Dolly Right

The camera travels right and the scene slides left underneath it. The move opens new frame on the right side, so whatever arrives next has been waiting just out of shot.

For an audience that reads left to right, travelling right feels like going forward. The same move at the same speed carries a sense of progress that a leftward one does not.

A straight lateral move to the camera's right, with the lens angle fixed. The camera slides, and what it points at never changes.

The reveal is timed by the speed. Decide when the thing on the right should enter frame, then set the rate of travel from that, because a lateral move has no other beats in it.

Foreground sells it. Something close that crosses the frame in a second gives the eye a measure of how far the camera went.

Use it to bring somebody into a scene, to travel along a line of subjects, and to give a static conversation forward motion.

Avoid it when the right of frame is empty. A move that opens onto nothing wastes the reveal it was built for.

A pan right rotates the camera from one spot, so the picture swings and the perspective stays fixed. Nothing passes anything.

A dolly right carries the camera, so the geometry shifts and near objects overtake far ones. The near foreground tells you which one you got.

The result is a pan, because rotating a view is cheaper than rebuilding a scene from a new position. Ask for lateral travel with parallax and name the object that crosses the frame.

The other failure is a camera that arcs around the subject and ends up looking at it from the side. Say the path is a straight line and the lens keeps its angle.