Cinemachine 3 position composer distance

I am trying to use Cinemachine 3 but am having some issues. what i would like is the camera to move left and right based on where the character is (but not follow them exactly). I don’t really want it to move up and down or forward and backwards with the character. So i decided to use Position composer. I set the dead zone depth to somethink like 200 so it ignores the character going forward and backward.

The issue I am having is I would like the camera to move backwards to view more of the playingfield when something happens. But when i change the camera distance value either through code or just in the editor while the game is playing nothing happens.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

Are you using an orthographic camera? If so, then that is the reason. With ortho cameras distance does not affect the view. Try adjusting the ortho size in the lens.