Dolly zoom
The Vertigo shot Scorsese uses in Raging Bull and Goodfellas to unsettle the audience.
A dolly zoom, also known as a Hitchcock shot or Vertigo shot, is an in-camera effect in which the lens zooms while the camera dollies toward or away from the subject, keeping the subject the same size in the frame while the background appears to stretch or compress. Martin Scorsese uses it in Raging Bull (1980) and Goodfellas (1990).
Quick Facts
- Also known as
- Hitchcock shot
- Vertigo shot
- Jaws effect
- zolly shot
- Method
- Zoom and dolly in opposite directions
- Invented by
- Irmin Roberts, for Vertigo
- Scorsese films
- Raging Bull (1980), Goodfellas (1990)
- Effect
- Disorientation, tension
Facts from the source article.
Background
In Raging Bull, Scorsese uses a dolly zoom shot to disorient the audience and put them in Jake LaMotta's shoes, creating a vertigo effect. In Goodfellas he uses dolly zooms to convey tensions between characters, most famously in Henry's dive into paranoia, when he eats at a diner with Jimmy while watching a window to see whether anyone has been following him. The effect was first created by Paramount second-unit cameraman Irmin Roberts for Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo.
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