How this scene was shot

and Google is your friend :) http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0050825/trivia

Stanley Kubrick's numerous fluid tracking shots required that the trenches be two feet wider than the original World War I trenches - six feet as opposed to four feet - to allow room for the roving camera dollies. Although the technical director did object to the widening, the duckboards the camera rolled on were authentic.
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Note - look carefully at the floor and you can see it's actually pretty flat (a real trench would not be that flat) - so you can see how it's prepped for the dolly shots.
 
It's all dolly work, and mostly with pretty wide lenses. Until about 2:50 when he starts zooming in during a dolly and uses longer lenses to keep Kirk Douglas large in frame while he's across the battlefield.

Dolly work with short lenses has a very dramatic look.
 
if it's a slow dolly out, the track is split into sections, and two or more people remove the track segment after the camera passes. in fast action moves,
the camera flies by wire.

if a crane on a track is available, you don't have to keep removing the track segments, since the camera is extended out by the crane.
 
Victor Nhat Nguyen said:
I always wonder this, when you're using a dolly you have tracks on the floor right? can't they be seen?
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It looks to me, in this instance the dolly is simply using pneumatic tyres, no rails required.

PopcornFlix said:
It's all dolly work, and mostly with pretty wide lenses. Until about 2:50 when he starts zooming in during a dolly and uses longer lenses to keep Kirk Douglas large in frame while he's across the battlefield.
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I wonder if that shot was done with a zoom, given there were only a couple of zoom lenses in existence at the time. I bet kubrick found another way, maybe the camera was on a boom arm or possibly it was an optical effect. He was a clever bugger...
 
I'd go for the rubber tire theory too ...... Lot's of astonishing ways to move a camera can also be found in old UFA movies from the late 20's and especially in Russian movies .... If you've once seen how one of this old camera grips from Cinecitta could build a dolly for a blimped 35er Mitchell in ten minutes from some beams of wood and scrap material you start getting a lot of respect for those pre-steadycam technicians....
 
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Liam Hall said:
I wonder if that shot was done with a zoom, given there were only a couple of zoom lenses in existence at the time.
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Pretty sure it's a zoom lens. Kubrick was also well-known for having the latest/greatest lenses and having them custom made sometimes.

Look at 2:29-2:49 -- watch the relationship between Kirk and the distant background. A zoom changes the perspective between the midground and background. An optical zoom or other post-process would just blow up the frame, without changing pespective. Watch how fast it changes, too -- a crane would have to be moving like a race car to cover that ground.

My money goes on a zoom lens.
 
There's no way that's a zoom lens, how would the actors know to hit their marks from a zoomed shot? I suppose it could be timed, but it's to precise and the way they move is obvious that their getting out of the way of something. If you look closely, you can see the track marks on the ground, it's 100% dolly in my opinion. If those are not track marks on the trench floor, I also like the fly by wire theory, any of those could be made to work I guess. After watching it again, theres subtle movement, you know it looks almost as if a camera operator is standing on a traditional moving dolly, like the furniture kind, and is being pushed through the trench. At 00:41 you see on the ground very distinct lines from continuous packing of the ground. Then you notice an explosion causes debris to fall on the path, right before the cam would run it over the shot cuts, probably because it caused bumpy footage.
 
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maybe when they wore in the trench the track was actually above on each side and the camera was actually floating from under the track?
 
Guys, it's really simple, the dolly rode on the wood plank in the trench. Nothing complicated about it, other than the trench having to have an extremely level floor (Kubrick was fastidious about this sort of thing).

Also, yes those are definitely zooms in the later section as the action travels laterally across the battlefield. It's a matter of record that the production had access to zoom lenses--see here for instance.
 
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