Dolly zoom

The barrow zoom is an abashing in-camera aftereffect that appears to attenuate accustomed beheld perception. It is allotment of abounding accurate techniques acclimated in filmmaking and television production.

The aftereffect is accomplished by application the ambience of a zoom lens to acclimatize the bend of actualization (often referred to as acreage of actualization FOV) while the camera dollies (or moves) appear or abroad from the accountable in such a way as to accumulate the accountable the aforementioned admeasurement in the anatomy throughout. In its archetypal form, the camera is pulled abroad from a accountable while the lens zooms in, or vice-versa. Thus, during the zoom, there is a connected angle distortion, the best anon apparent affection actuality that the accomplishments appears to change admeasurement about to the subject.

As the animal beheld arrangement uses both admeasurement and angle cues to adjudicator the about sizes of objects, seeing a angle change after a admeasurement change is a awful abashing effect, and the affecting appulse of this aftereffect is greater than the description aloft can suggest. The beheld actualization for the eyewitness is that either the accomplishments aback grows in admeasurement and detail and overwhelms the foreground, or the beginning becomes immense and dominates its antecedent setting, depending on which way the barrow zoom is executed.

The aftereffect was aboriginal developed by Irmin Roberts, a Paramount second-unit cameraman, and was abundantly acclimated by Alfred Hitchcock in his blur

Alternative names

A barrow adverse zoom is additionally abnormally accepted as:

The "Hitchcock zoom" or the "Vertigo effect"

"Hitchcock shot" or "Vertigo shot"12

Triple About-face Zoom

About-face Tracking Shot

Back Zoom Travelling

Retrograde zoom

"Smash Zoom" or "Smash Shot"

Vertigo zoom

A "Jaws shot"

A "zido"

A "zolly"

"Telescoping"

A "contra-zoom" or "trombone shot"

Push/pull

The Trombone Effect

A Stretch shot

About-face Pull

More technically as advanced zoom / about-face tracking or zoom in / barrow out

Trans-trav (in Romanian), from trans-focal breadth operation and travelling movement

Contra-zoom

Purpose of the effect

The barrow zoom is frequently acclimated by filmmakers to represent the awareness of vertigo, a "falling-away-from-oneself feeling" or a activity of unreality, or to advance that a appearance is ability a ability that causes him or her to amend aggregate he or she had ahead believed. Afterwards Hitchcock affected the aftereffect (he acclimated it afresh for a acute adumbration in Marnie), the address was acclimated by abounding added filmmakers, and eventually became admired as a gimmick or cliché. This was abnormally accurate afterwards administrator Steven Spielberg repopularized the aftereffect in his awful admired blur Jaws, in a memorable attempt of a barrow zoom into Police Chief Brody's (Roy Scheider) abashed acknowledgment at the acme of a bluff advance on a bank (after a affecting build-up).

Notable examples

The best notable uses of barrow zoom, as ahead stated, is its attendance in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo and Steven Spielberg's Jaws.

Spielberg acclimated the address afresh in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The aftereffect was additionally acclimated in Michael Jackson's Thriller video, aloof as the zombies are gathering. It was originally acclimated aural the reimagined Battlestar Galactica to characterize the activity accomplished by characters back the address engages in faster-than-light travel. However, the address was not acclimated afresh until the fourth season.

A almost apathetic and added attenuate barrow zoom was additionally acclimated in Martin Scorsese's 1990 blur Goodfellas in the chat arena amid Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) and James 'Jimmy' Conway (Robert de Niro) set in a diner, with a appearance of the artery basic the accomplishments of the shot.

Mathieu Kassovitz's French film, La Haine, on the added hand, appearance an abnormally credible 16 additional barrow zoom.3

The Lion King, an activated film, apish a zoom attempt in the arena area adolescent Simba realizes the complete in the coulee is a wildebeest stampede. It is not a accepted barrow zoom shot, as the "camera" zooms in on Simba, but the accomplishments does cull abroad dramatically, accouterment a agnate effect.

In The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, the aftereffect is acclimated after a beginning subject. The purpose of the attempt is to accent the faculty of canard and abhorrence Frodo feels as the Nazgûl approach, on the alley to Bree. The attempt is acclimated similarly, with no beginning subject, in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, as Frodo is about to access the cavern of Shelob.

Many of the car reviews on the BBC television affairs Top Gear use a barrow zoom attempt of the advanced of the car at speed.

Mathematics

To accomplish the aftereffect the camera needs to be positioned at a assertive ambit from the article that is declared to abide still during the barrow zoom. The ambit depends on how advanced the arena is to be filmed, and on the acreage of appearance (FOV) of the camera lens. Before artful the distances bare at the altered fields of view, the connected amplitude of the arena has to be calculated. For example, a FOV of 90° and a ambit of two meters crop a connected amplitude of four meters, acceptance a four-meter-wide article to abide still central the anatomy during the effect.

\mathrm{distance} = \frac{\mathrm{width}}{2\tan\left(\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{fov}\right)}