really depends on how much light for the scene. Buy a vareity of different watts so you can adjust the scene's lighting as needed.