Hello friends....Meet the new caretaker of NYU's Colortran Mini Crab Dolly! Noah Elliot Morrison! Noah is an accomplished filmmaker from the Detroit, Michigan area.
Hopefully, you've read the previous post of me picking-up this mini crab # I-20 back in October 2024. The original plan was for my son, Adam and me to refurbish this dolly and eventually use/share it with the filmmaking community here in the Cleveland, Ohio area.
If you haven't read the previous post, my friend, Zul Atmosudirdjo, Teaching Soundstage Manager at NYU was nice enough to gift this dolly to us. It's a very special dolly and was used at Tisch School of the Arts' filmmaking curriculum for the better part of 40 years.
Many world renowned filmmakers that attended Tisch during the past 40 years most likely used this dolly for their coursework and completed their Reels with it. Prior to that it was used in the independent filmmaking movement during the late 1960s and 70s in NYC. What makes this dolly more rare than others, its serial number has a letter (I) followed by the number (20).
I remember a phone call I had with the late Joseph Tawil, who was not only a friend of William Sargent (designer/inventor of the mini crab) but was also Colortran's president.
Mr. Tawil oversaw the launch of the mini crab and he told me that serial numbers which started with a letter, were part of the first batch of dollies manufactured.
Since dolly I-20 was originally a gift to me, Noah simply paid me for the round-trip cost of me driving to NYU and bringing the dolly back to Ohio.
During the time my son and I were getting ready to refurbish # I-20, we realized there were some maintenance issues that were way beyond our scope. Mainly, the steering mechanism would not engage the crab steering and rear steering options and parts of the hydraulics were missing.
Then during a conversation I had with Noah, he was very much interested in taking over and restoring this dolly for his film production company. Noah has contacts that are skilled with hydraulics and knows a great machinist. So far, Noah and his machinist have corrected the complicated steering mechanism to its original functionality. Next, he is planning to update the hydraulic system that raises and lowers the camera pedestal. His goal is to upgrade this 60+ year old dolly with the latest equipment.
Thanks to Noah, I will soon be posting very useful information and repair diagrams that he and his machinist discovered while repairing the dolly's steering mechanism. This info will prove to be useful to others that may encounter steering issues with their mini crabs.
In the meantime, if any of you have questions about the steering mechanism, i.e., not crabbing or rear steering, when needed, etc., please email me at gzaryk118@gmail.com and I will reach out to Noah for further repair info.
More to come.....
