1. Trombone Shot in Vertigo
http://youtu.be/GnpZN2HQ3OQ Personally, this is one of my all-time favourite camera tricks (skip ahead to 2:04 in the video to see exactly what I mean). As a freelance videographer by trade, Ive attempted to emulate this shot more times than you can imagine. And Ive pulled it off too, to certain extents, but obviously never to the degree that it was achieved by Hitchcock, for the first time ever, in Vertigo. The mechanics of the shot are relatively simple in theory. Actually pulling it off is less so. With a camera mounted on a track and dolly and the subject stood still, the dolly is then pulled backwards or pushed forwards while the zoom is pulled in the opposing direction creating the effect of the background changing in perspective (looming closer, or dropping away), while the subject remains the unchanged. Why It Was Inventive: Well, for starters Hitchcock invented the technique out of thin air and not only that, he created it in order to properly visually convey what it might be like to suffer from Vertigo. And that he did. I think youll be hard pushed to find a more accurate visual representation of a psychological infliction; Hitchcock proved again here that he is the absolute master of Show-Dont-Tell. The shot has been used time and time again since, most notably in Steven Spielbergs Jaws and as mentioned above in Scorseses Raging Bull, butwell, can a cover version ever be as good as the original? Of course, this list could have been populated by things that Hitchcock did first, but with Vertigo recently ousting Citizen Kane as the greatest movie of all time, its safe to say that this shot might just be one of the greatest in the history of Cinema. So there you have some of our favourite, most inventive moments in cinema history. Obviously, there are probably billions of sungular shots from throughout the lifespan of cinema and we'd be silly to imagine we've included them all here. Any you'd like to add? To let us in on it.