Tracking shot
The tracking shot is the movement of a camera through space while filming. A shake to prevent the image from the camera movement, come in the professional field range of technical aids used:
- Dolly (camera cart), which is often pulled on rails for extra precision.
- Mobile stands
- Steadicams enable blur-free trips with the handheld camera.
- Camera stages, camera cranes or even helicopters or camera drones enable the third dimension to be included.
- Cable cameras enable journeys over long distances
In addition to these film-specific aids, motorcycles ( cycling races ), moving cars or carts are also used. Camera pans that move towards the action are often shown (for example from the long shot to the closeup ). However, tracking shots are by no means restricted to the two dimensions in the plane.
In contrast to tracking shots, the camera pans , in which the camera rotates around a fixed point (on a tripod or in the hand). This corresponds to the head movement in order to capture a larger section of what is happening.
history
As the founder of unchained camera of the German cameraman applies Karl Freund , who in the last man for the first time cameras moved on rails and other devices both horizontally and vertically, as well as aerial photographs carried out by means of camera cranes, which was enriched the cinematic expression immensely. Also Buster Keaton's film The Cameraman from 1928 is an example of a very early Tracking: About halfway through the film runs Keaton four floors of a house down while the camera mitfährt quiet, to the cellar.
In the first German music film Der Kongreßtanzt from 1931, several camera pans are used very spectacularly in the scene when Lilian Harvey sings the hit that became famous because of this film, That's Only Once During a carriage ride.
A classic example of how the camera, seemingly detached from the shackles of gravity, becomes an actor itself and measures all three dimensions, is Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho from 1960. The aids mentioned can also be used to get at the height of a moving event to stay. An example of this: Indians chase a 1939 stagecoach in Ringo owned by John Ford .
The film Shining by Stanley Kubrick , who in 1980 used a new, greatly improved steadicam that had only recently been developed, was also a significant step forward . The film marked the breakthrough for steadicam.
Modifications
In addition to the camera movement along an axis in each of the dimensions, in the circular driving a motive drive around in a quarter, half or full circle. Examples of a circular trip at a full 360 ° angle can be found in the films of cameraman Michael Ballhaus , who used the circular trip in the films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and (later) Martin Scorsese , among others . The circular trip is therefore often called the Ballhaus roundabout .
With the fake tracking shot , the movement is simulated by zooming .
With dolly zoom , the object remains unchanged in the image, while the focused object is enlarged or reduced by adjusting the focal length in the opposite direction while driving.
The special effect Bullet Time gives the impression of a tracking shot with “frozen time”, but is not realized with a real tracking shot, but with the help of single images.
Filming from a moving vehicle also represents a tracking shot and is used in the film in phantom rides and onride videos . A “tracking shot” through the air is, for example, a video that was recorded with the Oracle model rocket.