Camera tilt up or down — reveals vertical extent or transitions between planes. Keep it slow, or it reads as sloppy.
You perform a vertical pan when you rotate the camera around its horizontal axis—up or down. This is not the same as a zoom or a crane shot: you are moving the optical axis vertically while the camera itself remains in place. The effect seems simple but quickly becomes shaky if you go too fast or don't control the acceleration.
In practice, you use vertical pans to show vertical extent—for example, a skyscraper from bottom to top, or a person standing up from the ground. The pan follows the logic of looking: eye up, then down to detail, or vice versa. Timing is crucial here. A slow pan—about 5 to 10 seconds for a three-story building—looks elegant and gives the viewer time to grasp details. Faster than that and you create unease, unless that is your intention (action, confusion, haste). Pay attention to acceleration and deceleration: start smoothly, maintain a steady speed, end smoothly. Abrupt starts and stops make the pan look amateurish.
You often combine vertical pans with other movements—for instance, a slow dolly zoom while panning to create spatial depth. In editing, be careful: a vertical pan between two static shots looks cheaper than a cut; but exploring a spatial plane with a pan within the same shot creates continuity and flow. Some DoPs also use it to direct attention—a pan from the face down to the hand holding an important object draws the viewer in.
Practical tip: A vertical pan works more cleanly with a handheld gimbal or a tripod head than freehand, unless you intentionally want organic, shaky footage. Always test the speed on the monitor—what feels slow on set often looks faster on 24fps. And don't forget: a vertical pan down has a different psychological effect than one up. Down can feel depressing, oppressive; up can be uplifting, hopeful.