Camera
Many sources are available to help you with the technical aspects of using a camera. You also need to consider the story that you want to tell and how decisions about what to capture with the camera serve the story or message.
Ways of Looking
Looking at:
- Report
- Clarify an event
- Capture the "what"
Looking into:
- Close scrutiny
- Reveal psychological implications
- Capture the "why"
Creating an event
- Use technology of media to invent
- Build a scene with special effects
- Intensify and event through effects
Field of View
Decide how much "territory" will appear in the shot by making choices about the types of shots you'll use. Choose a principle approach based on the effect and feeling you want to create.
The field of view is created by the shot.
Point of View
Point of view involves both conveying or commenting on a character's perspective and experience as well as the position that the camera takes to express it.
POV determines the emotional positioning of the audience to characters and events.
- In omniscient POV, the audience see everything and knows everything from the perspective of the major characters equally. Because characters often have limited knowledge of the whole situation, sometimes the audience knows more than the characters.
- In limited POV, the audience is sees things from the point of view of one of the characters, or sees events in a way that encourages the audience to empathize with one character's view of events.
Technically, the camera provides a sense of whose doing the looking, what they're seeing, and it conveys the psychological state from that point of view. The technical POV can be used to evoke a particular reaction from the audience.
The technical POV of the camera also orients viewers to events and characters.
Subjective Camera
Assuming the characters point of view. Only rarely is the audience actually placed in the role of "a character," as in the camera is supposed to actually be our eyes. (See Humphrey Bogart in "Dark Passage").
When characters "break the fourth wall," they recognize and acknowledge the audience as audience--they directly speak to or signal to the audience through the camera. (Woodie Allen in "Annie Hall," for example; various examples throughout "Austin Powers")
The subjective camera is more about having the viewer understand, sympathize or identify with a character's situation. (A good example is the scene in "Rear Window" when we watch helplessly as James Stewart watches helplessly while Raymond Burr threatens Grace Kelly).
Looking up or down
When the camera perspective is from below, looking up at person or objects, the persons or objects seems important, powerful.
When the camera perspective is from above, the persons and objects seem less significant.
Positioning of camera relative to interacting characters
- Two shot (two actors sit, stand, or walk next to each other--both are in the shot interacting).
- Over the shoulder (we see over the shoulder of one of the speakers)
- Cross shooting (only one person is in the shot, though we are aware that another person is involved in the interaction).
Over the shoulder and cross shots involve reversals because the characters are facing each other.
Angles
- Provide vector continuity (making sure that the index vector in one shot matches the index vector of previous and succeeding shots)
- Create shift in the viewpoint from one character to another, from one view of an event to other views.
- Clarify point of view (as in a tall person talking to a short person. In a conversation, If the shot changes from a two shot to a CU, the person remaining in the shot must be perceived as maintaining the appropriate index vector via the camera)
- Intensify events (above, below; medium, long or close shot--close ups intensify emotional impact)
- Set style