cinematography Using the lens to zoom, instead of a dolly.

[harmonica44]

I was trying to order a slider online, only to find out you need other accessories, to make it work, and the bill gets high pretty fast. I was thinking instead of using a slider, why not just do what a lot of 60s movies did, and use the lens to zoom. The lenses we have for our DSLRs though, are not constant aperture, and when you zoom in, the light goes dark, then we you stop zooming, the aperture goes back to what it was before. So I would need to correct that with After Effects afterwords. But I already have AE, and it still saves a lot of money for how much a slider costs.

Now me and some people are practicing to make a real professional movie, so would lens zooms look good enough to modern audiences, are there enough people out there who think that they are lame, and it could cost the movie to become amateur by that alone?

 

[Joshua Irwin]

I don't know it was used like a hundred times in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, and that is considered a well directed film.

A well executed zoom is difficult to achieve and requires practice. With some lenses it's easier than others. And it requires a lot of practice to get right.

Do it wrong, and it will be very distracting, and won't help your scene.

 

[trueindie]

Read what Knightly said in a previous post. zooming and pushing in are not just different looking shots, they create a different 'feel' as well. You need to think about 'why' you want to zoom in. What is the purpose? Is there some sort of feel or effect you want to achieve? Why not keep everything still? If you want achieve an effect you've seen somewhere else, then you may want to do what they did in that movie. If you want the effect they had in the good the bad and the ugly, then zoom in by all means. But as a director, whose intention is to control audience emotion, you want to think more about 'why' you want to do something, and then think about how best to achieve it, within means of course.

not sure if my comment helped,...

 

[harmonica44]

Sure it helped. And I get what you mean. This weekend I have a shoot but my slider has not come in yet. I will use a lens zoom to substitute. I figure it's better than nothing. As for keeping the camera still, it's a jarring scene, so I figure some sort of zoom or forward movement for what happens in the shot, is necessary.

 

[Mitra]

Zooming and dollying are completely different tools. A zoom simply increases the size of the picture being captured. A dolly push will actually change the sizes of the foreground and background differentially. An off-axis push with a pan to keep frame on the subject will allow the background to slide while keeping your subject in frame.

Knightly is absolutely on the dot. Dolly and Zoom are used for totally different purpose and create different effects.

Making a dolly is extremely simple, it is nothing but a platform with wheels. A shopping cart, skate board, trike anything with wheels and with some imagination can be used. If you are technically included and have some simple tools, you can make this motorized dolly. The tutorial also has some tips on dolly usage in filmmaking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8-3C8kt1GE

 

[MileCreations]

There is that trick where you use two of the tripod legs and lean the camera back then move the head forward while keeping those two legs on the ground and you get a small slider feel

 

[Ernest Worthing]

Zooming and dollying are completely different tools.

This.

 

[harmonica44]

Okay thanks. One guy has a dolly which I've had the honor of trying out on set. Not during shooting, just for practice after shooting. The dolly though, does vibrate along the ground and you can see the vibrations on camera. But I guess that's better than a lens zoom for some effects.

 

[knightly]

The BTS on the 3-Disc PANIC ROOM shows how they did a huge "single take" shot using a techno crane. They mention using stabilization in post on every moment of that shot to get it smoothed out as the techno crane has a jerky quality to it that didn't serve their purposes. There's alot of good stabilization stuff in post out there for those shots if you need them.

 

[jax_rox]

Okay thanks. One guy has a dolly which I've had the honor of trying out on set. Not during shooting, just for practice after shooting. The dolly though, does vibrate along the ground and you can see the vibrations on camera. But I guess that's better than a lens zoom for some effects.

This can quite often depend on the type of dolly you're using, the tracks you have laid down and the type of ground.

Post stabilisation can help, as can getting a dolly that suits the needs of the shoot (rather than just getting the one you own/have access to).