Technical question about movies?

Question

When a person in a movie has a kind of OMG-moment , there's often this special shot used. A close-up to the person's face, while the room in the background seems to become longer and deeper. You know what I mean?
What is this called (I bet there's a name for it) and how do they do it?
Thanks for helping!

Answer 1

I'm not sure what the technical term for it is, but I know how to do it. The OMG moment: Camera operator stands at a distance from the actor. Cameraman gets a fixed "beginning" shot, zooming the lens in on the actor and holding that shot - in this case, let's say it's the actor's face with some background visible around the edges of the face. So then we start filming. The way this effect is achieved is that the camera itself physically moves in closer to the actor's face, while at the same time the camera lens zooms OUT. THE TRICK IS TO ZOOM OUT AT THE SAME SPEED THE CAMERA IS MOVING TOWARD THE ACTOR. If you have a video camera, try it. It looks awesome, of course, the pros make it look really good, but you can do it yourself, roughly, with your own camera.

Answer 2

I studied this in a film class- it was clumsily called a "zoom/dolly" shot. The examples used were both Spielberg movies-"Jaws" and "Poltergeist". Chazzychef- the method I studied was backwards to yours.
Camera is on wheels, on a "dolly" track. Camera dollies backwards at the same time the lens zooms forward. If it's timed right, the subject appears to be the same size and the depth of field shifts in such a way that the background seems to lengthen.
Jaws-Roy Sheider on the beach sees the shark...zoom/dolly.
Poltergeist-Jo Beth Williams hobbles down the long hallway, only to find it getting longer.
He sure likes that effect, doesn't he!

Answer 3

A bit of background to the two answers so-far given, both essentially correct---the first noticeable time this was used was in Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" back in 1957----a shot looking down a steep bell-tower from Jimmy Stewart's fearful point-of-view----the camera pulls way back at the same time the shot is zoom-lensed--gives a great sense of the fear of falling, isolation, etc...
Spielberg's use in "Jaws" was terrific----zooming in on Roy Scheider while pulling the camera back perfectly relayed the sudden shock of seeing the shark attack and the paralysis of movement.