Dolly Left

The camera travels left and the whole scene answers by sliding right. Depth becomes obvious, because near things cross the frame quickly and far things barely move.

Direction carries meaning on top of that. In most screen grammar a move left runs against the reading direction, so it reads as going back, resisting, or returning to something.

The camera body moves along a straight line to its left, with the lens pointing the same way throughout. It does not turn. If the lens angle changes, the move stopped being a dolly.

Parallax is set by what is near the lens. Put a pillar, a doorway or a plant in the foreground and the difference between near and far becomes measurable.

Speed stays flat. A lateral move that eases in the middle reads as a mistake rather than as style, because there is no destination to slow down for.

Use it to reveal along a wall, to move through a row of people, and to add depth to a scene that would otherwise be flat.

Skip it when the frame has no near plane. Without foreground the move looks like a background scrolling behind a static subject.

A pan left turns the camera on its axis from a fixed spot. Nothing overtakes anything, because every part of the picture rotates at the same rate.

A dolly left carries the body sideways, so the foreground crosses the frame faster than the background. Watch the nearest object. If it outruns the far wall, the camera travelled.

The model returns a pan, which is easier to generate because the scene never has to be rebuilt from a new position. Say lateral travel, and name a foreground object the camera passes.

The second failure is an arc, where the camera swings around the subject instead of moving in a straight line. Say the path is straight and the lens angle does not change.