The Clever Camera Effect Used on ‘Severance’ When Outies Becomes Innies
The intriguing concept of Apple TV’s Severance — employees are severed from their outside consciousness when entering work — allows for a creative camera trick that signifies the moment of detachment.
Without giving too much away about the show which is currently midway through Season Two, when a Lumon Industries worker enters the company building, they take an elevator in which they switch between who they are in the real world (their outie) and their worker-selves (their innie).
This is accomplished by a dramatic head and shoulder shot of the characters which warps perspective and alters their features. Coupled with the actor’s expression, it lets the viewer know that the switch between outie and innie has taken place. But how do they do it?
Dolly Zoom Shot
Well, the makers of Severance employ a shot that was first used by Alfred Hitchcock in Vertigo (1958): the dolly zoom effect. It is actually quite a simple technique: the lens simultaneously zooms in (or out) as the camera physically moves forward (or backward) on a dolly in the opposite direction.
The dolly zoom shot has been used in numerous productions since Vertigo, notably in the first Lord of the Rings movie and Steven Spielberg’s Jaws.
The ever-creative Slow Mo Guys recreated the shot using a rig that zoomed a lens from 15mm to 40mm while a robot pushed the camera physically away from the subject.
“If I cut between this and the previous shot, you will notice that the lens compression is completely different,” explains Gavin Free of the Slow Mo Guys. “My ears are more visible, my nose looks slightly less big.”
Severance cinematographer Jessica Lee Gagné tells Variety that she used a 19-90mm Panavision lens, kept within the 19-30mm range, when shooting the elevator scenes. She tells the Go Creative Show podcast that she uses Kuper motion controls which em computer software to calculate the zooming as the dolly is manually pushed or pulled. The aspect ratio for the show is 2.35:1, wider than the average 16:9 aspect ratio found in a lot of TV shows.
Image credits: Apple TV
