Since the release of the Canon 5DmkII & 7D, we at 3B have been enjoying working creatively with HD video. This weeks 3B Friday’s post is essentially a bit of a road test for a video gizmo called a ‘Glidetrack‘. It’s basically a portable ‘dolly’ rail you can attach your camera to for a ‘movie-esque’ pan, and looks like this:

We first heard about it when a friend of 3B, Irish Photographer Larry McMahon, made a short movie in an empty mill using this gadget. The result had a haunting ‘28 days later’ feel to it (check it here).

We’ve found that video really sings when shot from a stable platform (ie. a tripod) with a smooth fluid video tripod head (we use the Manfrotto 700RC2 and Manfrotto 701HDV) or from a steadycam type device. We’ve tried the Steadycam Merlin (which is very hard to get to grips with) a more easily balanced but less steady Steadytracker. But when we learned that you could get that movielike ‘dolly’ shot (as though panning along a set of rails), we thought we had to get a go on this.

Two days after ordering the ‘Glidetrack Shooter’ (available for £199 + VAT here) we received it & excitedly screwed it together. The 1/2m model we’d ordered looked awful short, but the friendly Glidetrack director Alasdair assured us it is the most portable, the one he personally uses and the one best suited to shooting weddings.

So Barnaby, who likes a bit of ‘Urban Exporation’, joined a pal to nosey around a Bradford Mill to roadtest the Glidetrack. Below is what he created: [click 'Vimeo' in the bottom right to view HD at vimeo.com]

[if you can't see the video, click here to see it at Vimeo]

The editing was done in Final Cut Pro, with a bit of toning applied with the Magic Bullet Looks plug-in and the music is ‘Follow On’ by Nick Cave & Warren Ellis (from ‘The Assassination of Jessie James’ Soundtrack)

It certainly was an interesting learning curve trying to get more than just a load of smooth pans. Gliding close to the ground (as opposed to on a tripod above the floor) emphasized the movement, and gliding down a rail towards the subject looked pretty amazing too. On the day Barnaby felt he was just shooting anything of interest, while figuring out the Glidetrack, rather than telling a narrative, and as in all video projects would have benefited from a bit of a storyboard!

All in all we think the Glidetrack is a fantastic gizmo to create fantastic quality, cinematic style footage and we have begun using it on many of our projects.