Don’t Go Nuts With the Zoom Button

In Hollywood movies or on TV, when the director wants to mock the look of a bad home movie, he or she will have the cameraperson zoom in and out a lot. In our research, we had to watch 30 minutes of dress rehearsal footage for a wedding. In this footage, shot from a balcony, were approximately 32 billion zoom movements. The camera zoomed in and out over and over again with absolutely no motivation (film school terminology for “a reason for an action”). The person shooting was not zooming in because something important was happening—at least from what we could tell. We suspect he was just bored and felt that if he weren’t pushing a button on the camera, he wasn’t earning his keep.
Perhaps the first mistake was to put the camera on the balcony in the first place—after all, being right in the middle of the action would make for better shots and would have probably kept him off the zoom button because he’d be too busy getting in the action. With a camera on the scene, he might have caught more intimate conversations, mistakes made by the bride and groom to be, bickering between the wedding planner and the mother of the bride, and so on. Why zoom if you can be right there to catch the action?
Of course, being right on top of the action isn’t always practical or allowed—Todd once got some successful “home video” footage using as much zoom as his digital camera could muster—he was shooting the film crew putting together a scene from an Adam Sandler movie that happened to be taking place across the block from Todd’s New York apartment. To get the shot from a few hundred feet away (where about 300 other people were sitting on stoops eating ice cream and popcorn and watching the filming unfold), he clearly had to use zoom. Once there, however, he stayed off the zoom controls, held the camera as steady as possible, and panned back and forth to capture as much of the interesting action as he could (including one great shot of the director storming away from Sandler).
Incidentally, Todd notes that for night-time shooting, even a small, one-chip DV camcorder can be sufficient if you have millions of dollars’ worth of Hollywood lighting and technicians at your disposal. You know—just in case you were wondering.
We realize how tempting it is to toggle between T (telephoto) and W (wide) but, well, don’t do it. Occasionally, perfect moments arise for zooming in and out, and by all means, zoom in for the kiss at the dress rehearsal. But don’t zoom just to zoom. More than anything, it makes your viewers seasick and makes you look like an amateur.
The pros don’t do a lot of zooming during a shot—particularly if that shot is a keeper. If at all possible, try to zoom between shots, when the camera is not recording. Then pick up and record again, and stop shooting before you change zoom settings, start recording again, and so on. If you must use zoom, zoom in or out for a purpose. Purposeful zooming could include the following scenarios:
• To show a detail not visible from far away, such as Aunt Sue’s flowery rhinestone pink pumps she wore at cousin Lhayla’s bridal shower
To catch the tears welling up in dad’s eyes as he views the Grand Canyon • To show your little league outfielder picking flowers and tasting them instead of watching the ball

A reason to zoom out might be to show an action not visible from a close-up. Sports shooting is a perfect scenario to illustrate this type of zooming. Suppose you’re filming a sporting event and you’re tight on the runner with the ball. Zooming in too close can cause the action to appear to be taking place in a vacuum. (It can also be a tough shot to hold, and fast action can seem exaggerated and shaky in a close-up, ending up in a picture that makes your audience queasy when you’re showing the game in your living room.) If you’re zoomed in to the ball and the audience starts cheering wildly, it’s probably a good idea to zoom out, because the action between the players will be what you’ll want to see later. Indeed, many sporting events are best shot in a medium-to-wide angle, with a second camera (if you have one available) used for close-ups.
This is an example of how listening to what you’re shooting is just as important as seeing the action. Use your ears as well as your eyes to help you decide what and how to shoot. Peeking through the viewfinder can seriously cut down on your ability to see all of the action around you, so you’ll want to heighten your other senses to compensate. It helps to have someone working with you to spot the action, and, where appropriate, you can keep a schedule of events to help you make sure you’re at the right places to get great shots.
A good reason to zoom in to a subject is to check your focus—again, you don’t do this while you’re recording. To guarantee something is in focus, you can zoom in on your subject all the way, set the focus (or allow your camera to do it automatically), and then zoom out to your desired shot size.