Camera view, angle, movement, shot continued

Crane shot - In motion picture terminology, a crane shot is a shot taken by a camera on a crane. The most obvious uses are to view the actors from above or to move up and away from them, a common way of ending a movie. Some filmmakers like to have the camera on a boom arm just to make it easier to move around between ordinary set-ups. Most cranes accommodate both the camera and an operator, but some can be operated by remote control. They are usually, but not always, found in what are supposed to be emotional or suspenseful scenes. One example of this technique is the shots taken by remote cranes in the car-chase sequence of To Live and Die in L.A..

During the last few years, camera cranes have been miniaturized and costs have dropped so dramatically that most aspiring film makers have access to these tools. What was once a "Hollywood" effect is now available for under $400

Dolly zoom - The dolly zoom effect is an unsettling in-camera special effect that appears to undermine normal visual perception in film.

The effect is achieved by using the setting of a zoom lens to adjust the angle of view (often referred to as field of view) while the camera dollies (or moves) towards or away from the subject in such a way as to keep the subject the same size in the frame throughout. In its classic form, the camera is pulled away from a subject while the lens zooms in, or vice-versa. Thus, during the zoom, there is a continuous perspective distortion, the most directly noticeable feature being that the background appears to change size relative to the subject.

As the human visual system uses both size and perspective cues to judge the relative sizes of objects, seeing a perspective change without a size change is a highly unsettling effect, and the emotional impact of this effect is greater than the description above can suggest. The visual appearance for the viewer is that either the background suddenly grows in size and detail and overwhelms the foreground, or the foreground becomes immense and dominates its previous setting, depending on which way the dolly zoom is executed.

The effect was first developed by Irmin Roberts, a Paramount second-unit cameraman, and was famously used by Alfred Hitchcock in his film Vertigo.

The dolly zoom is commonly used by filmmakers to represent the sensation of vertigo, a "falling-away-from-oneself feeling" or a feeling of unreality, or to suggest that a character is undergoing a realization that causes him or her to reassess everything he or she had previously believed. After Hitchcock popularized the effect (he used it again for a climactic revelation in Marnie), the technique was used by many other filmmakers, and eventually became regarded as a gimmick or cliché. This was especially true after director Steven Spielberg repopularized the effect in his highly regarded film Jaws, in a memorable shot of a dolly zoom into Police Chief Brody's (Roy Scheider) stunned reaction at the climax of a shark attack on a beach (after a suspenseful build-up).

Spielberg used the technique again in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The effect was also used in Michael Jackson's Thriller video, just as the zombies are gathering. It was originally used within the reimagined Battlestar Galactica to depict the feeling experienced by characters when the ship utilizes faster-than-light travel. However, the technique was not used again until the fourth season.

A relatively slow and more subtle dolly zoom was also used in Martin Scorsese's 1990 film Goodfellas in the conversation scene between Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) and James 'Jimmy' Conway (Robert de Niro) set in a diner, with a view of the street forming the background of the shot.

Mathieu Kassovitz's French film, La Haine, on the other hand, features an especially apparent 16 second dolly zoom.

The Lion King, an animated film, simulated a zoom shot in the scene where young Simba realizes the sound in the canyon is a wildebeest stampede. It is not a standard dolly zoom shot, as the "camera" zooms in on Simba, but the background does pull away dramatically, providing a similar effect.

In The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, the effect is used without a foreground subject. The purpose of the shot is to emphasize the sense of unreality and fear Frodo feels as the Nazgûl approach, on the road to Bree. The shot is used similarly, with no foreground subject, in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, as Frodo is about to enter the cave of Shelob.

Many of the car reviews on the BBC television program Top Gear use a dolly zoom shot of the front of the car at speed.

Dutch angle - Dutch tilt, Dutch angle, oblique angle, German angle, canted angle, or Batman Angle are terms used for a cinematic tactic often used to portray the psychological uneasiness or tension in the subject being filmed. A Dutch angle is achieved by tilting the camera off to the side so that the shot is composed with the horizon at an angle to the bottom of the frame. Many Dutch angles are static shots at an obscure angle, but in a moving Dutch angle shot the camera can pivot, pan or track along the director/cinematographer's established diagonal axis for the shot.

A Dutch angle differs from a high-angle shot and low-angle shot (although Dutch angle shots are often combined with those for artistic and/or dramatic effect), in that those refer to placement of the camera in height relative to the subject (which for human subjects is mostly defined by a person's eyeline).

Dutch angles are frequently used by film directors who have a background in the visual arts, such as Tim Burton (in Edward Scissorhands, and Ed Wood), and Terry Gilliam (in Brazil, The Fisher King, Twelve Monkeys, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Tideland) to represent madness, disorientation, and/or drug psychosis. In the Evil Dead trilogy, Sam Raimi used Dutch angles to show that a character had become possessed.

Establishing shot - An establishing shot in film and television sets up, or establishes the context for a scene by showing the relationship between its important figures and objects. It is generally a long- or extreme-long shot at the beginning of a scene indicating where, and sometimes when, the remainder of the scene takes place.

Establishing shots may use famous landmarks to indicate the city where the action is taking place or has moved to, such as Big Ben to identify London, the Statue of Liberty to identify New York, the Sydney Opera House to identify Sydney, the Eiffel Tower to identify Paris or the Las Vegas Strip to identify Las Vegas.

Sometimes the viewer is guided in his understanding of the action. For example, an exterior shot of a building at night followed by an interior shot of people talking implies that the conversation is taking place at night inside that building - the conversation may in fact have been filmed on a studio set far from the apparent location, because of budget, permits or time limitations.

Alternatively, an establishing shot might just be a long shot of a room that shows all the characters from a particular scene. For example, a scene about a murder in a college lecture hall might begin with a shot that shows the entire room, including the lecturing professor and the students taking notes. A close-up shot can also be used at the beginning of a scene to establish the setting (such as, for the lecture hall scene, a shot of a pencil writing notes).

Establishing shots were more common during the classical era of filmmaking than they are now. Today's filmmakers tend to skip the establishing shot in order to move the scene along more quickly. In addition, scenes in mysteries and the like often wish to obscure the setting and its participants and thus avoid clarifying them with an establishing shot.

An establishing shot may also establish a concept, rather than a location. For example, opening with a martial arts drill visually establishes the theme of martial arts. A shot of rain falling could be an establishing shot, followed by more and more detailed look at the rain, culminating with individual raindrops falling. A film maker is colluding with his audience to provide a shorthand learned through a common cinematic cultural background.

An establishing shot should be two or three seconds - long enough for viewers to appreciate the scene. However, a good example of an establishing shot that breaks that rule can be found at the beginning of the film Wake in Fright, where it pans over the vast desert landscape of Australia, accompanied by unsettling music to set the mood for the whole film that the desert is a big and dangerous place. The pan shot lasts for about half a minute. An establishing shot of that length would be cumbersome if placed after the film had started, because by then the film should have been established and the story would be underway.

Follow shot - Follow shot or tracking shot is a specific camera shot in which the subject being filmed is seemingly pursued by the camera. The follow shot can be achieved through tracking devices, panning, the use of a crane, and zoom lenses resulting in different qualitative images but, nevertheless, recording a subject (performer) in motion.

# Elephant: Each character is followed continuously during their narrative time.
# 2:37: Each character is followed several times, in a style similar to that of the previously-mentioned Elephant.
# The Shining: The camera follows Danny as he rides his tricycle through the long hallways of the hotel.

Ideas and Reflections:
I am very interested in the Dolly Zoom effect and how it is achieved. I may attempt to use this camera technique in my own film.