Camera Movements

A. The mounted camera creates the movement

1 - Pan

To shoot while rotating a camera on its horizontal axis in order to keep a moving person or
object in view or allow the film to record a panorama.

A pan simulates the physical act of following a moving person or object with the eyes or getting
a good look at the immediate environment, from the point of view of a person who is not
moving.

You normally define a pan by its direction, right or left. “Pan” is used both as verb and noun.

A whip pan or a swish pan is a very fast movement which blurs the image and is sometimes
used for transitions, because it makes it very difficult to see where the cut is.

2 - Tilt

A pan on the camera’s vertical axis. Some people call it “to pan up” or “down”.

It is normally a way of getting the details of a person, object or place that is too high for our
present point of observation and optics.

You normally define a tilt by its direction, up or down. “Tilt” is used both as verb and noun.

3 - Pedestal

Physically moving the height of the camera up or down, usually on a tripod.

It is a vertical camera movement in a small scale (for a big scale, we use the crane).

4 – Roll

You move the camera on a special rig so that the image rotates on its long axis, flipping it
upside down, going full circle or continuing to spin around.

This is normally used to create a sense of wrongness or disorientation, as it totally upsets the
visual order of things.

2. The camera and the operator move together

5 - Dolly

The camera is set on tracks or wheels and moved towards or back from a subject. A “dolly” is
the cart the camera is mounted on, and the dolly grip is its operator.

There are two basic kinds of dolly movements:

• Dolly shot: is usually an in-or-out movement. When you get closer, you dolly in (or
push in), when you get farther away you dolly out (or pull back). Dolly shots
normally mark a strong involvement in or distancing from the action, since we get
physically nearer or walk away from the action (compare with zoom)
 • Tracking shot: When the camera follows a character or element, horizontally and at a
constant distance. It is defined by where we are in relation to the moving element:
o Forward tracking (the element moving with us following from behind)
o Backward tracking (the element moving with us receding in front of it)
o Lateral (or sideways) tracking (we follow the movement horizontally, from
the side). Lateral tracking can also be used for panoramas, in a similar way to a
pan, as we would be “following” the point of view of a person moving and
looking at everything.
o Arc shot (the camera describes a circle around the characters and we see
everything around them)

Dollies are now normally replaced with the Steadicam, but some filmmakers still prefer them
because they allow more precision.

6 - Floating stabilizer device (a.k.a. Steadicam)

The device is strapped to the photographer and the camera is mounted by a series of metal
joints controlled by gyroscopes.

It allows unlimited freedom of movement, because it can follow a person or object through
twists and turns without the limitations of a dolly.

A steadicam is more a physical means of moving the camera than a movement itself: you can
do dolly and tracking movements with it, but its fluid movement has a special quality that
makes the shot more neutral and distanced than handheld or dolly and approximates the eye of
an “omniscient” narrator that can go anywhere and is does not have human limitations.

7 - Crane

You lift the camera from the action or descend on it. The device works and looks similar to a
construction crane. It is a way of liberating the camera from the point of view of a person on
the ground, and allowing us to defy gravity and hover over the scene as if we were birds.

Also known as boom shot after the “boom” (long pole or stick) at one end of which the
camera is attached, in some models of crane that are operated from the ground.

8 - Handheld

The camera is in the operator’s hands and shoulder, without tripod or any stabilizing device.

The operator needs a lot of skill to keep the picture from shaking too much.

As with the steadicam, it is a way of operating the camera, and with it you can do pans, tilts,
dolly and tracking movements, but the oscillation of the camera gives the picture a special
character, even if the operator is not walking.

It is frequently used to point out that there is a human operator and therefore to give a
realistic, documentary quality, or to suddenly suggest that we see the point of view of a person
who is watching.
 3. Only the camera lens moves

9 - Zoom

You change the focal length of the lens so that the image gets closer or moves away. Image is
just magnified or broadened, there is no difference in perspective as in a dolly shot. You can
usually tell a zoom shot from a dolly shot because in the zoom shot you see the image “closing
down” or “opening” at the corners.

Zoom-in shots normally indicate the progressive concentration of a viewer’s attention on

events directly in front, therefore they are frequently used in point-of-view shots to underline
the physical act of looking. On the other hand, zoom-out would indicate a gradual discovery of
the scene after having focused on a detail. When these movements are performed very fast
(what is called the crash zoom), they normally want to communicate a sudden effect of fear
or surprise.

A combination of the dolly and the zoom applied in opposing directions gives us the dolly
zoom, also known as the Vertigo effect. Normally, this kind of movements aims to underline
a strong emotion of the characters, that changes the world around them as they stay the same
(because in a dolly zoom the space in the background gets distorted and “telescoped”).

10 - Rack focus (or focus pull)

You change the focal length so that an element in the picture that was out of focus suddenly
becomes clear. In this way, you can direct the audience’s attention to different parts of the
frame, and perform picture editing “in camera”.

The person responsible for adjusting focus is the focus puller.