Steadicam Stands and Wheels

So, I’ve gone through about 5 different revisions of wheels and stands at this point, and at this point I think I’m finally happy.

I agree that wheels on the stand is primarily a luxury for the assistants, but I will make this point that an assistant of mine made to another operator recently - if your stand doesn’t have wheels, moving the rig around set now takes 2 people. I’ve seen a few people mention just taking the rig back to their cart, or carrying it themselves. I personally don’t want to have the rig on for a moment longer than I have to, especially when dealing with really heavy sleds and long takes. So wearing the rig while my stand is moved is a no-go for me. And as for my cart? This may be a particularly New York problem, but my cart is often halfway across the stage, if I’m lucky, or 10 floors downstairs outside of the building if I’m not.

Without wheels, my stand suddenly is a lot more trouble to work around, and I’m less likely to be able to dock conveniently at the end of my shot. I often have the stand brought to one, the shot lined up for lighting on the dock, and then the stand flown away just as we roll and I pick it up. Again, not very possible without wheels, especially with less physically burly assistants.

As for what I use, I have gone away from the American stand to a Matthews low-boy Combo stand, which I have heavily modified. The stand’s low legs mean that even an incredibly long rig, like a super post sled in low mode, still clears the legs. I had many issues in low mode with long sleds hitting the legs of the American stand while docking. The stand is also heavy enough and with a low enough CG that it’s never needed bagging or another set of hands holding onto it, even for dynamic balancing.

And as for wheels, I have gone back and forth between pneumatic wheels and non-pneumatics. Because I roll my stand around a lot, I was convinced that pneumatic wheels were necessary. However, most pneumatic wheels for stands are incredibly heavy, very large, and don’t roll terribly well. I even had Inovativ custom make me $1000 wheels which were 6” pneumatics, but they just didn’t push well enough, and once an assistant actually pushed my stand over because the wheels didn’t perform well enough. I’ve since gone back to 6” diameter hard casters. The ones I use now are casters for medical equipment, and they roll nicer than anything I’ve ever used before. The brakes are solid and lock the stand down absolutely, and unlock easily. The stand can be pushed easily and is in no danger of tipping over unless you hit a really big bump. Yes, there are a lot more little bumps my sled takes because the wheels are hard, but I’ve not found it to be an issue, apart from the occasional screw working its way loose.