Animating Depth: Tweening Movement - Flash 3D: Animation, Interactivity, and Games - page 83

Cinematography in Flash
In the motion picture business, a cinematographer uses the camera to help tell the
story. A moving camera adds to the sense of depth in a scene. Unfortunately, there isn't
a camera tool in Flash that you can physically move around the Stage. So, if there is no
camera in Flash, how do we simulate camera movements?
Moving the camera across the screen horizontally is called panning (Figure 3.43).
The previous two exercises simulated this technique. Separate layers of artwork were
motion tweened either left or right across the Stage. The difference in speed creates
the illusion of depth, but the movement is still two-dimensional. The imagery is moving
along the x-axis. Panning can also be vertical, in which the imagery moves along the
y-axis. What about the z-axis?
Figure 3.43 Horizontal panning
Trucking is another cinematography term that describes a camera's movement (Figure
3.44). A camera moving inwards from a wide shot to a close-up shot is referred to as
a truck in . The opposite movement is referred to as a truck out . Here the camera is
moving along the z-axis to achieve a sense of depth. Since there is no camera to move
in Flash, the image's dimensions must be scaled to simulate trucking. Let's experiment.
Figure 3.44 Truck in