Whether you’re filming music videos, making a documentary, or creating a potential feature film, using varying camera movements is essential for improving the quality of your output. You’ll need them to add impact to your shots, keep your audiences interested, and help you tell a story more effectively.
Most of these basic camera movements are incorporated in basic cinematography techniques that every aspiring filmmaker should learn to execute. They’re super easy, and once you’ve figured out how to use them effectively in your work, you’ll be taking much better videos in no time!
What Is a Camera Movement?
A camera movement is an intentional motion of the video camera while filming a scene. Camera movements add drama, specificity, intensity, and emotions by deliberately directing the viewer’s attention.
While sometimes the camera moves slowly and subtly to create a more subliminal effect on the viewer, other camera movements are fast and deliberate to elicit a certain response. Just as a still photograph frames the world into an image for the viewer’s interpretation, a camera movement helps the director show the audience a specific moment, event, or expression on the screen to advance the action of the story.
The Importance of Using Camera Movements in Video Production
Imagine a movie where every single camera shot is stationary. The movie would feel lifeless and boring. When the camera moves, it introduces a sense of life and activity by adding variety and nuance.
Camera movements are so important to video production that film students are taught several useful camera movements early in their education. Before we get into the different types of shots and camera movements, here are some of the most important reasons to use camera movements:
Focus Audience Attention
When you want to make sure the audience is paying attention to an important character speech or an action that will have ramifications later in a film, camera movements are one of the best ways to focus and direct your audience’s eyes and minds.
Bring The Audience Into The Action
Shaky camera shots make the audience feel like they’re in the middle of the action during a fight scene, or give a sense of unease and urgency during a harrowing event. A still shot in tense moments provides far less drama than a moving shot.
Keep the Audience Engaged
You never want your audience to feel bored by what’s happening on screen. Even the most basic camera movements can keep your audience engaged during long blocks of dialogue.
Basic Camera Movements
- Pan
- Tilt
- Dolly
- Truck
- Pedestal
- Zoom
- Rack Focus
Pan Shot
Panning is simply moving your camera horizontally from right or left while its base (usually a tripod) remains in a fixed position. It is used for following a subject that is moving from left to right—or vice versa—in front of the camera, or for showing more of the surroundings in order to establish a sense of location without having to go for a wide-angle shot.
Tilt
Similar to panning, tilting is done by keeping your camera on a tripod or any fixed base and moving it so that the lens faces upwards or downwards. This type of camera movement is widely used for introducing a majestic character or for establishing shots with vertical elements like buildings, trees, and streets leading up to the horizon. Just don’t forget to straighten your horizon before you start tilting.
Dolly
The dolly involves moving the entire camera forward or backward when “entering” a particular setting through a first person POV or when following a subject. It’s a more dynamic version of the zoom, but to really make the best of the dolly camera movement and create beautiful and more cinematic shots with it, you’ll need filmmaking equipment (such as a track and moving platform) that will make the movement as fluid as possible.
Fortunately, dolly movements can now be done with DIY camera rigs (like skateboards) or more modern, compact, and affordable motion control gear.
Truck
While trucking is commonly also referred to as dollying nowadays, we’d like to highlight the real distinction between them. With trucking, you move the entire camera sideways from left or right while it faces forward. You’ll also need a fluid motion track or a smooth slider to eliminate jerks that can distract your viewers and ruin your shot—unless the jarring movement is what you need for your story, such as when you film a POV shot from the side of a moving vehicle.
Pedestal
To perform the pedestal, you move the entire camera upwards or downwards while it faces forward. This can easily be done with an adjustable tripod, but motion control gear can also be used to do bigger and more noticeable pedestal movements (as well as other similar whole camera movements).
Zoom
Zoom is technically not a camera movement as it requires you to only alter the focal length of your lens to move in “closer” or “further away” in a shot while your camera stays in place. Nonetheless, it’s the most commonly used camera movement for adding interest even to earlier generations of cinematography.
If you’re going to use zoom, do so creatively and only for good reasons—such as for focusing on a subject (zoom in) or its surroundings (zoom out) and for adding energy to a fast-paced scene. Also, make sure you’re using a high-quality camera and lens combo if you want to really zoom in and out from long distances.
Rack Focus
Like the zoom, rack focus is technically not a camera move. It’s when you keep your camera steady and change the focus of your lens in the middle of a shot in order to direct what part of the scene you want your audience to look at. The technique requires the use of a narrow depth of field (achieved with a large aperture), so you’ll need a more professional camera for this. The subjects will also have to vary in terms of their distance from the camera in order to create noticeable and dramatic changes in focus.
Knowing these seven basic camera movements should be enough to help you tell a cinematically compelling story. With some practice, as well as a good understanding of what you want to achieve, you can also start kicking things up a notch by combining these basic movements to create something more unique and memorable—like Alfred Hitchcock’s famous dolly zoom shot in the 1958 film “Vertigo.”
Using Camera Movements to Aid Storytelling
As you become more familiar and experienced with different types of shots and camera movements and how to use them, you will discover that camera movements can take on their own language.
Just as a composer may assign different musical themes to each character to support the action and narrative, the cinematographer and director can employ advanced techniques in visual storytelling by using camera movements.
Remember, the actors on screen interpret the script through their voices and behavior. In the same way, the cinematographer and director interpret the overall production by choosing what to zoom in on, how to frame shots, and how to move the camera in each moment.
Here are a few ideas to get you started on improving your visual storytelling through camera movements:
- Handheld or shaky camera shots for characters who are in crisis
- Zoom in to highlight a character having an epiphany
- Zoom out to show the context of a character’s situation
- Quick cuts and abrupt camera movements between characters to increase tension during moments of conflict
- Dolly shots and pan shots to place audiences in a character’s point of view
By exploring these and other camera movements, you can enhance the quality of your camera shots and inspire audiences to better connect with your characters.
