Camera Technique - Dolly Zoom

Whilst analysing the Jaws clip in my previous blog, I found a camera technique which I really liked. It is called the dolly zoom which is where the camera is placed on a dolly and is zoomed in on a subject for example a characters face or point of interest. The camera is then zoomed out as the dolly moves forward creating an effect which seems to be zooming out but moving in at the same time, creating a surreal effect. It can be quite unsettling and appears to undermine visual perception and create a continuous perspective distortion causing the background to change size while the subject stays the same.


Here is a link to the dolly zoom effect in Jaws (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NB4bikrNzMk)

This dolly zoom effect can have strong emotional impact depending on the feeling of the scene, for instance, it could portray fright, fear, shock, surprise etc. and can add tension to a scene. It could also create a sense of vertigo and unreality, or to suggest that a character is undergoing a realisation that causes them to reassess. This is why I really like this effect as it can be used in many circumstances to portray many emotions and gives a cool looking surreal effect. I would like to incorporate this effect in to my media production as I think it would give it a professional feel to the final product. I will try to recreate this effect as an example in a blog to follow.

Here is another effective use of the dolly zoom camera effect: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv41W6iyyGs

And here is a video explaining it fully: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Amj6RiGiTOE