The Dolly Zoom

While watching Season 1 Episode 3 of The Wire this week, I noticed a camera movement that made me feel slightly uneasy. The scene shows a group of drug dealers sitting around in the projects, and one of them is telling a story.

In order to capture the perspective of each person listening to the story, the camera was trucked right while panning left to make the audience feel like they are rotating around the scene’s main character. However, as the story progressed and the situation he was describing got worse, a slow dolly zoom was introduced. This camera movement stood out to me for two reasons: first, it stood out to me because I can appreciate how difficult it must have been to accomplish this. Trucking right and panning left while dollying out and zooming in is not something that just anyone can pick up a camera and do. I was really impressed with the shot and the work of cinematographer Uta Briesewitz. As impressive as the shot was though, I felt it stood out to me because it wasn’t really necessary. The dolly zoom is a very dramatic effect, and can be great for communicating disorder or chaos when used correctly. But while simply telling a story like this scene in The Wire, it struck me as odd and out of place.

With my interests regarding dolly zooms piqued, I took to the internet to find more examples of times that dolly zooms were used effectively. I ended up finding this video on Vimeo that takes a look at the history of dolly zooms in movies, starting with Vertigo in 1958 and continuing to a couple films from 2005. Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo was one of the first times, if not the first time, that a dolly zoom was used in a widely popular movie. Because of this, the combination of dollying in/out and zooming the opposite way was was given the nickname “The Vertigo Effect”. The dolly zoom’s second most famous appearance come in 1975 with Jaws, giving it another nickname: “The Jaws Effect”.

After seeing all these cool examples of dolly zooms, I decided to take out my camera and try it for myself. Seven takes later, I came to a conclusion: a dolly zoom is tough to pull off (without tracks to smoothly dolly on). And although it might not have fit very well in the scene I first saw it in on The Wire, it made me appreciate the experimental camera work that past cinematographers have done to get the dolly zoom to where it is today.

OK, How'd They Do It?

The band OK Go is known to have some crazy music videos that really go above and beyond but in their latest video the band goes even further. The video directed by Morihiro Harano starts in a studio as the members of the band ride these little machines called UNI-CUB's. We dolly out of the studio and into the streets surrounded by bright and colorful buildings and out of nowhere the camera flies up into the air. The camera was attached to a drone that was then attached to a dolly and the camera continues to soar into the air.

Below the members are joined by dancers with umbrellas and the camera shoots back down. It locks back into place on the dolly and continues rolling down the street. And just like that the camera goes up again, but this time it doesn't come back down. The band is joined with now hundreds of dancers and we keep flying up and up. The crowd shapes forms with their umbrellas even spell out words as the camera flies over a half a mile into the air. To think how long it took to block the whole shot and to then get the choreography down perfectly is mind boggling. Check out the video below! 

OK Go - I Won't Let You Down - Official Video

Old Spice Commercials are Black Magic.

So today, like most friday afternoons I spent searching the web looking for interesting things that I could possibly write a blog post on. Normally I'm looking for small interesting tid bits from movies, or running themes in TV shows. But recently while watching videos on YouTube I remembered some funny commercials a couple years back that starred this guy.

                                                                   "Hello Ladies..."

I remembered two iconic Old Spice commercials that I had seen and it wasn't until I watched them recently that I appreciated the difficulty of the commercial. So as a preamble before you watch this scene, just remember that it is all done in one take and there is no CGI whatsoever (except for the diamonds)... Enjoy.

So that is a very impressive commercial. The amount of bells and whistles and things that have to be timed perfectly is unreal. The moving sets, the props and everything needs to be in perfect synch. Here was the one thing that made me watch this commercial over and over again was the fact that I could not figure out how the hell he managed to get on the horse. I mean it is a completely continuos shot and he never even breaks stride. My best guess is he is on wires the entire time and they hoist him up after he exits the boat set. But really I still have no clue. Comment if you know how they did it.

Now if that commercial wasn't amazing enough Old Spice outdid themselves by making another one of these commercials even more elaborate than before. If you have the time, I really suggest you watch this.

 

In an interview with the star of this commercial Isaiah Mustafa he claimed that this took place on location on top of a lake. When he walks on water they put clear plastic panels underneath the water. The cake he catches, is a real cake, and the table saw he uses, is a real saw. If all of that wasn't fantastical enough look closely when he jumps into the hot tub. He is wearing bermuda shorts beforehand, and after the walls of the tub collapse he is wearing jeans and boots. Now Mustafa claims that the pants are real, and although he does not reveal the secret of how they did it. He said that no animation was used on the pants. I myself am skeptical.

I decided to post on advertising this week because I think it is very interesting that some really impressive stuff can be done not just for film and television.