This Glambot-Style DIY Camera Slider Captures Impressive Shots

Traditional cinematic camera moves, like long and slow dolly shots, tend to fall flat on modern social media. Those audiences want immediate and eye-catching action, which is always a challenge. A lot of that is possible to achieve with handheld cameras and heavy use of speed ramping in the editing phase, but even minor mistakes tend to become amplified by those effects. That’s why Henry Kidman built his own affordable (ish) Glambot-style DIY camera slider.

For those of you who scoff and roll their eyes when people start talking about what happens on red carpets, Glambot is a fancy series of big camera-operating robot arms that are often present at events, such as movie premieres and awards ceremonies. They’re capable of capturing all kinds of dynamic shots, but one in particular is very popular: a fast offset dolly-in with tracking of the celebrity subject. When played in slow motion (or recorded at high FPS), those shots look really cool.

Now, a Glambot-style robot would be so expensive that we mere mortals could never afford to build one, much less buy one. But Kidman noticed something interesting about that trendy shot: it isn’t actually a very complex move. And it can be simplified a bit without sacrificing the effect. In fact, it can be done with movement on just two axes. One to move the camera along a horizontal line and one to pan in order to keep the subject in frame.

A lot of you are now thinking “wait, that sounds a lot like a camera slider!” And…yep. But we’re talking about a lot of movement to get the desired effect, so Kidman needed a really big camera slider.

The slider’s frame and track look to be about 12 feet long. They’re made out of square steel tube, which is sturdy and the most affordable option at this scale. A huge servo motor turns a belt to slide a carriage along the tubes that make up the track. That takes care of one axis.

But Kidman needed at least one more axis (panning) to get the effect. While he was at it, he went ahead and added another axis (tilting) to enable changes in vertical angle as the camera moves along. Servos actuate those axes, too — they’re just a lot smaller. An Arduino controls the servos and incorporates nifty details, like progressive acceleration for smooth motion.

Of course, none of that would be any good without a camera. For that, Kidman rented a Freefly Ember S5K that can capture video at 1000FPS, which is perfect for freezing the action as the slider zips the camera around. A DJI Focus Pro helps to keep the Ember S5K in focus, using its lidar-based ranging system.

The results speak for themselves, because the shots Kidman was able to capture would make even the biggest TikTok stars drool.