Two days, one dolly, nineteen worlds

For Strada Motors we laid twelve metres of track on a car park roof and shot the same dolly move one hundred and forty times. Same speed, same height, same lens. The only thing that changed was the world around the car.

Why one move

A camera move is a promise to the audience. When it stays constant, the cut between worlds feels like a door opening rather than a jump. We wanted nineteen places to feel like one journey, so the move had to be the one thing nobody could argue with.

Repeat the move until it becomes the rhythm, then let the worlds change on the beat.

We used the real plates as the spine and generated the worlds around them, matching the parallax of the track to the millimetre. The car never left the roof. The roof never appeared in the film.

Two days on set, eleven in the render room. The grip who pushed the dolly asked to be credited as the second unit, and he was.