There are three factors to consider when you’re doing a dolly zoom because they will give a different effect: the direction of the movement, the speed, and the focal length of your zoom lens. In other words, you can zoom in while you dolly out – or you can zoom out while you dolly in. The idea is that the direction of the movement is opposite to the zoom. Once you have everything set up, it’s time to shoot. The more distance you have, the more pronounced the effect will be. You’ll need to have enough space between the foreground and background objects. Make sure the track is long enough to cover the entire movement you’ll do with your camera.Īside from the gear, the scene also needs to have specific characteristics. The right equipment to do a dolly zoom is a camera with a zoom lens, a dolly and a smooth dolly track. Indicate a relationship between two characters or elements.Create a sense of unease or impending danger.Compress or extend distances because the background appears to be getting closer or further away from the foreground.What is a Dolly Zoom shot used for?ĭolly zoom is a very versatile technique. Zolly, for example, is a contraction of the words zoom and dolly Vertigo effect or Hitchcock shot because it was first used by Alfred Hitchcock on the movie Vertigo and so on. You’ll find that some people refer to this technique with other names, but they are just as easy to explain. So, you dolly while you zoom – you dolly zoom! To do a dolly zoom, you’re zooming in or out while moving the dolly in the opposite direction. (A camera dolly is a wheeled cart or similar device used in filmmaking and television production to create smooth horizontal camera movements.) The dolly zoom effect is called that because it describes the actions needed to create the effect. With this technique, the main subject in the foreground stays the same size, but the background appears to move closer or further away from it.

The dolly zoom definition states that you need to zoom out or zoom in while you dolly in or dolly out (respectively) at the same speed. The dolly zoom is an in-camera effect first used by Alfred Hitchcock and Irmin Roberts in the movie Vertigo in 1958.

Zoom movie