First shot using ‘dolly zoom’

Also known as a contra-, vertigo-, Hitchcock- or trombone-zoom, a dolly zoom involves moving (dollying) a movie camera towards the subject while zooming out, or vice versa; as the focal length changes, the background appears to fall away while the subject retains its relative size in the frame. This dizzying shot was designed by Irmin Roberts (USA) for Alfred Hitchcock’s (UK) Vertigo (USA, 1958) and has since been used countless times, most notably and effectively in Jaws (USA, 1975) and Goodfellas (USA, 1990).