Achieving a slow zoom

iamWZA

iamWZA

Active member
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhYevGDyRWo

This scene from Breaking ad is relatively unremarkable but it's a technique I want to use in the future. I'm wondering how it was shot. It doesn't look to me like it was shot with a dolly. Steadicam maybe? And is there a name for this kind of shot that I'm not aware of?

Thanks for your help!
 
thats a dolly shot, look at the picture on the wall on the right side of the frame, it starts cropped and becomes whole as we see around the corner. Slow zoom wouldn't do that.

To do a slow zoom shot you need a cine zoom or the new servo 18-200 sony , or use camcorder
 
Once again, terminology is my downfall. So was it actually shot on a dolly? Can you get this kind of shot with a steadicam?
 
It could've been shot with a jib on a dolly, the shot looks like it raises and pans down as it moves forward.
Also could of just been done with a protruding(?) jib arm.
 
Looking at that shot again, I think it's pretty visible that it's not just a dolly shot. That's a dolly with a zoom in. The shot starts with a very wide lens, probably in the 25mm range, but by the end of the shot, the composition is much more compressed. I'm guessing somewhere around an 85, maybe tighter. It's a slow zoom, and hidden inside the dolly move, but it's there. The zoom starts picking up around 18 seconds in.

Regardless of the specifics of the shot, to get a move of that speed and smoothness on a Steadicam is going to take a very experienced operator, with very, very good gear. A dolly will be simpler and easier every time, and is something that with a little training you can be up and running with in days, rather than months or years.

For smooth, slow, imperceptible zooms, you can always do what the pros do, and rent a Preston Microforce with a cinema zoom lens. They make doing slow creep zooms (so slow you can't even tell they're happening) doable in trained hands. Go to a rental house and prep one, you'll immediately see why they're on almost every job that has a zoom lens. There aren't any low-end competitors that do the same functionality, especially at that level of performance. However, since they're bread-and-butter rental items, I'm sure you can find one for a decent price, especially if bundled in with a good cinema zoom.
 
Actually, the perspective changes all the way through to the end, so it seems it's a long push in on a dolly. You can see progressively more of the cabinet just below the counter in the background as the shot progresses.
 
My vote is that it is indeed a dolly move combined with a zoom as Tom suggests, although I would estimate focal lengths ranging more from 20 to 60mm as seen in this clip (clearly it continues pushing in after this clip cuts out). I do not agree that it is booming up, the perspective shift seen as the camera tilts down is expected when tracking a subject below the level of the camera. And if it was, it would have much more likely to have been done with the boom arm on the dolly than with a jib given the nature of episodic television.
 
Zoom and track in, and some wobble thrown in for good measure. Stick it into your editor and do motion track as in when you stabilise and see the point take a very odd course. I'm even wondering if the zoom direction was actually OUT, while the track went in, so the faster track in is compensated by the zoom out giving a slower 'in'. Looked odd - whatever technique was used.
 
Use bezier curves and do it in post. The "average" viewer can not tell and if you're shooting high rez you can go all the way from master shot to med and sometimes even close up shots - as long as your focus is tac sharp.

"Real" films do this all the time, just start watching for next time you watch movies. Perspective will change when the camera moves, but with a post zoom perspective stays the same and the image becomes more "cropped".
 
Chris Santucci said:
I guess that means I'm the only one seeing a perspective change on both axes?
Click to expand...

No, there's definitely a perspective change there, and the dolly move does continue throughout the whole shot, but there's also a zoom in there. And there's also a vertical perspective change, though whether that's caused by the dolly being high and tilting down as it comes in closer, or actually booming up, I do not know.

A very interesting shot - and even more interesting is how much discussion that one shot created. Lots of fun to dissect a shot like that.
 
CharlesPapert said:
Various including myself have agreed that there is a dolly move involved--adding a zoom to that won't decrease the perspective change.
Click to expand...


My understanding was that we were talking about Dolly shot Vs. Dolly shot + zoom.

I can't for the life of me figure out WHY they would need to or want to do a zoom in conjunction with a dolly-in. Mr. Wills stated that he saw a zoom continue at 18 seconds, I assumed(?) after the dolly stopped(?)

It's such a slow move, and completely doable as a dolly-in, why pray tell would they want to mess around with a zoom?
 
Chris Santucci said:
My understanding was that we were talking about Dolly shot Vs. Dolly shot + zoom.

I can't for the life of me figure out WHY they would need to or want to do a zoom in conjunction with a dolly-in. Mr. Wills stated that he saw a zoom continue at 18 seconds, I assumed(?) after the dolly stopped(?)
Click to expand...

I apologize if my wording was misleading on that - I meant to speak of a zoom during the dolly move, not as a continuation of one. By "picking up" at 18 seconds, I meant that the zoom picked up speed, not picking up from the end of the dolly move.

Not sure of the motivation for the zoom, but perhaps it was to avoid seeing the dolly tracks? Or possibly an issue of not being able to lay long enough track due to confines of the space? Not sure we'll ever know, unless someone gets in touch with the operator or DP from that episode!
 
I concur with Tom that the zoom was throughout. As far as picking up speed, that is possible although the perspective change can help to make the move feel faster when one is closer to a subject.

Chris, we do combo zoom/dollys in episodic all the time. Sometimes it's a function of how to end up with a tighter end frame than the length of track will allow. In this instance, there was clearly a desire to see a lot of the room at the first mark and then to push in to a detail shot by the end. One would have to get awfully close to the subject to fill the frame with the wide focal length at the end of the shot, and there's obviously going to be a certain amount of distortion. Burying the zoom by executing it throughout is the best way.

Back in the day when Panaheads and Arriheads were standard on TV shows, the 1st AC would generally perform the zoom (or hand the controller off to the AC). These days a lot of shows use fluid heads with the Microforce on the panhandle, so the operator is more likely to operate the zoom himself. With a shot like this, I might be more likely to have the AC do the zooming as the timing is pretty specific and it's hard to judge where you are on the zoom (the AC can look at the indicator on the controller or at the lens to regulate the speed, whereas the operator has virtually no feedback via the thumb control, only the framing itself which can get a little tricky).
 
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