MasterShots Vol 2

by Christopher Kenworthy

  At first, all of them are looking off into the distance. Then, the director racks focus to the closest character and Knightley looks directly at him as he speaks. (In reality, she probably wouldn’t do this, as she can’t see his eyes, but it looks good on screen.) Finally, as Orlando Bloom speaks, the focus is on him, and the closest character turns to look at him. Importantly, Knightley continues to keep her face toward the camera. This is because Bloom is quite distant from the camera and his face is small in the frame; if the others both turned around to face him, the shot would appear empty and would lose a lot of its impact.

  Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. Directed by Gore Verbinski. Walt Disney Pictures, 2006. All rights reserved.

  4.7

  CENTRAL LINE

  In many group conversations, most of the action takes place between two main characters. There may be others sitting around with them, but it’s the dialogue between these two that matters most. In such scenes you can use the standard angle/reverse angle approach to great effect.

  Rather than going in close, you can shoot from outside the group. This keeps everybody in view, so that when the characters on either side do interject, we can see and hear them.

  The illustrations show how to position your camera on one side of an imaginary line drawn between the two main characters. This is an exceptionally simple setup, and requires no movement, close-ups, or other coverage. It works because you have four people and they are in a busy environment. Cutting can be problematic, because your actors will need to make sure they time their physical movements from take to take to avoid continuity errors. You could shoot some close-ups to provide coverage to get past such errors, but this setup works best when it uses just the two angles.

  In Revolutionary Road, this setup is successful because the director used it in an early scene and then returned to it much later in the film, when many things have changed. By using identical angles and only slightly changing the characters’ costuming, the director gives his audience the feeling that the more things change, the more they stay the same. If he had shot the scene with lots of motion and multiple angles, this effect would have been impossible to achieve.

  Revolutionary Road. Directed by Sam Mendes. Paramount Vantage, 2008. All rights reserved.

  4.8

  SOLID CAMERA

  Sometimes, the last thing you need is a camera move. In this scene from Grease, Jeff Conaway barely moves and the camera doesn’t move at all. The other characters move all around him, further emphasizing his solidity in this scene.

  A setup like this will only work if you have a character who is very cool, strong, or certain in some way, surrounded by others who are either excited (as here), in a panic, or under pressure.

  With the camera so still, and the main character doing nothing more than turning his head, it’s important that you add visual interest to the scene. In this scene, the director placed the camera a long way back and used a long lens. This makes the distant background appear closer and blurred, again focusing the audience on this small crowd, rather than anything else. The other characters move, partly for the sake of visual interest, but also to turn their faces to camera. By looking at each other, as well as at him, they display more facial expressions to the audience.

  Finally, one of the characters turns his back on the camera, ready to rush past Conaway and out of this setup. When you’ve set up such a solid scene, you need to break out of it strongly, or the next cut will feel jarring. By having a character come toward the screen or turn his back on the camera (as shown here), you get that strong effect.

  Grease. Directed by Randal Kleiser. Paramount Pictures, 1978. All rights reserved.

  4.9

  ROUND TABLE

  Shooting a large group of people talking around a table can be a huge challenge. It’s especially demanding in scenes where the audience needs to know who’s talking to whom. Sometimes, the conversation is general, and it’s not so important, but in a scene such as this, the audience must know that Brad Pitt is the one who’s meant to be the focus of the scene. The fact that he is Brad Pitt does a lot of the work for us, but the director is not so lazy as to rely on this.

  When the scene opens there is a brief establishing shot, which shows where everybody is sitting in relation to everybody else. The main character, played by Pitt, is the most strongly lit, and moves the most, leaning into frame, so that the viewer spots him and remembers where he is in the room.

  The next shot has him on frame right, looking to frame left. The other characters are in shot, to his left, but the one delivering dialogue is facing away from the camera. This keeps the audience focus strongly on Pitt.

  The director then cuts to a similar shot, from a similar camera position, but this time Pitt is placed on frame left and is looking to frame right. It is not just his positioning in the frame, but the way he angles his body and eyes that helps to cement in the viewer’s mind where he is sitting, and how this group is arranged around him.

  After showing this much of a similar scene, you could easily switch to shots such as close-ups, so long as you keep coming back to these two shots to keep the geography of the scene clear.

  Ocean’s Eleven. Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Warner Bros., 2001. All rights reserved.

  4.10

  EXPANDING GROUP

  Directors tend to see group dialogue as a problem, or at least a challenge. The best directors see it as a great opportunity to expand the story and reveal character. With real skill, it’s possible to do all this without ever making a single cut.

  This scene from Munich starts with a close-up on Eric Bana, with the conversation taking place behind him. What the audience sees on his face is as important as what’s being said back there, so it doesn’t matter that the background is out of focus.

  The camera moves back slowly on a dolly, and as it does, people from the background move forward into the frame. Rather than cutting to them, or having him turn to them, the director has the characters walk right up to him and lean into frame. They move back to the background and continue this dance until they are on both sides of him as the camera reaches its final position.

  As the director, you could end the scene at this point or cut to a different angle. If you cut to a motionless camera, make sure this camera has stopped before doing so. If you cut to another moving camera, do so while this camera is still moving.

  It could be argued that this setup is far from naturalistic, when looking at the still-frame grabs, but in the context of the film, this scene works. The audience is intent on Bana’s reaction, seeing the effect the surrounding drama has on him. If you plan to use a single moving shot to capture an entire scene, make sure your main character is the true focus of the scene and the absolute focus of the other characters in the scene. If they are genuinely intent on getting something out of the main character — a reaction, a comment — then their positioning in the frame is believable.

  Munich. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Universal Studios, 2005. All rights reserved.

  CHAPTER 5

  CONNECTING CHARACTERS

  5.1

  LONG LENS SPACE

  When two characters meet for the first time, you need to make the most of the moment. A good screenwriter will often keep the dialogue minimal at this point, so you need to use all the visual skills in your arsenal to connect these characters.

  Long lenses have a way of showing distance and proximity at the same time, which is perfect for a dialogue scene where two characters first meet. In these shots from Paris, je t’aime, Natalie Portman is a long way from the camera, but the long lens brings her closer.

  When she walks toward the camera, the long lens makes her movement forward almost imperceptible, so that crossing the long space of this hallway takes her a long time. This is a perfect way for the director to show that, although there is a growing connection between these two characters, finalizing that connection takes some effort on their part.

  The reverse shot of him
uses a slightly shorter lens and he appears low-down in the window frame, giving him an air of vulnerability.

  The choice of location is as important as the lens choice and camera position. If the director had simply walked her across a room, the effect would not have been as strong. Instead, she crosses a room (from the very farthest wall), then moves all the way down a long hallway. This tunneling effect suggests that she is traveling toward him, rather than just coming over to talk to somebody.

  You can see how the director took advantage of her moving into the light at the end of the shot. When she is close to the camera, she becomes illuminated by the window light. Although the character she’s talking to is blind in this story (and cannot see this illumination), the effect on the audience is to show her radiance as the connection between them is made.

  Paris, je t’aime (segment titled Faubourg Saint-Denis). Directed by Tom Tykwer. Victoires International, 2006. All rights reserved.

  5.2

  OBSTRUCTION

  In many of these chapters you’ll notice that when we’re trying to connect characters, they are often held apart. Writers tease the audience by keeping lovers apart for as long as possible, and directors echo this by finding visual ways to keep the characters away from each other.

  In Onegin, the director puts a physical barrier — a bookcase — between the characters. The size of the barrier is made completely clear by shooting from a good distance back, so that the viewer sees the bookcase towering above the two characters.

  Despite this barrier, the characters continue to converse. Then, when least expected, the director cuts to a shot of Liv Tyler, filmed through the bookcase. This is a pleasant surprise, because it shows that the two can in fact see each other and a connection is forming between them. This second shot uses a long lens to make the bookcase seem blurred and to foreshorten the distance, so that she seems closer than she actually is.

  Don’t underestimate the power of these symbolic barriers. It’s easy to dismiss them as film theory, but these techniques can enrich your film greatly. Although the audience won’t consciously notice what you’re doing, putting barriers between characters and then opening them up will have an effect on how your viewers experience the scene.

  Onegin. Directed by Martha Fiennes. 7 Arts International, 1999. All rights reserved.

  5.3

  FACING AWAY

  This iconic shot from Nineteen Eighty-Four shows that turning actors away from the camera can work beautifully during an important dialogue scene. The actors do glance at each other and turn to look at one another in profile, but for most of the scene they are looking out at the scenery.

  The setup for a shot like this is extremely simple in terms of positioning the camera at head height, a short distance from the actors. To get the most out of it, though, the director has made sure that the viewer sees a foreground, a midground, and a background. This is a principle that can be used to increase the beauty of any shot, but is especially important when there is little movement, or when faces are concealed.

  In this shot, the actors are in the midground. The background is the distinctive landscape, and the foreground is made up of branches and leaves. There are strong plot reasons for the foreground and background to be visible. The background is part of a dream, and the foreground branches show that they are on the edge of the woodland we saw them in earlier. It could be argued that the director is simply showing the audience what they need to see to make sense of the film. Although this could be true, really strong and memorable images often make use of a strong foreground, midground, and background, and you can experiment with them, even when they aren’t particularly relevant to the plot.

  When, though, do you turn your characters away from the camera? This isn’t something you should do often. It should only happen when what they look at is important to them, and when their dialogue is something that the audience can understand without seeing their expressions. For scenes where these criteria are met, this setup has much potential and forms a strong on-screen bond between two characters.

  Nineteen Eighty-Four. Directed by Michael Radford. Umbrella-Rosenblum Films Production, 1984. All rights reserved.

  5.4

  ANGLED PUSH

  Even the best directors resort to using the angle/reverse angle approach from time to time, but when they do, they often give it a small twist. In this scene from The Lovely Bones, the smallest of camera moves makes an ordinary setup into something dramatic.

  The camera starts in medium close-up on each character, but as they talk, it pushes in closer. It does this at the same speed for each character, so that as the director cuts between them, each face is the same size as the other in the frame. This draws a connection between the two of them. If the camera moved in on one character but not on the other, it would draw attention to the first character. By moving in on both, the camera draws them together.

  It helps if the actors are almost motionless in a scene like this, and facing each other directly. People rarely face each other directly, which is why you have to be cautious about positioning them in this way. In this example, they are both focusing on the ship-in-a-bottle that he’s working on, which gives a justification for their seating position. If you can’t use a prop, you should only use this approach when there is good reason for one person to directly face another, such as a teacher addressing a student.

  The move itself should be slow and weighted so that the audience isn’t aware that it’s happening. Set up your camera so that you can keep the actors’ eyes at the same level in the frame, without having to tilt or raise the camera as you push in.

  The Lovely Bones. Directed by Peter Jackson. Paramount Pictures, 2009. All rights reserved.

  5.5

  BACK TO CHARACTER

  The strongest connections between characters can occur when one person is trying to avoid the other. This is an important technique in romantic situations, because the audience senses the rapport that is being resisted by one character and pursued by the other.

  These shots from Magnolia show how a stationary camera can capture this dynamic between the actors, by having one move around a lot while the other remains almost stationary. She busies herself, making coffee, moving all around the room, even leaving it at one point. Most of the time, she has her back to him. This serves the purpose of keeping her face toward the camera (so the viewer can see what she’s feeling), and also shows her resistance toward him.

  He is more animated. Although he remains in roughly the same position, he angles his body toward hers wherever she goes, making his interest in her clear. At one point he moves closer to her, but quickly backs away when she tries to get past.

  When she leaves the room, the director holds the camera in the room, without cutting to show where she’s gone, so that the viewer feels an awkward moment of suspension.

  This scene takes the idea about as far as it can go, and you may not want to emulate this directly. You can, however, use the same principles, even if only briefly. A motionless camera, with one character turning away from the other as she moves around him, creates a strong connection between the two.

  Don’t think that you always need to have characters facing each other when you’re trying to connect them. Sometimes, a refusal to look at somebody is far more enticing to the audience and emotionally demanding for the character.

  Magnolia. Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. New Line Cinema, 1999. All rights reserved.

  5.6

  DANCE MOVES

  Dance scenes are used relentlessly in films, whether the films are about dance or not. This is largely because it gives you, as the director, the opportunity to push two characters together physically, even though they may not yet be close emotionally. This is enjoyable for the audience, and lets them glimpse where the characters might be heading.

  In terms of camera work, dance scenes offer endless opportunities. In recent years there has been a tendency to throw the camera on the dance floor, and have it circle the act
ors as they swirl around. Although that can work, this scene shows that when the actors are moving, you have the option to leave the camera exactly where it is.

  A brief wide shot shows the two characters move together, and then the director cuts to a camera that is at waist height, tilted upward. The camera does not move, apart from the smallest corrections to reframe. Instead, the actors turn, revealing one face and then the other.

  The actors will be aware of the camera and should time their movements so that one face is visible to the audience at all times. They should not hesitate or linger when somebody’s back is turned to the camera. Be careful, however, not to make it obvious that they are moving their faces into shot.

  Although the camera setup is simple, this will need extensive rehearsal to get the timing right, to make sure the actors’ movements match the dialogue, and that each face is on screen when you want it be.

  V for Vendetta. Directed by James McTeigue. Warner Bros., 2006. All rights reserved.

  5.7

  OUTSIDER

  A character who’s seeking connection with others generates sympathy with the audience. You need to film this sort of scene carefully, or the outsider will seem like a whiny intruder. Spielberg shows how this can be done by placing Henry Thomas outside the main group.

  In the first shot, Thomas is trying to get the attention of the others. Although the audience can see him, he’s on the outside of the group, farthest from the camera, and in a much darker part of the frame. The risk here is that he’s so hidden within the frame that he could almost disappear; so the director has placed his face in the exact center of the frame, both vertically and horizontally. This way, the viewer can’t miss him.