Horror movie zoom

Lotustar

Lotustar

Member
Hey everyone. Have a quick question. How do i go about getting that horror movie zoom effect? Like when someone is scared stiff and the camera does that strange zoom or whatever. You can also see an example of this in lock stock and two smoking barrels when he loses the card game in the boxing ring. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanx
 
Lotustar said:
Hey everyone. Have a quick question. How do i go about getting that horror movie zoom effect? Like when someone is scared stiff and the camera does that strange zoom or whatever. You can also see an example of this in lock stock and two smoking barrels when he loses the card game in the boxing ring. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanx
Click to expand...

Do you have a pic or clip? I think I know what you are referring to. Is it the vertigo effect? Where you zoom in and dolly back at the same time?
Here is an example I found.
http://www.siggraph.org/education/materials/HyperGraph/animation/cameras/movies/vertigo.avi
 
Do you mean when the camera zooms in on the character and the background looks like it's getting bigger while the character is getting smaller? That's a dolly effect. You first zoom in to frame and then dolly in while zooming out. I've done something like this with some cheap tripod wheels, didn't have enough room, but I got a decent shot out of it.

As many might say, you could have used a search, this has been asked quite a bit in the past.
 
Yep guys, thats it. Seems simple enough. I have a dolly and track so that should make it a bit easier. And yea, i usually do a search first but im very short on time right now as the shoot is this evening and a shot was changed on me. Anyways, Thanx soooo much! :)
 
you can experiment with both

dolly in zoom out

dolly out zoom in

works best when either the foreground image or the back ground image is kept in fairly similar size ... that's when its most disorienting IMHO .... because your eye really can't process the data ... wait she's the same but background closer ... how can that be ...

but even if you don't nail it you still get some effect ...

there's s short shot in ODD Squad just moving in with a fig rig when the young mutant in the climax fight scene looks down and is doing the scanners "I'm gonna blow your mind up thing"
 
there are no rules really ... just play with it and you will go "whoa ... " right away.

Once you get closer to something but your field of view increases, or move away from something but your field of view decreases .... you will be in "wtf" territory.
 
oh also ... sometimes they do a slight tilt with the camera as well ... particularly when the effect is done in a medium or closeup to really give it a "Reality just distorted feel" or something just happened that "really tweaked the mellon" of the main character.

I'm going to semi-arbitrarily use quotation marks one more time in this post "there".
 
and how do you get that "jumpy-zoom-effect" (like the last shot of the casino royal trailer where he´s sitting at the table - and probably every other comic movie trailer out there)

is it a regular zoom and just some frames taken away in post? (for the "jump-cut" effect)
 
That "jump-zoom-effect", in regards to the "Casino Royale" trailer, is just a regular dolly move towards the actor and is sped up in post. More than likely they sped it up for the trailer and it would be a more formal dolly-in on James Bond in the film, speeding it up just makes it look cool.
 
Lotustar said:
Hey everyone. Have a quick question. How do i go about getting that horror movie zoom effect? Like when someone is scared stiff and the camera does that strange zoom or whatever. You can also see an example of this in lock stock and two smoking barrels when he loses the card game in the boxing ring. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanx
Click to expand...

I don't know if I class Hitchcock as 'horror' but 'suspense' would work... anyway, Hitchcock used this technique several of his films.

The wikipedia reference below indicates that it was a second-unit cameraman named Irmin Roberts who actually invented the technique.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_zoom
 
Jack_Felis said:
That "jump-zoom-effect", in regards to the "Casino Royale" trailer, is just a regular dolly move towards the actor and is sped up in post. More than likely they sped it up for the trailer and it would be a more formal dolly-in on James Bond in the film, speeding it up just makes it look cool.
Click to expand...


sorry jack,

but its not just sped up and nice whoosh sound effect...when you watch it frame by frame, you´ll notice the jumps. that´s why i thought they simply removed some frames in between but the BG also changes (a little bit like the vertigo zoom)
 
Spielberg did this in 'Jaws' when Roy Scheider realizes there's a shark attack happening.
Gotta have a good zoom puller and dolly grip to keep the foreground actor static.
 
As to the casino royal question, isn't that how you speed up a clip in post "digital post" anyway, by taking away frames? So infact if you did speed up a clip, it would appear jumpy do to the loss of frames. Atleast in premiere when you speed something up it appears jumpy unless you frame blend. just a guess though ha.
 
It's called a push-pull. Simply dolly towards your subject while while zooming out (or vice versa). If the zoom matches the speed of the dolly closely, then you'll get the queesy 'Vertigo' look.
 
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