Camera Roll

The horizon turns while everything else holds still, so the audience loses their sense of which way is down. Nothing in the world has moved and the world is wrong anyway.

It is also the only move that can put a wall under somebody's feet. Roll far enough and the geometry of a room changes meaning without a single object being touched.

The camera turns on the lens axis. The view does not change at all, so the subject keeps its position and its size in frame while the frame itself rotates around it.

On a set this is often achieved by turning the set instead of the camera, with the camera locked to the rotating structure. The result is identical and the actors can walk on it.

Rate is the whole performance. A slow roll builds unease over a long take. A fast roll is an impact or a loss of control.

Use it for disorientation, for zero gravity, for a loss of consciousness, and for any moment where up should stop being reliable.

Leave it alone in a scene that has to stay readable. A rolling frame makes it hard to follow where anybody is.

An orbit travels around the subject, so the background changes and you see new sides of things. A roll turns on the spot and the view never changes at all.

Dutch Roll is a partial roll used for unease, stopping at a cant. A camera roll is the full move and it is about geometry rather than mood.

Christopher Nolan built a rotating corridor for Inception (2010) and locked the camera to it, so the fight plays with the actors walking up the walls. Stanley Kubrick used the same principle on the centrifuge set in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), where the room turns and the camera turns with it.

The view changes during the move, which means the model gave you an orbit. Say the camera turns on its own axis and the subject holds its exact position in frame.

The other failure is a roll with no reference. Give the frame a strong horizontal, such as a horizon, a table edge or a floor line, or the rotation has nothing to rotate against.