Tag: Dolly zoom

The return of Steve the orc…

Playing around with what the camera can do in Blender, I was inspired to try and set up a dolly zoom. It turned out to be quite easy.

What’s a dolly zoom?

It’s an effect you’ll have seen but perhaps not known the name of. I think the most famous example is from Jaws, when Chief Brody sees the shark attack off the coast and the camera seems to both zoom in on him and yet he stays the same size onscreen.

It’s a matter of doing two things at the same time. You change the focal length of the camera from wide to close and you also physically move the camera away from the main subject. To do this with a physical camera you need to have the camera mounted on a track (or dolly) and change the focal length to zoom in on the subject. Hence, it’s a dolly zoom.

In real cinema this would need at least three people, perhaps four. The camera operator and the focus puller would be on the camera mount, and one or two big chaps (the dolly grips) would move the camera and coordinate with the focus puller and the director to get the smooth effect the director wants.

For computer generated animation, it’s all a lot easier. You decide where you start from, add an animation keyframe once you have the scene how you want. Keyframe camera position and focal length. Then set the next keyframe for the end of the effect, reposition the camera and set the focal length so that the main subject is the same size as before. Set the keyframes and play the animation.

Writing it down makes it seem a lot more complex than it is.

If you’ve not got it quite right, it’s a quick job to change the timing, camera position or focal length. Much easier than doing it for real.

Let’s give it a go

To test the idea I set up a simple scene. Three blocks to represent the main subject and two things a bit further back and a white picket fence to the back of the three blocks. The ground is a slightly uneven plane with a sand colour and the sky is an image I got from Poliigon.

To get an idea of how this looks when you’re in Blender, I learned how to do a screen record (I used ShareX for this) and set up a top-down view of the scene.

Then I tried it on Steve the orc doing his failing stand-up. Steve has just realised the next five minutes is all dwarf jokes and a deputation from Khazad-dûm has just walked in.

This type of dolly zoom is used to give an unsettling feeling to the scene. In the Apple TV series Severance it is used to indicate the change between ‘outer’ and ‘inner’ personalities.