Dolly

What this is about

A dolly move is a production decision, not a camera one. Track has to be laid and levelled with wedges, the floor has to take it, the route must stay clear of lamps and furniture, and a dolly grip pushes to a rhythm rehearsed with the actors. What it buys is a smooth, weighted move with a real parallax shift, and repeatability: take after take the camera passes the same marks, which is what makes coverage cut together and what a gimbal cannot promise.

A term only helps when everyone on set means the same thing by it — so what follows is how it is used, not a dictionary definition.

What runs differently here

Where this differs from the general case:

• Track needs levelling before every setup; an unlevel rail shows as a rocking horizon in the finished shot.
• A dolly move brings its own crew position, since a dolly grip pushes while the operator frames.
• Unlike a slider, a dolly can travel many metres and carry the operator, which is why it dominates long developing shots.

With TillyGen

TillyGen marks dolly shots in the shot list and reserves track-laying time in the schedule, so a move is not squeezed into the last hour.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.