The Power of the Tarantino Zoom

Watching Jackie Brown this morning, When Jackie says something about ‘starting over’ & the zoom incites the story’s unfolding, I felt that familiar rush of sharpening focus, pulling me in with the camera’s assent, a sudden heightened interest, the emotional stakes amping up, turning over and restarting some imperceptible engine, broaching a whole new expanse of awareness & meaning, & all that, set in as the zoom unraveled the seconds before, the saturation of motion magnifying approaching implications with renewed vigor, a soundless rhythm sinking us into & through & our standby and brand new perceptions, the viewing public, the camera’s most reliable witness. During those Signature Tarantino Zooms It feels like we are not just sweetly indulged, in our complicit consciousness of frames & constructs - beauty fragments edited into monuments of form and function in the visual realms, we are invited to listen in on a very silent narrative yet all the while, jam packed with the heady wordy energy of a spirited discourse, encouraging us to ‘look here’ & ‘feel now’, marking the journey with an inner pace that bubbles up to punctuate permission levels, to see more, learn more, hear more, examine the presumptions, throw out the best expectations, face the worst emerging unscathed but changed and all the same, & allow the world of film to take us down neither path at the crossroads, but tunnel under the well known worn out byways, and emerge into a fresh undefined attention, paying ever closer attention to something as yet never seen or known or considered, as the camera closes in on echos of heavens unheard of, never imagined, never hoped or planned for.Those zooms are like keys turning in the lock of what might be, infused with an imagery of mutual invention, artistry’s eyes for eyes circumventing convention. & at the end of the film, when the main male character has turned away, and has his back to the camera, the image blurs like the camera itself is crying, & my eyes teared up matching the blur, on cue, reeling with newfound comprehension. & kept tearing up as the lyrics swell making mention of the heart of the matter for Jackie, as she drives off mouthing the words of her own reinvention

Cut down on your words. You write way too much.

Very good point about the zoom affect but I agree you could have made that point with a lot less words. The reverse works as well. I like the seen in Jaws where Brodie is sitting on the beach in a lawn chair and the camera pans out, chilling. I also love the part in Goodfellas where the camera follows Ray and his date through the entire kitchen seamlessly. I will pay more attention to Quentin’s Camera work. What I like about his films is his extraordinary casting skills. ::slight_smile:

[quote=“tmeyers123”]I also love the part in Goodfellas where the camera follows Ray and his date through the entire kitchen seamlessly. [/quote]
Thats a steadycam shot.