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FILM: TECHNIQUES AND TERMS
The Shot
• The Shot is the picture on the screen
• it is a single, uninterrupted piece of film
• it is the image seen on screen until it is replaced by another image
Lighting
• Low Key Lighting
• High Key Lighting
• Neutral Lighting
• Bottom/Side Lighting
• Front Lighting
Camera Focus
• Soft Focus
• Deep Focus
• Racking Focus: moving from one point of focus to another in the shot
Camera Framing
• Long Shot
• Medium
• Close Up
Camera Angle• Low Angle
• High Angle
• Eye Level
• Aerial-view shot: Omniscient POV taken from helicopter so viewer can see all
• Dutch Angle: A shot in which the camera is tilted from its normal horizontal and vertical positions so that it is no longer straight, giving the viewer the impression that the world in the frame
Camera Movement
• Pan
• Zoom
• Tilt
• Tracking/Dolly Shots
• Handheld/Steady Cam: Handheld cameras that rely on the camera operator to hold it steady
• Steady Cams have a Gyroscope to stabilize the camera and were invented in the 1970s
• these cameras lend a more spontaneous/avant-garde or documentary look
Activity One:• “Every morning for six months, at precisely 9:05 a.m., the old
man would cautiously seat himself on the park bench and commence slowly to feed the pigeons.”
How would you shoot this scene to suggest each of the following: 1 The old man is a secret agent waiting to meet someone
2 the old man is really a woman in disguise 3 the old man is waiting to die 4 the pigeons will attack him later in the film
Describe in detail how you would work the cameras for each one
Activity 2
• A person is about to open a door. The person hears a sound and becomes mildly concerned. The person finds the door locked and searches for his or her keys. The person hears the sound again and becomes visibly apprehensive.
• As the filmmaker, your goal is to build tension and growing panic, using any visual element or device that you can think of.
Editing
• Editing is the transitions between shots and the selection of shots
• Cut: abrupt change between one shot and the next
• Cut in/Cut out: frames the shot nicely between two different perspectives (long shot to close up)
Editing
• Crosscut: going between two different shots repeatedly, two or more stories or visuals
• Fade: go slowly to black or another scene
• Dissolve: a slow shift between one shot and the next
• Eye-Line Match: tries to match what the character would see
• Editing Rhythm and Duration: length and speed of transition between shots
The Kuleshov Effect• The 1920s Soviet filmmaker Lev
Kuleshov discovered that when he combined different shots of unrelated objects without allowing viewers to see the entire context (the establishing shot), viewers assumed a connection among the shots and created their own context.
In his most famous experiment, Kuleshov took one shot of an actor’s expressionless face and intercut it with several different images, including a bowl of soup, a dead woman in a coffin, and a little girl. When audiences viewed the segment, they mentally connected the images and perceived the actor’s face as responding to the appropriate emotion for each image—hunger for the soup, sorrow for the dead woman and affection for the child—even though, in each case, the facial expression never changed.
Activity 3• In his book Real to Reel, David Coynik proposes a
challenge for a film editor. The following four shots have not been arranged in any particular order. Arrange the shots to create different meaning.
• a medium shot of a group of soldiers, showing the worried looks on their faces
• a long shot of a huge ape-like monster trampling on a city
• a long shot of an explosion
• a medium shot of the same soldiers as in shot a, this time with a calm expression on their faces
A Dozen Ways to Tell a Story
• Using the series of shots, edit your film to tell the scenario you have been given.
• Discuss the importance of using the different shots in sequence.
