I love Dolly’s, Jibs, cranes, steadicams, glidecams and all sorts of things that attach to my cameras. They allow camera operators to take stunning shots and are an amazing asset in the filmmakers ‘instant-awesome’ toolkit.

Online there are huge communities of enthusiasts designing, building and marketing all sorts of rigs and attachments but they do tend to be very expensive and very specalised. I love using the real deal but sometimes it’s better (and cheaper) to just make it yourself.

The new range of smartphones from Telstra phones feature HD video recording (many shoot at HD1280x720). With smartphone penetration tipped to top 62% by 2015 millions of Australians are potentially filmmakers. Thanks to a boom in backyard creativity Telstra Mobile Masterpieces at Tropfest is now in its second year and features amazing prizes.

With all these new mobile devices it is easy to have all the equipment to make a Tropfest winner right there in your pocket. In NYC Tropfest 2009 the overall winners film was shot entirely on mobile and with the amazing prizes this year’s competition is sure to atract record entrants. View the winners from last year here.

Being a camera nut I wanted to challenge myself to discover how to get creative with using your mobile. First I needed to get comfortable with the phone as a camera and test its limits. Instead of trying to attach crazy lenses and converters I kept it simple, treating the phone like as if it was real camera and just find ways of enhancing the way to shoot with it. That meant heading to the shed and building some rigs.

I’m not particularly the ‘building things’ type but I do have a history of building camera rigs. Meet Dennis Vollmer a very good friend of mine and long time associate in rig building. Dennis, his mate Angus, and I have built a few rigs before, we once built a 10 metre dolly for less than 800 bucks (most of the money was spent on expensive but smooth skateboard wheels). Dennis is in his day job a very accomplished Steadicam operator, a very unforgiving rig that takes hundreds of hours to master. He was happy to help in the buil and we set off to make as many rigs as we could in an afternoon.

Watch the video to see what we managed to pull together in an afternoon of building. If your keen to enter the Telstra Mobile Masterpieces competition follow the link to the Tropfest website for more details and dates.

Related Links

• Movie Extra Tropfest Australia
• Tropfest entry guidelines
• Missing You: Telstra Mobile Masterpieces 2010 Winner
• Frequency: Tropfest Telstra Mobile Masterpieces 2010 finalist film
• Mankind Is No Island: Tropfest New York 2008 Winner