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Can someone name this type of shooting technique?


danny bartle

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Hello all,

What is the name of the technique used when the camera is moving away from the subject being shot but the lens is zooming towards it which makes it look like the background & subject are racing towards you? Any info on how the pros achieve this shot?

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I've heard this called lots of things, often 'reverse dolly zoom' or 'Vertigo shot'. I'm not sure there is a recognised name for it - correct me if I'm wrong someone.

The classic examples are in Vertigo, Jaws and Goodfellas.

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http://www.amctv.com/show/detail?CID=3592-1-EST

 

(the famous zoom-in-dolly-out shot used to simulate vertigo)

 

http://www.teako170.com/af45.html

 

Two cinema firsts: The 360* pan and the now infamous, 'dolly out/zoom in' tracking shot.

 

http://www.rimric.com/folio/fa01/hitchcock.htm

 

It is also a masterpiece of filmmaking technique, including one of cinema's most important innovations-the dolly-out, zoom-in shot that visually represents Scottie's sensation of vertigo. As Hitchcock told Truffaut, "I always remember one night at the Chelsea Arts Ball at Albert Hall in London when I got terribly drunk and I had the sensation that everything was going far away from me." Although he first attempted to visualize this sensation in Rebecca (1940), Hitchcock was dissatisfied with the effect and continued to think about the problem for fifteen years. For the vertigo effect in the bell tower (and elsewhere in the film), he finally hit upon the idea of dollying the camera away from the stairs (which meant physically pulling the camera away) while simultaneously zooming the lens in on them. When presenting the idea to his crew, Hitchcock was told it would cost $50,000, "because to put the camera at the top of the stairs [they had] to have a big apparatus to lift it, counterweight it, and hold it up in space." Since there were no characters in the shot, Hitchcock asked, "Why can't we make a miniature of the stairway and lay it on its side, then take our shot by pulling away from it?" The resulting shot, which cost $19,000 to produce, is unique to Hitchcock and completely new to film.
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A director I work with uses that shot at least once in ever film he makes. He has dubbed it...the "WARPO-Cam". This is probably not what the shot usually goes by, but I will always remember it as such.

 

Anyway, I am really interested in finding out if there are certain accessories that will compensate focus and zoom automatically while moving because I have burned a lot of film and pulled a lot of hair getting those just right.

 

:lol:

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I've always referred to it as a "Vertigo" shot, since Hitchcock "invented"it for his movie. It's often used in the reverse direction as well, dollying back and zooming in to compress the depth. This was done in "Goodfellas." Hitchcock had a gearing assembly make to connect the zoom and dolly movement, but most of the time people just wing it. It doesn't always have to be perfect (Roy Scheider sitting on the beach chair in "Jaws") but I would reccomend using a zoom motor control such as a Microforce so that the zoom remains consistent and a videotap so that the AC pulling focus can maintains a smooth focus adjuatment speed while not effecting the image too much by focus breathing, which looks like a slight zoom.

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There's a nice one in the Fellowship of the Rings. It's a little different cause there isn't much in the foreground (It's just a road) so it's not as obvious as others I've seen.

 

It's probably been done before, but it's the first I've see it done this way.

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Mitch,

Weren't you the one who posted that link to the "don'ts" of student filmmaking, which included not using this type of shot in your film? All the talk about this kind of shot just reminded me of it. I still think it's a cool shot, but it's definately over used.

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It's fairly popular in student films, 'cause student filmmakers always gotta do those few crazy shots you know :rolleyes:

But if they don't... They will be pelted with stones for not "thinking outside the box!" Gah, what a conundrum... :lol:

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That's the problem--it's not thinking outside the box, it's simply imitating others. When the Warchofski (however you spell it) brothers decided they wanted to do their "bullet time" shot in "The Matrix," they had a scripted visual concept but turned to their technicians to engineer the shot. It was truly an original idea. But all the Gap commercials, Buffalo 66 and other films that copied it were not being original, no matter how they technically acheived the effect. People think that speed ramping became possible only once Arri incorporated the electronic shutter control into the 535, but the effect could be done on an old Mitchell and was featured a number of times in the fight sequences in "Raging Bull," among other films. Arri just made it technically easier to do so people started using it constantly. And even then they realized they'd rather control it more in post so now most people shoot in high speed and pull frames to create the effect in the edit room.

 

It's the rare moment when someone comes up with a truly new, unique visual effect or look. Frankly, Billy Bitzer is responsible for most of them! (He shot D.W. Griffith's films and together they invented much of what is considered film's "visual language," such as the close-up.

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  • 2 years later...
i believe vincent gallo did that shot before the Warzowscki borhters

 

Actually to be accurate, it was first created for a series of American commercials for "The Gap," with dancers in blue jeans captured in midair. This was done with two 35mm motion picture cameras on either end of the shot with a row of still cameras in between. The still cameras were all fired at once, "freezing" the moment. Gallo's DP faked the effect using a single movie camera , having everyone stand perfectly still while he dollied the camera along with some clever work from the art department to make something that looked like a frozen moment exist as a static object (I'm trying not to give away the story point here). The Matrix was the first use of "bullet time," where the series of 35mm still cameras did not fire at once but instead captured an image one after another, creating a dolly over slow motion, so to speak.

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They used a "Vertigo" camera move in an episode of "The Wire" that worked really well because it was a very slow move over about a minute half of dialoge between two characters. The move created a ominous mood as the buildings in the background seemed to grow and loom over the scene.

 

Mike Sorel

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