An active zoom is a zoom that lasts >0 seconds and a 0-second zoom is a zoom that happens instantly, producing a jump to a zoomed in or out static shot. A 0-Second zoom is called a “cut” in film and television, but we’ll avoid that term since @cut is an existing Donacode command.

Let’s contextualize this difference with a few examples...

In the app, open the story “Advanced Directing Guide” and click button “1.2 Zoom Time Comparison”

*To follow along in the script, open:

http://episodeinteractive.com/write/story/Advanced_Directing_Examples/1

Then jump to “label onetwo”

Example A:

In this shot, we active zoom on Marie in 3 seconds.

Donacode : &zoom on MARIE to 200% in 3

Example B:

In this shot, we 0-second zoom to Marie in 0 seconds.

Donacode : @zoom on MARIE to 200% in 3

In Example 3, Marie stopped talking while we zoomed on her. That’s because we used @zoom to create the shot. As we learned in Chapter 0, @commands occur as their own discrete actions. To zoom on her while she’s talking, we use the ampersand (&).  More on that in the next section...