The American cinematographer (Jan-Dec 1963)

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well as horizontal. Tracking shots are mainly used in a production either for the purposes already mentioned, or in order to maintain a fairly con¬ stant spatial relationship with a moving object. In other words, moving along with the object being filmed. Does the zoom lens replace normal tracking shots? As can be seen from the above, it can only act as a substitute for those shots where the camera is mov¬ ing towards or away from the object. It cannot give the second type of tracking shot — moving with the subject — except under special circumstances of posi¬ tioning. And although it can be used to approach or draw away, the resulting picture is different from that obtained by a tracking camera. The reason for this lies in the difference of perspective in the two shots. With a “zoom” taking the place of a track, the camera remains in a fixed position and consequently the perspective of the scene remains unchanged irrespective of the apparent move. The relationship between the object and the foreground and background is unaltered. The only change is in the size of the object on the screen: it becomes bigger or smaller according to which way the zoom is made. With a tracking camera, this is not the case. Not only does the size of the subject change, but the perspective of the scene does also. Dramati¬ cally, or rather artistically, this difference between the two visual results is very important. With a tracking shot, the audience will feel that they are part of the scene, moving towards or away from the object as the camera does. This feeling of being “inside,” so-to-speak, is due to the chang¬ ing perspective, which resembles that which would be experienced in normal life as one moved in a similar manner. In a zoom shot, on the other hand, those in the audience remain outside of the scene, in the sense that they cannot feel themselves part of it. If the scene begins as a long shot and then narrows down to a closeup, the effect is not that the audience has gone into the scene and approached the subject, but rather that the audience has re¬ mained where it was and that a magnifying glass has been used to examine some detail in the long shot. The perspective in this case does not change, only the size of the object in relation to the screen size. However, there is sometimes an apparent perspective change with a zoom, especially with a zoom-in. It is most marked on the occasions when the scene is zoomed from a long shot to a closeup not of one object by itself, but to two or more stand¬ ing in different planes relative to one another. When this happens, it appears that the distance between the various objects is foreshortened, in other words, they seem closer together. This alteration in appearance is similar to the effect seen when very long focus lenses are used on cricket matches; though it is of, course, far less marked as the longest focal length of a normal zoom lens is still far less than that of the lenses used for such a purpose. The two sets of stumps seem to be very close to each other, and yet when the batsman runs from one set to the other, he resembles the Red Queen — he runs like mad and appears to get nowhere. This effect is, of course, due to the magnification of the image in relation to the position of the audience relative to the screen. A long shot on the screen seems to look normal to people seated in the usual viewing position, but when a section of the long shot is enlarged to the full -screen size — which is what happens in a room, or with very long focus lenses — then the usual view¬ ing position is no longer correct for the degree of magnification, and in order to restore the perspec¬ tive to normal the audience would need to move further away from the screen; the increased dis¬ tance being relative to the increased magnification. The illusion of perspective change is further in¬ creased by the elimination of the objects in the Continued on Page 46 AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER, JANUARY, 1963 29