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What do you think of these lens zooms?
I wanted to do some fast zooms for a few shots in a current project, kind of like the fast zooms you see in older movies, during certain reveals.
I did some practicing on the zooms, but what do you think do these zooms on my lens look good, like in this example?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNfzSxFq9aw
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49 Replies
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You should not use any zooming at all, and instead concentrate on delivering a finished project with steady shots that has story and dialogue that works.
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Okay thanks, but I already have delivered finished products before, and I don’t want to keep on shooting them the same way all the time, so isn’t good to develop new ways?
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[ryan elder] “so isn’t good to develop new ways?”
Only if you the basics down. I want to see that first.
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See what first? The lens zoom I am trying as a new development?
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Unmotivated zooms are an affectation. You’re not Wes Anderson. Unless the film is a parody of Hong Kong or Bollywood martial arts films, there’s no reason to make such a camera move today.
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[Mark Suszko] “Unmotivated zooms are an affectation.”
Exactly, until you start delivering content with steady shots that are wavering all over the place, you should instead concentrate on using a tripod with no zooming.
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Well, in an effort to widen the discussion for the benefit of others, I’d say there’s a visual grammar to choice of shot and framing. It’s been evolved from over 100 years of motion picture craft in practice. Zooms are not something you want to use a lot, because they call attention to themselves more than to the thing you’re trying to zoom on. Better to make it with cuts, or a dolly shot. (Dolly could also be read here as Steadicam, jib, slider)
When you can’t make a physical move, for budget or other reasons, a zoom is substituted, but often that’s less ideal, because visually it’s not changing the parallax relationships between objects in the visual field. And this can have a subliminal consequence for the narrative. Best and first choice is to physically move the lens in and out, and add movement thru editing in a kinetic manner. Think of the zoom lens as more like a variable prime.
That said, I’ve made zoom moves, shooting mostly news, but also PSA’s and promos and pre-recorded addresses/speeches. When I do them, they can take over a minute to go from stop to stop, and I’m usually hand-rolling my focus at the same time. I’m trying my best to make the zoom itself imperceptible. These days, I like doing that zoom in the NLE, from a 4K res shot; the camera operator NEVER fails to get that move right:-)
A dead-slow zoom in or out, to reveal something in the framing or impose a new framing context, is certainly not a sin. But to use a cooking metaphor, it’s a condiment, not a main ingredient. Snap-zooms from tight to full-wide or the reverse, meant for the audience to see, IMO are best left for episodes of Power Rangers, or music videos where you often make up the rules as you go. To most of us here though, online power-zooms imply inept consumer camcorder home movie shtick.
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[Mark Suszko] ” Zooms are not something you want to use a lot, because they call attention to themselves….. visually it’s not changing the parallax relationships between objects in the visual field. “
Mark said this precisely correctly… and I’ll reinforce it with the way that I usually try to explain it to people…
Zooms call attention to themselves… they look unnatural, because they are unnatural.
This is because, in the simplest of terms, a zoom is the only camera move that the human eye cannot reproduce. Your eye (and head and body) can tilt, pan, dolly, truck, arc, crane, dutch, and do just about anything else a camera/lens can do except zoom (unless you are original Six Million Dollar Man Steve Austin).
And they make you look like you are stuck in 1979.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKOxbCx1LNc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIveqr4bMOI
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Thank you Mark… I’m gonna use that first one as a template for my next work.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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