Tilt - Tilting is a cinematographic technique in which the camera is stationary and rotates in a vertical plane (or tilting plane). A rotation in a horizontal plane is known as panning. Tilting the camera results in a motion similar to someone nodding their head "yes" or to an aircraft performing a pitch rotation.
Tracking shot - In motion picture terminology, a tracking shot (also known as a dolly shot or trucking shot) is a segment in which the camera is mounted on a camera dolly, a wheeled platform that is pushed on rails while the picture is being taken. One may dolly in on a stationary subject for emphasis, or dolly out, or dolly beside a moving subject (an action known as "dollying with").
The Italian feature film Cabiria (1914), directed by Giovanni Pastrone, was the first popular film to use dolly shots, which in fact were originally called "Cabiria movements" by contemporary filmmakers influenced by the film; however, some smaller American and English films prior to 1914 had used the technique prior to Cabiria.
The tracking shot can include smooth movements forward, backward, along the side of the subject, or on a curve. Dollies with hydraulic arms can also smoothly "boom" or "jib" the camera several feet on a vertical axis. Tracking shots, however, cannot include complex pivoting movements, aerial shots or crane shots.
Tracking shots are often confused with the long take -- such as the 10-minute takes in Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1948) -- or sequence shots.
Trunk shot - The Trunk shot is a camera angle used in cinema when one or more characters need to retrieve something or someone from the trunk of a car. Though the trunk shot can be produced with great difficulty by placing the camera inside the trunk of a car and filming the action outside the trunk of the car, it usually is "cheated" by the art department by placing a trunk door and some of the trunk frame close enough to the camera to make it appear to be shot from within the trunk. This allows the considerable bulk of a movie camera and camera operator to have a free range of movement without risk of damage to the camera or operator, makes the shot logistically easier, and allows the normal crew and equipment used in filmmaking to be utilized.
This camera angle is often noted to be the trademark of film maker Quentin Tarantino who disputes that he puts the shot in his films as a trademark and simply asks "Where would you put the camera?"[citation needed] Although he did not invent it, Tarantino popularized the trunk shot, which is featured in Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, and Kill Bill. In Death Proof, Tarantino's traditional shot looking up at the actors from the trunk of a car is replaced by one looking up from under the hood. In Inglourious Basterds a "trunk shot" is used two times when Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) crouches over a captured Nazi with one of his soldiers, cutting a swastika into their victim's forehead (the shot is supposed to be the victim's point of view).
Possibly the earliest trunk shot can be noted in the 1948 movie by Anthony Mann (though credited to Alfred L. Werker), He Walked by Night when the police are inspecting the contents of a murder suspect's trunk. Another use of the shot is in 1967 film In Cold Blood (directed by Richard Brooks) after the two outlaws cross the borders to Mexico by a stolen car. The technique also has been used in the film Goodfellas in 1990 where the characters of Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, and Joe Pesci are opening the trunk of their car, ready to kill the man within, as well as in the CW's Supernatural (TV series), where trunk shots can be seen looking up at the protagonists, Dean Winchester and Sam Winchester, in both the pilot episode, and the second season's finale. In the music video for Colombian pop-singer Shakira's single "Objection (Tango)," Shakira is shown from a trunk shot, smiling sadistically at her ex-boyfriend and his mistress, who are bound and gagged in the trunk of her car, which she then slams shut.
Two shot - A Two shot is a type of shot employed in the film industry in which the frame encompasses a view of two people (the subjects). The subjects do not have to be next to each other, and there are many common two-shots which have one subject in the foreground and the other subject in the background.
The shots are also used to show the emotional reactions between the subjects. For instance, in the movie Stand By Me, this shot is used multiple times to show these emotions.
An 'American two shot' shows the two heads facing each other in profile to the camera.
Similarly, a three shot has three people in the composition of the frame. In these shots the characters are given more importance; this type of image can also be seen in print advertising.
Ideas and Reflections:
There are some very interesting shots listed above although it is unlikely that I will be using these in my own film.
Tuesday, 29 March 2011
Camera view, angle, movement, shot continued
Panning - In photography, panning refers to the horizontal movement or rotation of a still or video camera, or the scanning of a subject horizontally on video or a display device. Panning a camera results in a motion similar to that of someone shaking their head "no" or of an aircraft performing a yaw rotation.
Film and television cameras pan by turning horizontally on a vertical axis, but the effect may be enhanced by adding other techniques, such as rails to move the whole camera platform. Slow panning is also combined with zooming in or out on a single subject, leaving the subject in the same portion of the frame, to emphasize or de-emphasize the subject respectively.
In video technology, the use of a camera to scan a subject horizontally is called panning.
In still photography, the panning technique is used to suggest fast motion, and bring out the subject from other elements in the frame. In photographic pictures it is usually noted by a foreground subject in action appearing still (i.e. a runner frozen in mid-stride) while the background is streaked and/or skewed in the apparently opposite direction of the subject's travel.
The term panning is derived from panorama, a word originally coined in 1787 by Robert Barker for the 18th century version of these applications, a machine that unrolled or unfolded a long horizontal painting to give the impression the scene was passing by; Barker also invented the cyclorama in which a large painting encircles an audience.
Point of view shot - A point of view shot (also known as POV shot or a subjective camera) is a short film scene that shows what a character (the subject) is looking at (represented through the camera). It is usually established by being positioned between a shot of a character looking at something, and a shot showing the character's reaction (see shot reverse shot). The technique of POV is one of the foundations of film editing.
A POV shot need not be the strict point-of-view of an actual single character in a film. Sometimes the point-of-view shot is taken over the shoulder of the character (third person), who remains visible on the screen. Sometimes a POV shot is "shared" ("dual" or "triple"), i.e. it represents the joint POV of two (or more) characters. There is also the "nobody POV", where a shot is taken from the POV of a non-existent character. This often occurs when an actual POV shot is implied, but the character is removed. Sometimes the character is never present at all, despite a clear POV shot, such as the famous "God-POV" of birds descending from the sky in Alfred Hitchcock's film, The Birds. Another example of a POV shot is in the movie Doom, which contains a fairly long POV shot which resembles a head-up display in a first-person shooter video game, with the viewer watching through a character who is venturing through hallways shooting and killing aliens.
"Point-of-view , or simply p.o.v., camera angles record the scene from a particular player's viewpoint. The point-of-view is an objective angle, but since it falls between the objective and subjective angle, it should be placed in a separate category and given special consideration. A point-of-view shot is as close as an objective shot can approach a subjective shot - and still remain objective. The camera is positioned at the side of a subjective player - whose viewpoint is being depicted - so that the audience is given the impression they are standing cheek-to-cheek with the off-screen player. The viewer does not see the event through the player's eyes, as in a subjective shot in which the camera trades places with the screen player. He sees the event from the player's viewpoint, as if standing alongside him. Thus, the camera angle remains objective, since it is an unseen observer not involved in the action." - Joseph V. Mascelli in The Five C's of Cinematography
A POV shot need not be established by strictly visual means. The manipulation of diegetic sounds can be used to emphasize a particular character's POV.
It makes little sense to say that a shot is "inherently" POV; it is the editing of the POV shot within a sequence of shots that determines POV. Nor can the establishment of a POV shot be isolated from other elements of filmmaking — mise en scene, acting, camera placement, editing, and special effects can all contribute to the establishment of POV.
With some POV shots when an animal is the chosen character, the shot will look distorted or black and white.
When the leading actor is the subject of the POV it is known as the subjective viewpoint. The audience sees events through the leading actor's eyes, as if they were experiencing the events themselves. Some films are partially or totally shot using this technique. In fact, there is an entire genre of pornography dedicated to filming technique known as Point of view pornography.
One of the first films to use this technique was Rouben Mamoulian's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Everything is seen through Jekyll's eyes, as he leaves his house to go to the medical lecture. Then, as he begins to speak, Jekyll is seen for the first time. When Jekyll first transforms himself into Hyde, Mamoulian once again uses the subjective camera to record his agonized reaction to his own drugged drink.
Film, directed by Alan Schneider written by Samuel Beckett and starring Buster Keaton also uses POV extensively, switching between the main character's point of view and the view of the camera as a way to illustrate Berkeley's quote "to be is to be perceived and to perceive". Interestingly, Film is also said to refer to the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
In the film noir Dark Passage, the protagonist has plastic surgery, and when his bandages are removed, he is revealed to be Humphrey Bogart. But until that moment, everything is seen through his eyes and the viewer has no idea what he looks like.
In another film noir, Lady in the Lake, directed by and starring Robert Montgomery as Raymond Chandler's detective Philip Marlowe, the entire film is shot from a subjective viewpoint, and Montgomery's face is seen only when he looks in a mirror. The film was not a critical or popular success.
"The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" uses the POV shot with a tilt shift focus to imitate the lead protagonist loss of sight in one eye.
The Plainclothesman, a moderately popular crime series aired on the DuMont Television Network from 1949 to 1954, used the technique. According to David Weinstein's book The Forgotten Network, the show was even used in police training in some cities.
The British sitcom Peep Show is shown mostly through the viewpoints of the characters and even lets you hear the two lead character's thoughts in the scenes.
In Gaspar Noé's 2010 film Enter the Void the beginning of the movie is shot in first-person.
Racking focus - Racking focus is the practice of shifting the attention of a viewer of a film or video by changing the focus of the lens from a subject in the foreground to a subject in the background, or vice versa. It dated back to the time when cameras did not have reflex lenses so the operator would have to "rack focus" the camera by looking through the viewfinder, then sliding the camera over so that the shot would be in focus. The technique can be seen in as early as 1929 in the early talking picture Applause (film), directed by Rouben Mamoulian. American director Richard Rush claims that he and cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs invented the technique, first used in the 1968 motorcycle film The Savage Seven. Rush owns the patent on a lens used in the technique.
Reaction shot - Reaction shot is a term used in motion picture production and cinematography referring to a basic unit of film grammar. It is a shot which cuts away from the main scene in order to show the reaction of a character to it.
A reaction shot usually implies the display of some sort of emotion on the face of the actor being shown, and is thus most commonly a close-up shot (although a group of actors may be shown reacting together). A reaction shot is also generally bereft of dialogue, though this is not an absolute rule. Its main purpose is to show an emotional response to the immediately preceding action or words of another character in the scene, or to an event in the immediately preceding scene which may or may not involve another actor (e.g., an explosion, monster, empty room, etc.)
The assumption behind the logic of the reaction shot is that the emotional reaction of the actor being depicted will either advance the story forward, reveal character traits of the character in the reaction shot, or emphasize character traits of another character that were displayed in the action or dialog present in the preceding shot. A completely unemotional reaction may also be important if it provides information to the audience or is unexpected in the context of the scene.
Reaction shots can be especially critical in comedy, as the reaction of an actor or actors to a dramatic incident provides a psychological cue to the audience about how to respond to that incident themselves.
In some cases; the deliberate avoidance of showing a reaction shot can be used by a filmmaker to dramatic effect; for instance, if the filmmaker does not want the audience to see a character's reaction to a particular incident at that point in time.
Shot reverse shot - Shot reverse shot (or shot/countershot) is a film technique where one character is shown looking at another character (often off-screen), and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character. Since the characters are shown facing in opposite directions, the viewer assumes that they are looking at each other.
SnorriCam - A SnorriCam (also chestcam, bodymount camera, bodycam or bodymount) is a camera device used in filmmaking that is rigged to the body of the actor, facing the actor directly, so when he walks, he does not appear to move, but everything around him does. A SnorriCam presents a dynamic point of view from the actor's perspective, providing an unusual sense of vertigo for the viewer.
The SnorriCam is named after two Icelandic photographers and directors, Einar Snorri and Eiður Snorri, who –although they are not related– worked together under the name Snorri Bros.
The concept of the SnorriCam has been around for decades. Various ad hoc versions of the device were implemented in films going as far back as Seconds, in 1966. However, the practicality of such a point-of-view device was limited by the weight of the camera. Since most 35mm motion picture cameras were simply too heavy to easily carry, there was no real point in developing such a device. However, with the emergence of the Steadicam and the manufacture of small, lightweight, soundproof cameras that could fit on the Steadicam platform, an added bonus of these newer, lighter cameras was the possibility of a point-of-view device such as the SnorriCam.
Uses in film
All the following films use SnorriCam sequences[2]:
* Mean Streets, where the lead character (played by Harvey Keitel) can be seen moving through a crowded bar and passing out drunk in the back.
* Truck Turner - the character played by Yaphet Kotto can be seen in his final throes of death through the eyes of a SnorriCam
* Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels when Eddie (played by Nick Moran) is leaving the boxing ring after the game of poker.
* 25th Hour
* "Psycho (film)"
* Enduring Love
* Armageddon, when an astronaut gets hit by outgassing he zooms off into space and we see him scream from a virtual Snorricam
* The Lovely Bones
* π and Requiem for a Dream, directed by Darren Aronofsky, use the SnorriCam extensively.
* Kannathil Muthamittal
* Rakta Charitra
* Dil Chahta Hai
* Angst
* Dalkomhan insaeng
* Malcolm X
* Seconds
* Babel
* La sirène rouge
* Jacob's Ladder
* Guru
* The Exorcism of Emily Rose
* Stay
* Azumi 2: Death or Love
* Heyy Babyy
* Kicking & Screaming
* See No Evil
* I Am Legend
* Kidulthood
* Adulthood
* Inside Man
* Max Payne
* Tell No One
* RocknRolla
* Revolver
* District 9
* Slumdog Millionaire
* Dev.D
* Rann
* The Hangover
* Orphan
* Juice
* New York
* Terminator Salvation
* 28 Weeks Later, a zombie wears it while chasing Robert Carlyle's character.
* Touching The Void
* Bound
* Get Him To The Greek, where Jonah Hill parties and later receives an adrenaline shot.
* Va
* No Smoking
* Kaminey, used in the music video of 'Dhan Te Nan'
* Jackie
Ideas and Reflections:
There are some very interesting shots listed above although it is unlikely that I will be using these in my own film.
Film and television cameras pan by turning horizontally on a vertical axis, but the effect may be enhanced by adding other techniques, such as rails to move the whole camera platform. Slow panning is also combined with zooming in or out on a single subject, leaving the subject in the same portion of the frame, to emphasize or de-emphasize the subject respectively.
In video technology, the use of a camera to scan a subject horizontally is called panning.
In still photography, the panning technique is used to suggest fast motion, and bring out the subject from other elements in the frame. In photographic pictures it is usually noted by a foreground subject in action appearing still (i.e. a runner frozen in mid-stride) while the background is streaked and/or skewed in the apparently opposite direction of the subject's travel.
The term panning is derived from panorama, a word originally coined in 1787 by Robert Barker for the 18th century version of these applications, a machine that unrolled or unfolded a long horizontal painting to give the impression the scene was passing by; Barker also invented the cyclorama in which a large painting encircles an audience.
Point of view shot - A point of view shot (also known as POV shot or a subjective camera) is a short film scene that shows what a character (the subject) is looking at (represented through the camera). It is usually established by being positioned between a shot of a character looking at something, and a shot showing the character's reaction (see shot reverse shot). The technique of POV is one of the foundations of film editing.
A POV shot need not be the strict point-of-view of an actual single character in a film. Sometimes the point-of-view shot is taken over the shoulder of the character (third person), who remains visible on the screen. Sometimes a POV shot is "shared" ("dual" or "triple"), i.e. it represents the joint POV of two (or more) characters. There is also the "nobody POV", where a shot is taken from the POV of a non-existent character. This often occurs when an actual POV shot is implied, but the character is removed. Sometimes the character is never present at all, despite a clear POV shot, such as the famous "God-POV" of birds descending from the sky in Alfred Hitchcock's film, The Birds. Another example of a POV shot is in the movie Doom, which contains a fairly long POV shot which resembles a head-up display in a first-person shooter video game, with the viewer watching through a character who is venturing through hallways shooting and killing aliens.
"Point-of-view , or simply p.o.v., camera angles record the scene from a particular player's viewpoint. The point-of-view is an objective angle, but since it falls between the objective and subjective angle, it should be placed in a separate category and given special consideration. A point-of-view shot is as close as an objective shot can approach a subjective shot - and still remain objective. The camera is positioned at the side of a subjective player - whose viewpoint is being depicted - so that the audience is given the impression they are standing cheek-to-cheek with the off-screen player. The viewer does not see the event through the player's eyes, as in a subjective shot in which the camera trades places with the screen player. He sees the event from the player's viewpoint, as if standing alongside him. Thus, the camera angle remains objective, since it is an unseen observer not involved in the action." - Joseph V. Mascelli in The Five C's of Cinematography
A POV shot need not be established by strictly visual means. The manipulation of diegetic sounds can be used to emphasize a particular character's POV.
It makes little sense to say that a shot is "inherently" POV; it is the editing of the POV shot within a sequence of shots that determines POV. Nor can the establishment of a POV shot be isolated from other elements of filmmaking — mise en scene, acting, camera placement, editing, and special effects can all contribute to the establishment of POV.
With some POV shots when an animal is the chosen character, the shot will look distorted or black and white.
When the leading actor is the subject of the POV it is known as the subjective viewpoint. The audience sees events through the leading actor's eyes, as if they were experiencing the events themselves. Some films are partially or totally shot using this technique. In fact, there is an entire genre of pornography dedicated to filming technique known as Point of view pornography.
One of the first films to use this technique was Rouben Mamoulian's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Everything is seen through Jekyll's eyes, as he leaves his house to go to the medical lecture. Then, as he begins to speak, Jekyll is seen for the first time. When Jekyll first transforms himself into Hyde, Mamoulian once again uses the subjective camera to record his agonized reaction to his own drugged drink.
Film, directed by Alan Schneider written by Samuel Beckett and starring Buster Keaton also uses POV extensively, switching between the main character's point of view and the view of the camera as a way to illustrate Berkeley's quote "to be is to be perceived and to perceive". Interestingly, Film is also said to refer to the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
In the film noir Dark Passage, the protagonist has plastic surgery, and when his bandages are removed, he is revealed to be Humphrey Bogart. But until that moment, everything is seen through his eyes and the viewer has no idea what he looks like.
In another film noir, Lady in the Lake, directed by and starring Robert Montgomery as Raymond Chandler's detective Philip Marlowe, the entire film is shot from a subjective viewpoint, and Montgomery's face is seen only when he looks in a mirror. The film was not a critical or popular success.
"The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" uses the POV shot with a tilt shift focus to imitate the lead protagonist loss of sight in one eye.
The Plainclothesman, a moderately popular crime series aired on the DuMont Television Network from 1949 to 1954, used the technique. According to David Weinstein's book The Forgotten Network, the show was even used in police training in some cities.
The British sitcom Peep Show is shown mostly through the viewpoints of the characters and even lets you hear the two lead character's thoughts in the scenes.
In Gaspar Noé's 2010 film Enter the Void the beginning of the movie is shot in first-person.
Racking focus - Racking focus is the practice of shifting the attention of a viewer of a film or video by changing the focus of the lens from a subject in the foreground to a subject in the background, or vice versa. It dated back to the time when cameras did not have reflex lenses so the operator would have to "rack focus" the camera by looking through the viewfinder, then sliding the camera over so that the shot would be in focus. The technique can be seen in as early as 1929 in the early talking picture Applause (film), directed by Rouben Mamoulian. American director Richard Rush claims that he and cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs invented the technique, first used in the 1968 motorcycle film The Savage Seven. Rush owns the patent on a lens used in the technique.
Reaction shot - Reaction shot is a term used in motion picture production and cinematography referring to a basic unit of film grammar. It is a shot which cuts away from the main scene in order to show the reaction of a character to it.
A reaction shot usually implies the display of some sort of emotion on the face of the actor being shown, and is thus most commonly a close-up shot (although a group of actors may be shown reacting together). A reaction shot is also generally bereft of dialogue, though this is not an absolute rule. Its main purpose is to show an emotional response to the immediately preceding action or words of another character in the scene, or to an event in the immediately preceding scene which may or may not involve another actor (e.g., an explosion, monster, empty room, etc.)
The assumption behind the logic of the reaction shot is that the emotional reaction of the actor being depicted will either advance the story forward, reveal character traits of the character in the reaction shot, or emphasize character traits of another character that were displayed in the action or dialog present in the preceding shot. A completely unemotional reaction may also be important if it provides information to the audience or is unexpected in the context of the scene.
Reaction shots can be especially critical in comedy, as the reaction of an actor or actors to a dramatic incident provides a psychological cue to the audience about how to respond to that incident themselves.
In some cases; the deliberate avoidance of showing a reaction shot can be used by a filmmaker to dramatic effect; for instance, if the filmmaker does not want the audience to see a character's reaction to a particular incident at that point in time.
Shot reverse shot - Shot reverse shot (or shot/countershot) is a film technique where one character is shown looking at another character (often off-screen), and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character. Since the characters are shown facing in opposite directions, the viewer assumes that they are looking at each other.
SnorriCam - A SnorriCam (also chestcam, bodymount camera, bodycam or bodymount) is a camera device used in filmmaking that is rigged to the body of the actor, facing the actor directly, so when he walks, he does not appear to move, but everything around him does. A SnorriCam presents a dynamic point of view from the actor's perspective, providing an unusual sense of vertigo for the viewer.
The SnorriCam is named after two Icelandic photographers and directors, Einar Snorri and Eiður Snorri, who –although they are not related– worked together under the name Snorri Bros.
The concept of the SnorriCam has been around for decades. Various ad hoc versions of the device were implemented in films going as far back as Seconds, in 1966. However, the practicality of such a point-of-view device was limited by the weight of the camera. Since most 35mm motion picture cameras were simply too heavy to easily carry, there was no real point in developing such a device. However, with the emergence of the Steadicam and the manufacture of small, lightweight, soundproof cameras that could fit on the Steadicam platform, an added bonus of these newer, lighter cameras was the possibility of a point-of-view device such as the SnorriCam.
Uses in film
All the following films use SnorriCam sequences[2]:
* Mean Streets, where the lead character (played by Harvey Keitel) can be seen moving through a crowded bar and passing out drunk in the back.
* Truck Turner - the character played by Yaphet Kotto can be seen in his final throes of death through the eyes of a SnorriCam
* Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels when Eddie (played by Nick Moran) is leaving the boxing ring after the game of poker.
* 25th Hour
* "Psycho (film)"
* Enduring Love
* Armageddon, when an astronaut gets hit by outgassing he zooms off into space and we see him scream from a virtual Snorricam
* The Lovely Bones
* π and Requiem for a Dream, directed by Darren Aronofsky, use the SnorriCam extensively.
* Kannathil Muthamittal
* Rakta Charitra
* Dil Chahta Hai
* Angst
* Dalkomhan insaeng
* Malcolm X
* Seconds
* Babel
* La sirène rouge
* Jacob's Ladder
* Guru
* The Exorcism of Emily Rose
* Stay
* Azumi 2: Death or Love
* Heyy Babyy
* Kicking & Screaming
* See No Evil
* I Am Legend
* Kidulthood
* Adulthood
* Inside Man
* Max Payne
* Tell No One
* RocknRolla
* Revolver
* District 9
* Slumdog Millionaire
* Dev.D
* Rann
* The Hangover
* Orphan
* Juice
* New York
* Terminator Salvation
* 28 Weeks Later, a zombie wears it while chasing Robert Carlyle's character.
* Touching The Void
* Bound
* Get Him To The Greek, where Jonah Hill parties and later receives an adrenaline shot.
* Va
* No Smoking
* Kaminey, used in the music video of 'Dhan Te Nan'
* Jackie
Ideas and Reflections:
There are some very interesting shots listed above although it is unlikely that I will be using these in my own film.
Camera view, angle, movement, shot continued
Low-angle shot - In cinematography, a low-angle shot, is a shot from a camera positioned low on the vertical axis, anywhere below the eyeline, looking up.
Famous examples
* M (1931 film) (directed by Fritz Lang): Inspector Karl Lohmann is shot in low angle in his office, the camera sitting underneath his office desk. Also, two disputing men, one small and the other tall, are shot in low and high angles, respectively.
* Citizen Kane (directed by Orson Welles): there are many examples such as during the scene where Kane fires Leland. In fact, the scene where Leland confronts Travis after his defeat in the election is entirely shot in a low angle view.
* Psycho (directed by Alfred Hitchcock): the house where Norman Bates lives is usually shot from a low angle.
* Star Wars (directed by George Lucas): Darth Vader is often shot at a low angle, for example, the first time we see his character as he is walking down a hallway.
* Touch of Evil (directed by Orson Welles): In this film noir, Hank Quinlan is often shot in low angle to make him look menacing, large, and in-charge.
* The Lady From Shanghai (directed by Orson Welles): examples of low-angle shot are during the scene where George Grisby is confronted by Broome and he shoots him.
* Used while filming World Wrestling Entertainment interviews with André the Giant.
* The Dark Knight (directed by Christopher Nolan): Nolan uses extremely low angle shots to give the Joker a more powerful image in The Dark Knight, especially during the scene where the truck he was driving is flipped over and he gets out and starts shooting at Batman. In this scene, the angle actually goes from a normal medium close up and slowly moves into a low angle shot.
* Full Metal Jacket (directed by Stanley Kubrick): examples of a low angle shot is during the scene where the boot camp Sgt. is yelling at Joker.
Master shot - A master shot is a film recording of an entire dramatized scene, from start to finish, from an angle that keeps all the players in view. It is often a long shot and can sometimes perform a double function as an establishing shot. Usually, the master shot is the first shot checked off during the shooting of a scene—it is the foundation of what is called camera coverage, other shots that reveal different aspects of the action, groupings of two or three of the actors at crucial moments, close-ups of individuals, insert shots of various props, and so on.
Historically, the master shot was arguably the most important shot of any given scene. All shots in a given scene were somehow related to what was happening in the master shot. This is one reason why some of the films from the 1930s and 1940s are considered "stagey" by today's standards. By the 1960s and 1970s, the style of film shooting and editing shifted to include radical angles that conveyed more subjectivity and intimacy within the scenes. Today, the master shot is still an extremely important element of film production, but scenes are not built around the master shot in the same way that they were when professional filmmaking was in its infancy.
Matte - Mattes are used in photography and special effects filmmaking to combine two or more image elements into a single, final image. Usually, mattes are used to combine a foreground image (such as actors on a set, or a spaceship) with a background image (a scenic vista, a field of stars and planets). In this case, the matte is the background painting. In film and stage, mattes can be physically huge sections of painted canvas, portraying large scenic expanses of landscapes.
In film, the principle of a matte requires masking certain areas of the film emulsion to selectively control which areas are exposed. However, many complex special-effects scenes have included dozens of discrete image elements, requiring very complex use of mattes, and layering mattes on top of one another.
For an example of a simple matte, we may wish to depict a group of actors in front of a store, with a massive city and sky visible above the store's roof. We would have two images—the actors on the set, and the image of the city—to combine onto a third. This would require two masks/mattes. One would mask everything above the store's roof, and the other would mask everything below it. By using these masks/mattes when copying these images onto the third, we can combine the images without creating ghostly double-exposures. In film, this is an example of a static matte, where the shape of the mask does not change from frame to frame.
Other shots may require mattes that change, to mask the shapes of moving objects, such as human beings or spaceships. These are known as traveling mattes. Traveling mattes enable greater freedom of composition and movement, but they are also more difficult to accomplish. Bluescreen techniques, originally invented by Petro Vlahos, are probably the best-known techniques for creating traveling mattes, although rotoscoping and multiple motion control passes have also been used in the past.
Mattes are a very old technique, going back to the Lumière brothers. A good early American example is seen in The Great Train Robbery (1903) where it is used to place a train outside a window in a ticket office, and later a moving background outside a baggage car on a train 'set'.
Medium shot - In film, a medium shot is a camera shot from a medium distance. The dividing line between "long shot" and "medium shot" is fuzzy, as is the line between "medium shot" and "close-up". In some standard texts and professional references, a full-length view of a human subject is called a medium shot; in this terminology, a shot of the person from the knees up or the waist up is a close-up shot. In other texts, these partial views are called medium shots. (For example, in Europe a medium shot is framed from the waist up). It is mainly used for a scene when you can see what kind of expressions they are using.
There is no evident reason for this variation. It is not a distinction caused by, for example, a difference between TV and film language or 1930s and 1980s language.
Medium shots are relatively good in showing facial expressions but work well to show body language.
Over the shoulder shot - In film or video, an over the shoulder shot (also over shoulder, OS, OTS, or third-person shot) is a shot of someone or something taken over the shoulder of another person. The back of the shoulder and head of this person is used to frame the image of whatever (or whomever) the camera is pointing toward. This type of shot is very common when two characters are having a discussion and will usually follow an establishing shot which helps the audience place the characters in their setting. It is an example of a camera angle.
Ideas and Reflections:
There are some very interesting shots listed above although it is unlikely that I will be using these in my own film.
Famous examples
* M (1931 film) (directed by Fritz Lang): Inspector Karl Lohmann is shot in low angle in his office, the camera sitting underneath his office desk. Also, two disputing men, one small and the other tall, are shot in low and high angles, respectively.
* Citizen Kane (directed by Orson Welles): there are many examples such as during the scene where Kane fires Leland. In fact, the scene where Leland confronts Travis after his defeat in the election is entirely shot in a low angle view.
* Psycho (directed by Alfred Hitchcock): the house where Norman Bates lives is usually shot from a low angle.
* Star Wars (directed by George Lucas): Darth Vader is often shot at a low angle, for example, the first time we see his character as he is walking down a hallway.
* Touch of Evil (directed by Orson Welles): In this film noir, Hank Quinlan is often shot in low angle to make him look menacing, large, and in-charge.
* The Lady From Shanghai (directed by Orson Welles): examples of low-angle shot are during the scene where George Grisby is confronted by Broome and he shoots him.
* Used while filming World Wrestling Entertainment interviews with André the Giant.
* The Dark Knight (directed by Christopher Nolan): Nolan uses extremely low angle shots to give the Joker a more powerful image in The Dark Knight, especially during the scene where the truck he was driving is flipped over and he gets out and starts shooting at Batman. In this scene, the angle actually goes from a normal medium close up and slowly moves into a low angle shot.
* Full Metal Jacket (directed by Stanley Kubrick): examples of a low angle shot is during the scene where the boot camp Sgt. is yelling at Joker.
Master shot - A master shot is a film recording of an entire dramatized scene, from start to finish, from an angle that keeps all the players in view. It is often a long shot and can sometimes perform a double function as an establishing shot. Usually, the master shot is the first shot checked off during the shooting of a scene—it is the foundation of what is called camera coverage, other shots that reveal different aspects of the action, groupings of two or three of the actors at crucial moments, close-ups of individuals, insert shots of various props, and so on.
Historically, the master shot was arguably the most important shot of any given scene. All shots in a given scene were somehow related to what was happening in the master shot. This is one reason why some of the films from the 1930s and 1940s are considered "stagey" by today's standards. By the 1960s and 1970s, the style of film shooting and editing shifted to include radical angles that conveyed more subjectivity and intimacy within the scenes. Today, the master shot is still an extremely important element of film production, but scenes are not built around the master shot in the same way that they were when professional filmmaking was in its infancy.
Matte - Mattes are used in photography and special effects filmmaking to combine two or more image elements into a single, final image. Usually, mattes are used to combine a foreground image (such as actors on a set, or a spaceship) with a background image (a scenic vista, a field of stars and planets). In this case, the matte is the background painting. In film and stage, mattes can be physically huge sections of painted canvas, portraying large scenic expanses of landscapes.
In film, the principle of a matte requires masking certain areas of the film emulsion to selectively control which areas are exposed. However, many complex special-effects scenes have included dozens of discrete image elements, requiring very complex use of mattes, and layering mattes on top of one another.
For an example of a simple matte, we may wish to depict a group of actors in front of a store, with a massive city and sky visible above the store's roof. We would have two images—the actors on the set, and the image of the city—to combine onto a third. This would require two masks/mattes. One would mask everything above the store's roof, and the other would mask everything below it. By using these masks/mattes when copying these images onto the third, we can combine the images without creating ghostly double-exposures. In film, this is an example of a static matte, where the shape of the mask does not change from frame to frame.
Other shots may require mattes that change, to mask the shapes of moving objects, such as human beings or spaceships. These are known as traveling mattes. Traveling mattes enable greater freedom of composition and movement, but they are also more difficult to accomplish. Bluescreen techniques, originally invented by Petro Vlahos, are probably the best-known techniques for creating traveling mattes, although rotoscoping and multiple motion control passes have also been used in the past.
Mattes are a very old technique, going back to the Lumière brothers. A good early American example is seen in The Great Train Robbery (1903) where it is used to place a train outside a window in a ticket office, and later a moving background outside a baggage car on a train 'set'.
Medium shot - In film, a medium shot is a camera shot from a medium distance. The dividing line between "long shot" and "medium shot" is fuzzy, as is the line between "medium shot" and "close-up". In some standard texts and professional references, a full-length view of a human subject is called a medium shot; in this terminology, a shot of the person from the knees up or the waist up is a close-up shot. In other texts, these partial views are called medium shots. (For example, in Europe a medium shot is framed from the waist up). It is mainly used for a scene when you can see what kind of expressions they are using.
There is no evident reason for this variation. It is not a distinction caused by, for example, a difference between TV and film language or 1930s and 1980s language.
Medium shots are relatively good in showing facial expressions but work well to show body language.
Over the shoulder shot - In film or video, an over the shoulder shot (also over shoulder, OS, OTS, or third-person shot) is a shot of someone or something taken over the shoulder of another person. The back of the shoulder and head of this person is used to frame the image of whatever (or whomever) the camera is pointing toward. This type of shot is very common when two characters are having a discussion and will usually follow an establishing shot which helps the audience place the characters in their setting. It is an example of a camera angle.
Ideas and Reflections:
There are some very interesting shots listed above although it is unlikely that I will be using these in my own film.
Camera view, angle, movement, shot continued
Forced perspective - Examples of forced perspective:
* A scene in an action/adventure movie in which dinosaurs are threatening the heroes. By placing a miniature model of a dinosaur close to the camera, the dinosaur may look monstrously tall to the viewer, even though it is just closer to the camera.
Movies (especially B-movies) in the 1950s and 1960s produced on limited budgets sometimes feature forced perspective shots which are completed without the proper knowledge of the physics of light used in cinematography, so foreground models can appear blurred or incorrectly exposed.
Forced perspective can be made more believable when environmental conditions obscure the difference in perspective. For example, the final scene of the famous movie Casablanca takes place at an airport in the middle of a storm, although the entire scene was shot in a studio. This was accomplished by using a painted backdrop of an aircraft, which was "serviced" by dwarfs standing next to the backdrop. A downpour (created in-studio) draws much of the viewer's attention away from the backdrop and extras, making the simulated perspective less noticeable.
Freeze frame shot - A freeze frame shot is used when one shot is printed in a single frame several times, in order to make an interesting illusion of a still photograph.
"Freeze frame" is also a drama medium term used in which, during a live performance, the actors/actresses will freeze at a particular, pre-meditated time, to enhance a particular scene, or to show an important moment in the play/production[like a celebration]. The image can then be further enhanced by spoken word, in which each character tells their personal thoughts regarding the situation, giving the audience further insight into the meaning, plot or hidden story of the play/production/scene. This is known as thought tracking, another Drama Medium.
A very memorable freeze frame is the end of François Truffaut's The 400 Blows, a New Wave film from 1959. Director George Roy Hill frequently made use of the technique when depicting the death of a character, as in The World According to Garp (1982) and in the memorable ending to the classic western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), with Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Hong Kong director John Woo also makes extensive use of freeze frames shots, usually to gain a better focus on to a character's facial expression or emotion at a critical scene. An early use of the freeze frame in classic Hollywood cinema was Frank Capra's It's A Wonderful Life where the first appearance of the adult George Bailey (played by James Stewart) on-screen is shown as a freeze frame. This technique is used quite a lot in the film Pieces of April. The director uses this to capture special moments that are very significant. Tim Davis' infamous 'wink' at the conclusion of Cocoon: The Return is widely regarded as an unsuccessful use of this technique; Roger Ebert, in his review of the film, remarked of its conclusion, "who is this guy and why is he winking after apparently killing the protagonists?!"A recent use of this techniques is in the opening titles of the movie X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
High-angle shot - In film, a high angle shot is usually when the camera is located above the eyeline.
With this type of angle, the camera looks down on the subject and the point of focus often get "swallowed up" by the setting.
High angle shots also make the figure or object seem vulnerable or powerless.
High angle shots are usually used in film to make the moment more dramatic or if there is someone at a high level that the character below is talking to.
Long shot - In photography, film and video, a long shot (sometimes referred to as a full shot or a wide shot) typically shows the entire object or human figure and is usually intended to place it in some relation to its surroundings. It has been suggested that long-shot ranges usually correspond to approximately what would be the distance between the front row of the audience and the stage in live theatre. It is now common to refer to a long shot as a "wide shot" because it often requires the use of a wide-angle lens. When a long shot is used to set up a location and its participants in film and video, it is called an establishing shot.
A related notion is that of an extreme long shot. This can be taken from as much as a quarter of a mile away, and is generally used as a scene-setting, establishing shot. It normally shows an exterior, eg the outside of a building, or a landscape, and is often used to show scenes of thrilling action eg in a war film or disaster movie. There will be very little detail visible in the shot, as it is meant to give a general impression rather than specific information.
Long take - A long take is an uninterrupted shot in a film which lasts much longer than the conventional editing pace either of the film itself or of films in general, usually lasting several minutes. It can be used for dramatic and narrative effect if done properly, and in moving shots is often accomplished through the use of a dolly or Steadicam. Long takes of a sequence filmed in one shot without any editing are rare in films.
The term "long take" is used because it avoids the ambiguous meanings of "long shot", which can refer to the framing of a shot, and "long cut", which can refer to either a whole version of a film or the general editing pacing of the film. However, these two terms are sometimes used interchangeably with "long take".
When filming Rope (1948), Alfred Hitchcock intended for the film to have the effect of one long continuous take, but the cameras available could hold no more than 1000 feet of 35 mm film. As a result, each take used up to a whole roll of film and lasts up to 10 minutes. Many takes end with a dolly shot to a featureless surface (such as the back of a character's jacket), with the following take beginning at the same point by zooming out. The entire film consists of only 11 shots. (For a complete analysis of Hitchcock's hidden and conventional cuts in Rope, see David Bordwell's text "Poetics of Cinema" 2008.)
The length of a take was originally limited to how much film a camera could hold, but the advent of digital video has considerably lengthened the maximum length of a take. At least two theatrically-released feature films, Russian Ark and PVC-1 are filmed in one single take; others are composed entirely from a series of long takes, while many more may be well-known for one or two specific long takes within otherwise more conventionally edited films.
Sequence shot - A sequence shot involves both a long take and sophisticated camera movement; it is sometimes called by the French term plan-séquence. The use of the sequence shot allows for realistic and dramatically significant background and middle ground activity. Actors range about the set transacting their business while the camera shifts focus from one plane of depth to another and back again. Significant off-frame action is often followed with a moving camera, characteristically through a series of pans within a single continuous shot. An example of this is the first scene in the jury room of 12 Angry Men, where the jurors are getting settled into the room.
Directors known for long takes
* Chantal Akerman
* Robert Altman
* Paul Thomas Anderson
* Michelangelo Antonioni
* Alfonso Cuarón
* Brian De Palma
* Carl Theodor Dreyer in his sound films
* Bruno Dumont
* Michael Haneke
* Hou Hsiao-Hsien
* Alfred Hitchcock
* Miklos Jancso
* Jia Zhangke
* Mikhail Kalatozov
* Kenji Mizoguchi (see description of Mizoguchi's long take mastery in David Thomson's Biographical Dictionary of Film))
* Max Ophüls
* Otto Preminger
* Jean Renoir
* Jacques Rivette
* Martin Scorsese
* Alexander Sokurov
* Andrei Tarkovsky
* Béla Tarr
* Rob Tregenza
* Tsai Ming-Liang
* Apichatpong Weerasethakul
* Orson Welles
* Joe Wright
* Quentin Tarantino
* M. Night Shyamalan
Ideas and Reflections:
I Find all of the shots listed above incredibly interesting and I have had an idea of using freeze frames shot of empty streets for my own film.
* A scene in an action/adventure movie in which dinosaurs are threatening the heroes. By placing a miniature model of a dinosaur close to the camera, the dinosaur may look monstrously tall to the viewer, even though it is just closer to the camera.
Movies (especially B-movies) in the 1950s and 1960s produced on limited budgets sometimes feature forced perspective shots which are completed without the proper knowledge of the physics of light used in cinematography, so foreground models can appear blurred or incorrectly exposed.
Forced perspective can be made more believable when environmental conditions obscure the difference in perspective. For example, the final scene of the famous movie Casablanca takes place at an airport in the middle of a storm, although the entire scene was shot in a studio. This was accomplished by using a painted backdrop of an aircraft, which was "serviced" by dwarfs standing next to the backdrop. A downpour (created in-studio) draws much of the viewer's attention away from the backdrop and extras, making the simulated perspective less noticeable.
Freeze frame shot - A freeze frame shot is used when one shot is printed in a single frame several times, in order to make an interesting illusion of a still photograph.
"Freeze frame" is also a drama medium term used in which, during a live performance, the actors/actresses will freeze at a particular, pre-meditated time, to enhance a particular scene, or to show an important moment in the play/production[like a celebration]. The image can then be further enhanced by spoken word, in which each character tells their personal thoughts regarding the situation, giving the audience further insight into the meaning, plot or hidden story of the play/production/scene. This is known as thought tracking, another Drama Medium.
A very memorable freeze frame is the end of François Truffaut's The 400 Blows, a New Wave film from 1959. Director George Roy Hill frequently made use of the technique when depicting the death of a character, as in The World According to Garp (1982) and in the memorable ending to the classic western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), with Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Hong Kong director John Woo also makes extensive use of freeze frames shots, usually to gain a better focus on to a character's facial expression or emotion at a critical scene. An early use of the freeze frame in classic Hollywood cinema was Frank Capra's It's A Wonderful Life where the first appearance of the adult George Bailey (played by James Stewart) on-screen is shown as a freeze frame. This technique is used quite a lot in the film Pieces of April. The director uses this to capture special moments that are very significant. Tim Davis' infamous 'wink' at the conclusion of Cocoon: The Return is widely regarded as an unsuccessful use of this technique; Roger Ebert, in his review of the film, remarked of its conclusion, "who is this guy and why is he winking after apparently killing the protagonists?!"A recent use of this techniques is in the opening titles of the movie X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
High-angle shot - In film, a high angle shot is usually when the camera is located above the eyeline.
With this type of angle, the camera looks down on the subject and the point of focus often get "swallowed up" by the setting.
High angle shots also make the figure or object seem vulnerable or powerless.
High angle shots are usually used in film to make the moment more dramatic or if there is someone at a high level that the character below is talking to.
Long shot - In photography, film and video, a long shot (sometimes referred to as a full shot or a wide shot) typically shows the entire object or human figure and is usually intended to place it in some relation to its surroundings. It has been suggested that long-shot ranges usually correspond to approximately what would be the distance between the front row of the audience and the stage in live theatre. It is now common to refer to a long shot as a "wide shot" because it often requires the use of a wide-angle lens. When a long shot is used to set up a location and its participants in film and video, it is called an establishing shot.
A related notion is that of an extreme long shot. This can be taken from as much as a quarter of a mile away, and is generally used as a scene-setting, establishing shot. It normally shows an exterior, eg the outside of a building, or a landscape, and is often used to show scenes of thrilling action eg in a war film or disaster movie. There will be very little detail visible in the shot, as it is meant to give a general impression rather than specific information.
Long take - A long take is an uninterrupted shot in a film which lasts much longer than the conventional editing pace either of the film itself or of films in general, usually lasting several minutes. It can be used for dramatic and narrative effect if done properly, and in moving shots is often accomplished through the use of a dolly or Steadicam. Long takes of a sequence filmed in one shot without any editing are rare in films.
The term "long take" is used because it avoids the ambiguous meanings of "long shot", which can refer to the framing of a shot, and "long cut", which can refer to either a whole version of a film or the general editing pacing of the film. However, these two terms are sometimes used interchangeably with "long take".
When filming Rope (1948), Alfred Hitchcock intended for the film to have the effect of one long continuous take, but the cameras available could hold no more than 1000 feet of 35 mm film. As a result, each take used up to a whole roll of film and lasts up to 10 minutes. Many takes end with a dolly shot to a featureless surface (such as the back of a character's jacket), with the following take beginning at the same point by zooming out. The entire film consists of only 11 shots. (For a complete analysis of Hitchcock's hidden and conventional cuts in Rope, see David Bordwell's text "Poetics of Cinema" 2008.)
The length of a take was originally limited to how much film a camera could hold, but the advent of digital video has considerably lengthened the maximum length of a take. At least two theatrically-released feature films, Russian Ark and PVC-1 are filmed in one single take; others are composed entirely from a series of long takes, while many more may be well-known for one or two specific long takes within otherwise more conventionally edited films.
Sequence shot - A sequence shot involves both a long take and sophisticated camera movement; it is sometimes called by the French term plan-séquence. The use of the sequence shot allows for realistic and dramatically significant background and middle ground activity. Actors range about the set transacting their business while the camera shifts focus from one plane of depth to another and back again. Significant off-frame action is often followed with a moving camera, characteristically through a series of pans within a single continuous shot. An example of this is the first scene in the jury room of 12 Angry Men, where the jurors are getting settled into the room.
Directors known for long takes
* Chantal Akerman
* Robert Altman
* Paul Thomas Anderson
* Michelangelo Antonioni
* Alfonso Cuarón
* Brian De Palma
* Carl Theodor Dreyer in his sound films
* Bruno Dumont
* Michael Haneke
* Hou Hsiao-Hsien
* Alfred Hitchcock
* Miklos Jancso
* Jia Zhangke
* Mikhail Kalatozov
* Kenji Mizoguchi (see description of Mizoguchi's long take mastery in David Thomson's Biographical Dictionary of Film))
* Max Ophüls
* Otto Preminger
* Jean Renoir
* Jacques Rivette
* Martin Scorsese
* Alexander Sokurov
* Andrei Tarkovsky
* Béla Tarr
* Rob Tregenza
* Tsai Ming-Liang
* Apichatpong Weerasethakul
* Orson Welles
* Joe Wright
* Quentin Tarantino
* M. Night Shyamalan
Ideas and Reflections:
I Find all of the shots listed above incredibly interesting and I have had an idea of using freeze frames shot of empty streets for my own film.
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.
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.
Types of close-up
There are various degrees of close-up depending on how tight (zoomed in) the shot is. The terminology varies between countries and even different companies, but in general these are:
* Medium Close Up ("MCU" on camera scripts): Half-way between a mid shot and a close-up. Usually covers the subject's head and shoulders.
* Close Up ("CU"): A certain feature, such as someone's head, takes up the whole frame.
* Extreme Close Up ("ECU" or "XCU"): The shot is so tight that only a fraction of the focus of attention, such as someone's eyes, can be seen.
* Lean-In: when the juxtaposition of shots in a sequence, usually in a scene of dialogue, starts with medium or long shots, for example, and ends with close-ups.
* Lean-Out: the opposite as a lean-in, moving from close-ups out to longer shots.
* Lean: when a lean-in is followed by a lean-out.
When the close-up is used in shooting, the focused on should not be put in the exactly middle of the frame. Instead, it should be located in the frame according to the law of golden section.
The earliest filmmakers — such as Thomas Edison, Auguste and Louis Lumière and Georges Méliès — tended not to use close-ups and preferred to frame their subjects in long shots. Film historians disagree as to which filmmaker first used a close-up, but D.W. Griffith used the shot extensively at an early date. For example, one of Griffith's short films, The Lonedale Operator (1911), makes significant use of a close-up of a wrench that a character pretends is a gun.
Close-ups may be more expensive than other shots due to the extra lighting and make-up needed.
Ideas and Reflections:
I will consider using all of the shot's listed above and I may even experiment with some of these shots. I have had an idea of using a a Medium Close Up of an object with dead plants on top of it.
* Medium Close Up ("MCU" on camera scripts): Half-way between a mid shot and a close-up. Usually covers the subject's head and shoulders.
* Close Up ("CU"): A certain feature, such as someone's head, takes up the whole frame.
* Extreme Close Up ("ECU" or "XCU"): The shot is so tight that only a fraction of the focus of attention, such as someone's eyes, can be seen.
* Lean-In: when the juxtaposition of shots in a sequence, usually in a scene of dialogue, starts with medium or long shots, for example, and ends with close-ups.
* Lean-Out: the opposite as a lean-in, moving from close-ups out to longer shots.
* Lean: when a lean-in is followed by a lean-out.
When the close-up is used in shooting, the focused on should not be put in the exactly middle of the frame. Instead, it should be located in the frame according to the law of golden section.
The earliest filmmakers — such as Thomas Edison, Auguste and Louis Lumière and Georges Méliès — tended not to use close-ups and preferred to frame their subjects in long shots. Film historians disagree as to which filmmaker first used a close-up, but D.W. Griffith used the shot extensively at an early date. For example, one of Griffith's short films, The Lonedale Operator (1911), makes significant use of a close-up of a wrench that a character pretends is a gun.
Close-ups may be more expensive than other shots due to the extra lighting and make-up needed.
Ideas and Reflections:
I will consider using all of the shot's listed above and I may even experiment with some of these shots. I have had an idea of using a a Medium Close Up of an object with dead plants on top of it.
Camera view, angle, movement, shot
Aerial shot - Aerial shots are usually done with a crane or with a camera attached to a special helicopter to view large landscapes. This sort of shot would be restricted to exterior locations. A good area to do this shot would be a scene that takes place on a building. If the aerial shot is of a character it can make them seem insignificant. Circular shots are also possible.
American shot - "American shot" is a translation of a phrase from French film criticism, "plan américain" and refers to a medium-long ("knee") film shot of a group of characters, who are arranged so that all are visible to the camera. The usual arrangement is for the actors to stand in an irregular line from one side of the screen to the other, with the actors at the end coming forward a little and standing more in profile than the others. The purpose of the composition is to allow complex dialogue scenes to be played out without changes in camera position. In some literature, this is simply referred to as a 3/4 shot.
The French critics thought it was characteristic of American films of the 1930s or 1940s; however, it was mostly characteristic of cheaper American movies, such as Charlie Chan mysteries where people collected in front of a fireplace or at the foot of the stairs in order to explain what happened a few minutes ago.
Howard Hawks legitimized this style in his films, allowing characters to act, even when not talking, when most of the audience would not be paying attention. It became his trademark style.
Bird's eye shot - In film, a Bird's eye shot refers to a shot looking directly down on the subject. The perspective is very foreshortened, making the subject appear short and squat. This shot can be used to give an overall establishing shot of a scene, or to emphasise the smallness or insignificance of the subjects. These shots are normally used for battle scenes or establishing where the character is. It is shot by lifting the camera up by hands or by hanging it off something strong enough to support it. For a scene that needs a large area shot, then it will most often likely to be lifted up by a crane or some other sort of machine.
Close-up - In film, television, still photography and the comic strip medium a close-up tightly frames a person or an object. Close-ups are one of the standard shots used regularly with medium shots and long shots. Close-ups display the most detail, but they do not include the broader scene. Moving in to a close-up or away from a close-up is a common type of zooming.
Close-ups are used in many ways, for many reasons. Close-ups are often used as cutaways from a more distant shot to show detail, such as characters' emotions, or some intricate activity with their hands. Close cuts to characters' faces are used far more often in television than in movies; they are especially common in soap operas. For a director to deliberately avoid close-ups may create in the audience an emotional distance from the subject matter.
Close-ups are used for distinguishing main characters. Major characters are often given a close-up when they are introduced as a way of indicating their importance. Leading characters will have multiple close-ups. There is a long-standing stereotype of insecure actors desiring a close-up at every opportunity and counting the number of close-ups they received. An example of this stereotype occurs when the character Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, announces "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up" as she is taken into police custody in the film's finale.
Close-up shots do not show the subject in the broad context of its surroundings. If overused, close-ups may leave viewers uncertain as to what they are seeing. Close-ups are rarely done with wide angle lenses, because perspective causes objects in the center of the picture to be unnaturally enlarged. Certain times, different directors will use wide angle lenses, because they can convey the message of confusion, and bring life to certain characters.
Ideas and Reflections:
I will consider using all of the shot's listed above and I may even experiment with some of these shots.
American shot - "American shot" is a translation of a phrase from French film criticism, "plan américain" and refers to a medium-long ("knee") film shot of a group of characters, who are arranged so that all are visible to the camera. The usual arrangement is for the actors to stand in an irregular line from one side of the screen to the other, with the actors at the end coming forward a little and standing more in profile than the others. The purpose of the composition is to allow complex dialogue scenes to be played out without changes in camera position. In some literature, this is simply referred to as a 3/4 shot.
The French critics thought it was characteristic of American films of the 1930s or 1940s; however, it was mostly characteristic of cheaper American movies, such as Charlie Chan mysteries where people collected in front of a fireplace or at the foot of the stairs in order to explain what happened a few minutes ago.
Howard Hawks legitimized this style in his films, allowing characters to act, even when not talking, when most of the audience would not be paying attention. It became his trademark style.
Bird's eye shot - In film, a Bird's eye shot refers to a shot looking directly down on the subject. The perspective is very foreshortened, making the subject appear short and squat. This shot can be used to give an overall establishing shot of a scene, or to emphasise the smallness or insignificance of the subjects. These shots are normally used for battle scenes or establishing where the character is. It is shot by lifting the camera up by hands or by hanging it off something strong enough to support it. For a scene that needs a large area shot, then it will most often likely to be lifted up by a crane or some other sort of machine.
Close-up - In film, television, still photography and the comic strip medium a close-up tightly frames a person or an object. Close-ups are one of the standard shots used regularly with medium shots and long shots. Close-ups display the most detail, but they do not include the broader scene. Moving in to a close-up or away from a close-up is a common type of zooming.
Close-ups are used in many ways, for many reasons. Close-ups are often used as cutaways from a more distant shot to show detail, such as characters' emotions, or some intricate activity with their hands. Close cuts to characters' faces are used far more often in television than in movies; they are especially common in soap operas. For a director to deliberately avoid close-ups may create in the audience an emotional distance from the subject matter.
Close-ups are used for distinguishing main characters. Major characters are often given a close-up when they are introduced as a way of indicating their importance. Leading characters will have multiple close-ups. There is a long-standing stereotype of insecure actors desiring a close-up at every opportunity and counting the number of close-ups they received. An example of this stereotype occurs when the character Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, announces "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up" as she is taken into police custody in the film's finale.
Close-up shots do not show the subject in the broad context of its surroundings. If overused, close-ups may leave viewers uncertain as to what they are seeing. Close-ups are rarely done with wide angle lenses, because perspective causes objects in the center of the picture to be unnaturally enlarged. Certain times, different directors will use wide angle lenses, because they can convey the message of confusion, and bring life to certain characters.
Ideas and Reflections:
I will consider using all of the shot's listed above and I may even experiment with some of these shots.
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