It’s hard to describe, but it’s a shot–usually during a very tense or revealing moment (in an action or thriller movie)–where a person will have the camera slowly zoom in on them while the background (or area around them) will be zooming out at the same time.
The result is a very cool-looking shot that looks like the shot is sort of pushing against itself.
Does anyone know what the hell I’m talking about here?
I know one of these shots happens in the remake of The Taking of Pelham 123. Here, in fact (right at that second).
What’s that specific shot called? Surely there’s got to be a name for it. If someone can tell me, I’ll stop calling you Shirley.
Oh, wait, one more question. After it’s figured out what shot I’m talking about…what other movies/shows have this kind of shot? Feel free to link to good examples of them because…well, come on, it’s an awesome looking shot.
And called the Hitchcock Zoom/Dolly Zoom or Vertigo Effect because of the movie Vertigo. If you do a youtube search for any of those terms you’ll come up with countless examples. There was a Breaking Bad episode that featured 2 or 3 of them.
It was going to either be that our maybe dutch tilt. FTR, I prefer, “trombone shot” over dolly zoom. I always thought it looked great in Fellowship of the Ring.
Jaws was the first time I had seen that effect, and it was years, in fact over a decade, before I had it explained to me. You guys don’t know how easy you’ve got it, with your wikipedias and your social medias and suchlike.
I never knew what it was called, but I know the effect and don’t like it. It always seems artificial to me. I can get totally immersed in a movie, but then a dolly shot suddenly yanks me out of it and makes me aware that it’s staged. I know it’s supposed to be dramatic, but it has the opposite effect on me.
