User:Engan0518/Dolly zoom

A dolly zoom (also known as a Hitchcock shot, Vertigo shot, Jaws effect, or Zolly shot) is an in-camera effect that appears to undermine normal visual perception.

The effect is achieved by zooming a zoom lens to adjust the angle of view (often referred to as field of view, or FOV) while the camera dollies (moves) toward or away from the subject in such a way as to keep the subject the same size in the frame throughout. The zoom shifts from a wide-angle view into a more tighter-packed angle. In its classic form, the camera angle is pulled away from a subject while the lens zooms in, or vice versa. The dolly zoom's switch in lenses can help audiences identify the visual difference between wide-angle lenses and telephoto lenses. Thus, during the zoom, there is a continuous perspective distortion, the most directly noticeable feature being that the background appears to change size relative to the subject. In general, the dolly zoom effect can be broken down into three main components: The moving direction of the camera, the dolly speed, and the camera lens' focal length.

The visual appearance for the viewer is that either the background suddenly grows in size and detail and overwhelms the foreground, or the foreground becomes immense and dominates its previous setting, depending on which way the dolly zoom is executed. As the human visual system uses both size and perspective cues to judge the relative sizes of objects, seeing a perspective change without a size change is a highly unsettling effect, often with strong emotional impact.

History

The effect was first conceived by Alfred Hitchcock during the filming of 1940's Rebecca, but he was unable to achieve the desired results. Some 18 years later, success came through Irmin Roberts, a Paramount second-unit cameraman, who devised the proper method for Hitchcock's film Vertigo. It is thought that Alfred Hitchcock specifically asked Roberts to assist him in creating a shot that exemplifies being in a drunk state after fainting at a party. At the time, Roberts had already designed a special camera capable of fast focal lens changes that allowed short-range projections. His expertise in focal lenses most likely prompted his innovation of the dolly zoom, which was more popularly recognized as the "trombone shot" or "contra zoom." Despite this miraculous step forward in cinematography, Roberts was not properly credited at the end of Vertigo. . However, this shot has since been used in many other films, including Goodfellas, Jaws, and the Lord of the Rings films. Rainer Werner Fassbinder uses the effect twice in one shot in Chinese Roulette (1976). Director Joe Dante referred to it as the "Jaws Shot" since the scene in Jaws, when Roy Scheider sees the shark attack of the little boy Alex, is the most famous use of this shot.

Uses

The dolly zoom is commonly used by filmmakers to represent the sensation of vertigo, a "falling-away-from-oneself feeling" or a feeling of unreality, or to suggest that a character is undergoing a realization that causes them to reassess everything they had previously believed. The dolly zoom’s amplification of emotion is a special effect that compliments a director’s arsenal of creativity. For example, in Sam Raimi’s “The Quick and the Dead,” a dolly zoom, coupled with a Dutch angle shot, exemplifies drama between an intense shootout. An uneasy feeling of suspense can also be signified through a dolly zoom, most notably used in the movie Split in 2018, where Casey Cooke peers off into the distance in unwanted curiosity. Other uses include demonstrating overwhelming fear or important epiphanies for a character. The dolly zoom can also be utilized for the purposes of tonal shifts within the film. This was most exemplified in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, where director Peter Jackson chained events together with more flare as opposed to a regular transition. Directors may also decide to use the dolly zoom as an alternative to the generic wide shot in order to give sufficient exposition on the upcoming scene.

Among the many creative uses the dolly zoom can provide to cinematographers, the shot can generally be divided into two types: the dolly-in/zoom-out and the dolly-out/zoom-in. The dolly-in/zoom-out shot is usually centered on a subject, where the background is pushed away from the character to create a profuse amount of uneasiness. For example, the movie Poltergeist's infamous dolly zoom stretches the background to seem as if the door is much farther away from the character than it actually is. On the other hand, the dolly-out/zoom-in shot shrinks the background to seem much closer than it really is.

The first dolly zoom used in "Vertigo" by Alfred Hitchcock, shot by Irmin Roberts.

Other Notable Examples

In the 1975 film Jaws, the infamous “Get Out Of The Water” scene contains a dolly zoom that focuses on Martin Brody’s shocking realization of a shark on the beach.

In the 1990 film Good Fellas, Martin Scorsese used dolly zooms to convey tension between characters. This idea is most famously employed in Henry's dive into paranoia, where he eats at a diner with Jimmy while tracking a window to see if anybody has been following him.

In the 2001 film The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo standbys as a dolly zoom signifies an entrance of an enemy from the woods.

In the 2004 film Shaun of the Dead, a dolly zoom places comedic emphasis on Shaun’s bravery, which ultimately fails when his shotgun jams.  

In the 2007 film Ratatouille, the food critic has an intense flashback, signified through a dolly zoom, towards his childhood days after eating Remy’s ratatouille. Throughout the film, dolly zooms are used extensively to highlight the bonding between two characters, such as when Remy feels a personal connection with Chef Gusteau on television.