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Professional camera technique: changing a culture of over zooming
I’ve taken over a position as head of TV production where the former director and present camera operator
relied on using the zoom function extensively. Way, way too extensively in my opinion. The CEO has never expressed any problem with the final edited programs, however.We aren’t shooting “motion picture films” aka Hollywood, we shoot documentaries and on location educational productions and some travelogue type videos.
My sense is to use a zoom only when it is absolutely necessary. I need to change the culture of zooms, I believe.
This is affecting what new camera I can purchase, since if we stay with the pullouts and zooms I’ll need a standard camera, but, I would prefer something along the lines of a Panasonic AG-AF100 with the interchangeable lenses, or one of the new Sony nexcams. I personally own a Canon 5D Mark II and love the ability to control depth of field easily.
So, how do I educate my boss and introduce a new style of shooting?
( There are times when I’d like to use a zoom to pull out and reveal more information, or tighten a shot for more intensity.) If I point out that hollywood films hardly use zooms, he’ll say we are not making movies. He’ll say we need to hold the viewers attention by constantly zooming.I can’t remember the term, buy I understand the psychological difference between a zoom and a dolly move, but how do I teach my boss?
I need some type of authority figure/standards that I can appeal to.Anyone have any ideas? It would be most helpful for a person of years of experience answer my questions. Thanks
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22 Replies
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Wow… it’s not often that I get the chance to climb on my anti-zoom soap box, so I’ll certainly take advantage of this golden opportunity.
I, for the most part, hate zooms…. and (again, for the most post) never use them. I usually only shoot with prime lenses, but when I do occasionally pop the zoom lens on I typically just use it as a vari-focal prime, and rarely if ever zoom during a shot.
You’re right… zooms are rarely if ever used in feature films today. Watch a movie from beginning to end and you’d often be hard-pressed to find a single zoom shot. Conversely, watch most any film from the 1970s and they’re full of zooms. The zoom lens was just coming into prevalence for motion picture work then, and people felt the need to use the heck out of them.
Zooms look unnatural because, well, they are unnatural. They are the only camera move that the human eye cannot reproduce. With our eyes we can dolly (walk), track (step sideways), pan and tilt (move your head), crane (stand up), and dutch (tilt your head). But, unless you are Steve Austin the Six Million Dollar Man (or the Terminator) your eye cannot zoom. It’s unnatural.
Compare a zoom-in with a dolly-in to an actor, or through a scene. Both make the subject get bigger in the frame. But the zoom is a very flat, 2D move. It’s much like holding up a painting and just bringing it closer to your race. A dolly, on the other hand, is very organic and very dynamic. As you move to the subject, the size and relationships of all the objects in the frame are constantly changing, each at its on rate. You’re moving into a scene, rather than just bringing that painting closer.
A zoom is ok, when used sparingly, if you use it in the same way that you use any other camera move… that is, if you do it for a reason. There has to be a “why” as to why the zoom is there…. not just doing it for the sake of doing it. If your boss actually thinks that constantly zooming is a method of holding viewers’ attention, then you might have bigger problems.
Maybe some of the above explanation will help you with your boss.
As for a camera recommendation, I haven’t used either yet, but the one you mentioned specifically (the Panasionic AG-AF100) and the one you alluded to (the Sony PMW F3) were both recently used by a colleague of mine. His review of the Panny was “a plastic toy,” while he called the Sony “finally, a real camera.” Then again, the Sony is about three times the price.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Terry,
That is what I wanted! An anti zoom soapbox preacher! Unnaturally distracting is a term I shall use.
My ultimate motive here is that we need a new smaller field camera. We have a JVC 250U which draws too much attention, especially when we go overseas.
I can’t send my shooter with a DSLR (I own a 5d markII) because he will need too much retraining and doesn’t have the background for it.
If I give up interchangeable lens functionality, I would consider the new line of Canons: 100,105,300, 305.
Since you use and like the XL-H1do you think these new cams would be as good? 50mbs, 4:2:2, canon glass sounds good….
Any ideas?
La
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Zooms are silly.
Good luck changing the culture. I mean, they’ve done what they’ve done and made a living. Don’t mess with that. You might be able to tell the editor, “Just because I’m curious, can you cut that by removing/cutting-out the zooms?”
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Hi Larry…
(incidentally, one of my dogs is named Larry)….
I couldn’t really say much about that line of Canons… I have never used any of them and don’t know much if anything about them. But I have bought many Canon cameras (of all types) though the years and can’t recall ever being disappointed with any. We’re still using the XLH1 (or at least the body), and it has been my favorite camera ever.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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A strong second to zooms look “unnatural.” It is, of course, possible to hide a zoom move if you combine it with either a pan/tilt or a dolly move and best of all with a mix of both. Just make sure the zoom stops exactly when any other moves stop or the viewer will see the stop. Takes practice.
Rick Wise
director of photography
San Francisco Bay Area
part-time instructor lighting/camera
Academy of Art University/Film and Video (grad school)
https://www.RickWiseDP.com -
I like everything about what Todd told you, and I too like to use the zoom as a “variable prime”, though I don’t get to use dolly moves as often as Todd. I tend to keep my cameras static and add motion thru the pacing of the cuts, myself.
Back to how to argue with the boss: first off, why even make a deal about teaching him this? He wants to know the time of day, not how you build the clock. You do it this way because your expertise says this is the best way to do something; that’s easily communicated to anybody. I don’t question the plumber’s choice in wrenches, I want the (redacted) flooding to stop. Don’t feel the need to justify your own expertise to the unschooled, even if they ARE your boss. I recently had to “shush” a VIP during a shoot so I could get a little room tone. “Why are you just standing there quiet, I thought we were doing something?” “I AM doing something: I NEED to record the quiet, with you in the middle of it, to use it later. Please, I need another 20 seconds of quiet to help you sound good, and you will be all done”. ” …Okay.”
If that’s not good enough, break it down this way to the boss: it’s all about subconscious audience perceptions. Don’t get hung-up on the methods, boss, look at the results. The zoom and the dolly shot both get you more or less to the same place visually, but their psychological effects are different on viewers. The change in 3-d perspective thru a 2-d lens subconsciously is better percieved by the brain, activating more of it’s perceptual mechanisms, and it also subconsciously connotes that your subject and the production have higher-dollar values than zoom shots do. A dolly move, online or thru cutting, feels “richer” to the eye. A jib or crane move, even more strongly so. Even a small trucking move on a dolly take the entire shot to a higher level, and the audience feels that, even if they can’t say why they do. You’re trying to involve that audience as deeply as you can, right? So let the plumber pick his own wrenches!
The brain and eye are activated by changes in the visual field. Every time the position shifts, or the relationship between objects in view shifts, there is more in the frame that is different, and this demands the brain’s attention. Since we were lower on the food chain, our eyes and brains evolved to detect changes in the environment that meant we were going to get to eat that night, or be eaten that night. Static, unchanging imagery thus relaxes us. Sudden changes of any kind activate our attention.
That’s why cutting edits, shakey-cam, online zooms and dollies, any kind of camera movement in space, all activate viewer attention. But we need to use a mix. What you want are more tools in the toolbox to vary the *means* of that activation, like the dolly shot and short DOF, so as not to burn out an audience, and you want to deploy those tools with skill and purpose and to not over-use them.
You’re worried about short DOF at the same time you lust after it for it’s ability to focus attention on certain things in a frame, and to de-emphasize others. You should know, or can learn, how to increase or decrease DOF as needed, and not be “stuck” with just one or the other. The plumber has more than one wrench for different tasks.
With that, I’ll pull my pants up and my shirt-tail down:-)
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[Larry Watts] “If I point out that hollywood films hardly use zooms,”
Video and films are different things, uses different tools and most of all, different languages.
If you are making video, think in video terms; if you are making Hollywood films think in Hollywood films terms.
In video, zoom is an invaluable tool.
The reasons that Hollywood films do not use zoom too often do not dismiss the use of zoom in video.
rafael -
[Rafael Amador] “in video, zoom is an invaluable tool.”
It is, yes, when used as a tool…. only exactly when and exactly where zooms are needed. Unfortunately, most people don’t use them as proper tools, they use them as shortcuts and “quick fixes.”
I’m willing to bet that if you took the average video shooter and forced him or her to only shoot with primes for a week or two… they’d get better at what they do, even after you give them the zoom lens back.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Zetl is a good place to start “sight sound and motion” you should be able to find this book at a library i would quote it now but lent it to my girlfriend yesterday.
https://www.amazon.com/Sight-Sound-Motion-Applied-Aesthetics/dp/0534526772on that subject your are correct zooming can be very distracting form of motion and as with all cinematography techniques itshould be used carefully.
when i get the book back i will quote it.
Best
Louis—————————————————-
Computer animation Student
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Thanks!
I’m searching for the book already.
L
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