A long (in time and space) moving camera shot. Originally required tracks to be laid down, hence the name; nowadays is often achieved by Steadicam.
A Tracking Shot is often used as an Establishing Shot; it's also essential to The Oner. Compare Leave the Camera Running, which is more about how LONG the take is rather than the movement of the camera. Might be used to produce a Rack Focus.
- Conveyor Belt Video: The camera continuously tracks to one side, creating the illusion of filming on a conveyor belt.
- Crane Shot: The camera is mounted on a crane/jib, allowing horizontal, vertical, and complex tracking shots.
- Epic Tracking Shot: A long, uninterrupted shot of the camera flying through various landscapes, even in the most impossible places to shoot.
- Object-Tracking Shot: The camera follows an object around the world the story is set.
- Walk and Talk: Walking through a long passage (e.g. a hallway) while having a talk with someone aside.
Examples:
Creators
- Brian De Palma has been noted for his voyeuristic style, which he achieves through a particular assortment of filmmaking techniques and visual cues in his movies. One of these techniques is the tracking shot in unconventional ways.
- Jean-Luc Godard: Tracking shots are heavily relied on in many of his films, particularly the Epic Tracking Shot of the traffic jam in Weekend (1967)
- Max Ophüls is quite renowned for his usage of intricate, oftentimes outright acrobatic, tracking shots.
- F. W. Murnau pioneered the utilization of this technique in cinema in many of his movies, including the Oscar-winning Sunrise and Tabu.
Films — Animation
- Flow (2024): A considerable portion of the footage is nothing but long tracking shots of the flooding waters, the scenery, or the characters, with little dialogue and even fewer cuts. In the flood's case, the camera moves very fluidly, as well, as if it were the water and not just a tool to record it.
- Jetsons: The Movie: Spacely's Orbiting Ore Asteroid is introduced by means of a tracking shot following them around for a few moments.
Films — Live-Action
- Ain't Them Bodies Saints features a motif of the camera following behind a character as they march forward, filmed in Steadicam.
- Citizen Kane: The introductory scene is a vaulting tracking shot of El Rancho's upper facade, then through the twinkling neon sings on its roofs, and finally traversing the skylight to focus on Susan Alexander.
- Eskimo Day: Often used between scenes. Shortly before the main characters (Malcolm, Pippa, Neil) arrive in Cambridge, a succession of tracking shots follows Malcolm's bus, Pippa's train, and Neil's family car; as it turns off the motorway, the camera lingers on a road sign saying Cambridge. When characters walk from one location to another, other main characters are seen passing: Neil and Pippa walk past a door at Queens', just as Malcolm comes out.
- Contagion (2011): When Krumwiede runs through a park (with police and CDC officials in pursuit) after discovering his hedge fund broker was wearing a wire and tipped off the authorities.
- Les Misérables (2012): Gavroche's "Look Down (Beggars)" is basically a series of tracking shots that show us how well he can weave through the near-unmovable crowds of Paris.
- Osaka Elegy: Mizoguchi delivers one of his classics at the end, with a now-alone Ayako stoically walking along the waterfront for several seconds.
- The Power of the Dog: Especially towards the end of the film, hands that come into contact with people are given a lot of focus by the camera, to highlight the sense of separation many of the characters feel.
- Rear Window: The family (two parents and a young girl) only has a few seconds of screen time, as a single Tracking Shot passes over them, and when the parents listen to the woman on the fire escape yelling about her dead dog.
- Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse: Augie headshots three zombies on a row through one blast of his potato gun, which we see through a slo-mo tracking shot.
- The Second Act: The film is quite aware of its use of tracking shots because the pre-credits scene showcases the seemingly never-ending railroad needed for the tracking shots to keep going.
Literature
- Warhammer: Time of Legends: The epilogue of Nagash the Immortal follows the journey of a fleck of ash from the furnace burning Nagash's remains, as it journeys scross the now-silent Nehekhara and settles inside a sarcophagus within the Black Pyramid. "And there, it waited".
Live-Action TV
- AKBingo!: The 348th episode begins with a Papico ice cream commercial in which the camera tracks each girl and studio member as they play "Pa-pi-pu-pe-Papico".
- The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: In "Just Say Yo", the camera follows Will when he walks back into the prom to find Carlton high on speed and dancing.
- Loki: In "Ouroboros", the sequence of several characters walking towards the control room and talking to each other consists of three long Tracking Shots following each other with a very small shot of an opening door squeezed in-between.
Video Games
- ANNO: Mutationem: In specific moments, the camera performs a tracking shot in cutscenes to track whatever is being focused on; such as the Fantastic Nuke missiles launched in the opening scene and Loki running across the area during the Ruthless Rooftops in Noctis City.
- The Last Guardian: In the Distant Finale, the boy, now an adult, raises the shield to the sky, and unbeknownst to him, the beam from the shield travels all the way to the valley where the adventure happened.
Western Animation
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars: In "Landing at Point Rain", Anakin is followed without breaks as he runs through the shield and close enough to the generator to find cover and start the attack.