by Gil Bettman
If at some point in mid-film, the line of the story is trumped by a visual device and the audience finds itself watching a cool camera move — no matter how cool that camera move — the audience’s overall enjoyment of the film will suffer because the spell has been broken. It is not as bad, but almost as bad, as if the microphone dipped down below the frame line and was visible in the shot. It reveals to the audience, sometimes blatantly, and sometimes on a subtle, subconscious, but still perceptible level, that what they are watching is not real, but rather actors saying lines in front of a camera. This must dissipate the strength of the fantasy that they are a Mafia don or a Jedi warrior or even a self-proclaimed “loser” trying to regain an ounce of self-respect, like Lester Burnham, the hero of American Beauty. It brings the audience back into their own heads and reminds them that they have bills to pay, a car that’s double-parked, and a date who might be acting like a jerk. This is not what they came to the movies and paid good money for. So a wise objective for any first-time director would be to move his camera as much as possible to look as cutting edge as he can, right up to the point where the audience would actually take notice and say, “Look at that cool camera move.” In other words, this is why camera movement is essential, but should always be invisible.
BOB’S RULE: THE THREE KINDS OF CAMERA MOVEMENT THAT ARE INVISIBLE
There are three kinds of camera movement that are always invisible: shots that are externally or internally generated by whatever is on the screen — preferably the person or thing which, at that point in the film, is driving the story — and moving, establishing shots.
Externally Generated Camera Moves
An externally generated camera move is when the camera moves to follow something that is moving inside the frame. Externally generated moves are by far the most common. They come in all sizes — everything from the shot from Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, referred to below, which tracks alongside a speeding van for ten miles (Figure 2.001 to 2.018a), down to the shot from Saving Private Ryan of a canteen being lifted to a soldier’s lips (Figure 2.051 to 2.052, p. 19). They can all be classified as externally generated. It’s easy to understand why these moves never call attention to themselves and never detract from the story. The camera is moving quite literally to keep up with the story. If the camera did not move, the person or thing driving the story would slip off-screen.
To view a video clip of the scene from War of the Worlds and the scene from Saving Private Ryan referred to above go to this link on the Internet: http://hollywoodfilmdirecting.com/directing-the-camera.html
Film clips of all the frame grabs pictured in this book can be found on the Internet using this link.
Probably 95% of all camera moves in theatrical features are externally generated. And since, in the post-Spielbergian era, moving the camera has become de rigueur, externally generated camera moves probably make up half, if not all, of the shots used in feature films. At first glance, that may seem like a high percentage. Why is it that whatever is driving the story always seems to be about to move off camera, making it necessary for the camera to move in order to keep that something framed up on screen? The answer to this contains one of the keys to successful camera blocking.
The camera has to keep moving to keep up with whatever is on screen, because, ever since Spielberg started doing it all the time, directors now almost always start a scene with the camera framed up tighter on the principal object in the scene than was the custom in the pre-Spielbergian days. After framing up tight on the principal object, these directors then have it take off moving. Since the camera is virtually on top of the principal object, it has to make a countermove to keep that object in frame.
This results in a moving shot at the beginning of the scene that establishes the new location by traveling far enough to reveal it in its entirety. In the pre-Spielbergian era this was generally achieved by putting a static camera far enough away from the new location to reveal it in its entirety. For more on why it is necessary to establish a new location see Chapter 3, page 35.
If the principal object in the story is the van in which Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) is trying to escape with his family from Bayonne, New Jersey, as the city is being blown to smithereens by attacking alien forces in War of the Worlds, then Spielberg puts the camera so close to Ray’s speeding van, it would quickly drive out of frame, unless the camera kept moving alongside it as fast as the van is traveling. The van keeps on careening down the interstate, weaving in and out of blocked and abandoned vehicles (Figure 2.001 to 2.007), while Ray, in the driver’s seat, and his son, Robbie, in the passenger seat, have an intense debate over who is trying to destroy planet Earth and why (Figure 2.008 to 2.011). Suddenly, Ray’s daughter, Rachel, sitting in the backseat, has a panic attack, and Robbie then turns into the backseat and gets right in Rachel’s face in order to calm her down (Figure 2.012 to 2.015). Once Rachel gets a grip, Robbie turns back and resumes the argument with his father (Figure 2.016) as the van continues to careen down the interstate (Figure 2.017 to 2.018). Amazingly, the camera (aided by the magic of CGI graphics) continues to fly down the road right next to the van and circles it once, in order to stay in the face of whichever one of the three family members is driving the story at that particular moment (Figure 2.008 to 2.016). By staying framed up on the center of the drama, even as it flies down the road, and circling around so that he is shooting through the front windshield when Ray and Robbie talk, and through the back windshield as Robbie tries to comfort Rachel, Spielberg has given his camera an externally generated, story-based reason to move. This satisfies Bob’s Rule, that the camera, whenever possible, should move, but the move should serve the story and so become invisible.
• EXTERNALLY GENERATED CAMERA MOVES — SEAMLESSNESS AND EYE CANDY
By habitually moving the central object in a scene in order to create externally generated camera moves, Spielberg, and those who have followed in his wake, are able to establish a new location using a moving camera. They would rather use a moving camera than a static camera because a moving camera changes the look of what is on the screen in two ways: it adds the esthetic of seamlessness and eye candy to the shot.
SEAMLESSNESS
The most amazing aspect of the shot of Ray Ferrier and his family escaping in their van is that it stays on the screen for almost three minutes without a cut. Spielberg, and the many directors who have followed him emulating his style, do not want to cut. They want a shot, particularly at the beginning of the scene, to go on for as long as possible without a cut. This adds the esthetic of seamlessness to the frame. The esthetic of seamlessness is the term I use to describe the look of a film when everything is shown in one continuous shot. This is one of two ways that moving shots look different from static shots. Moving shots can go on indefinitely without an edit. Most static shots only last three or four seconds because it becomes harder and harder to do a good job telling the story with the camera pointed in one direction.
Seamlessness is one of the key elements that make a film look the way contemporary audiences like. This is why most mainstream directors try to pump as much seamlessness into their shots as time and money will allow. The shot of Ray and his family in the van took months of careful planning and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to execute. Yet clearly, in Spielberg’s mind it was worth every penny. Why? Because it went on for so long without an edit and therefore was legendary in terms of how much seamlessness it generated.
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EYE CANDY
The second esthetic element that contemporary directors want to pump huge quantities of into every frame of their films is eye candy. Eye candy is the same as motion blur. When the camera moves to keep the central object, which is also moving, in the center of the frame, any other object which passes through the frame blurs or strobes slightly. The more pronounced the strobing or the blurring, the more energized the frame, the more eye candy. The shot of Ray and his family escaping in the van from War of the Worlds is as much about eye candy as it is about seamlessness. There are hundreds of vehicles on either side of the interstate. Every time Ray passes one, you get some eye candy. As can be seen in Figure 2.001 to 2.006, the blurry edges that create eye candy can be seen along the sides of most of the stationary or slowly moving vehicles that Ray passes.
Spielberg was hardly the first director to fall in love with the way shooting with a moving camera added seamlessness and eye candy to the look of your film. Most of the directors who were known as great visual stylists, who preceded Spielberg — Hitchcock, Wells, Kurosawa, and Kubrick, to name a few — all used the increasingly agile moving camera platforms available to them to put more eye candy and more seamlessness into their films than their predecessors. But Spielberg took the curve of this trend and shoved it straight up off the chart. And the huge, repeated success of his films made him the dream director for anybody who wanted to make a movie that made money. If they could not get Spielberg (most could not) then they got the next best thing. If you wanted to direct, the more your films looked like Spielberg’s, the more work you got. Over time, this made the Spielbergian style the worldwide, professional standard.
The key to shooting in the Spielbergian style is to shoot an establishing shot which starts framed up close to whatever is driving the story and then have it take off moving and follow it using an externally generated camera move.
Internally Generated Camera Moves
The externally generated camera move is the most common way of moving the camera while sticking to Bob’s Rule. But there are other ways of doing it; probably the next most common is the internally generated camera move. A camera move is internally generated if the camera is moving to show the audience whatever is being seen or felt by someone or something on screen. These are essentially point of view (POV) shots. Because they only move to show us what the character who is driving the story is seeing or feeling, they remain invisible and never detract from the story. They are much less commonly used than externally generated camera moves.
The most common and easy to understand internally generated camera movement is a moving POV shot. A good example of a moving POV shot can be found in the thriller Bob Zemeckis made as an homage to Alfred Hitchcock: What Lies Beneath. Early on in the film, the female lead, Claire (Michelle Pfeiffer), comes up the stairs in her large (haunted) house and sees steam coming out from under the door to her bathroom. She walks up to the door and pushes it open. After that, Zemeckis alternates between tight shots on Claire’s face, which reveal her searching eyes, and moving POV shots which dolly forward into the bathroom as she crosses the room and approaches the tub against the far wall (Figure 2.019 to 2.033). Unlike an externally generated camera move, in the moving POV shot pushing in on the tub there is no person or thing in the frame that the camera is following in order to keep that object in frame. All we see is a shot that moves closer and closer to the tub, which happens to be mysteriously filled to the brim with steaming water. This movement is central to the story because it is what Claire sees as she walks into the bathroom and approaches the tub. Claire did not fill the tub, nor did her husband, Norman, who is asleep in the adjacent bedroom. So the audience is asking itself along with Claire, “Who filled the tub?” When she gets to the tub, Claire gets her answer. In the water, along with her own reflection, Claire sees a reflection of the ghost of the young blond girl who is haunting her house (Figure 2.032).
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To view a video of this film clip from What Lies Beneath go to this link on the Internet: http://hollywoodfilmdirecting.com/directing-the-camera.html
Just as a physical POV shot is always invisible because it shows us what a character in the story sees, the kind of shot that I call an emotional POV shot is invisible because it shows us what a character in the story feels. Probably the most common emotional POV shot is when the camera pushes in from a medium close-up to a tight close-up on a character as he catches sight of someone or something off camera and experiences an intense realization. What he sees generates a surge of emotion inside him. That emotion could be surprise or joy or fear or wonder or recognition or whatever, but in all cases it is fast and intense. In this case, you could say the camera was tracking with the character’s heart as it “rises in his throat.” I call this little, fast push-in an “oh-my-God!” shot.
Another typical example of a camera movement which is internally generated, and which disappears because it is an emotional POV, showing us what the center of the story feels, is when the camera, on a crane, sweeps up in the air and away from a character who has just found himself to be alone in the world. The camera’s movement makes him smaller and smaller in the frame and so can be said to be expressive of his internal emotions — his feelings of insignificance, weakness, and vulnerability. I call this the “all alone in the world” shot.
These two internally generated camera moves above are expressive of simple, common emotions. This explains why so many directors frequently use them. But internally generated camera moves are as various and complex as the emotions that generate them. Some of them are strange, one-of-a-kind moves. In the film Shine, director Scott Hicks uses such moves to show the audience what the main character, David Helfgott, is feeling as he suffers a nervous breakdown while playing Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 3 in concert. This shot — it is actually two hand-held close-ups on David (Figure 2.034 to 2.045) — could be thought of as the antithesis of an externally generated camera move because, while the object in the frame, David, never moves, the camera never stops moving. David remains seated at the piano playing the concerto throughout. He rocks back and forth or sways from side to side as he plays, but otherwise never moves. As the piano piece rises in intensity, all the tight shots on David become more kinetic. Like a drunken bumblebee, the camera bobs and weaves around his head as he starts to have his breakdown.
To view a video of this film clip from Shine go to this link on the Internet: http://hollywoodfilmdirecting.com/directing-the-camera.html
No doubt, as Scott Hicks intended, anyone watching this scene closely in a darkened theater quickly begins to experience vertigo. What the audience sees gives them an inkling of what the main character is feeling: disorientation, nausea, distress. Yet even though the camera is gyrating wildly, its movement is virtually unnoticeable, because it draws the audience even deeper into the story by showing them what a character is feeling.
This is virtuoso camera blocking according to Bob’s Rule at its best. At this particular moment, you might say the camera is acting up a storm. The gyrations around the actor’s head are as wild and crazy as the wildest and craziest moves to be seen in any music video or episode of CSI. And yet they are virtually invisible because they exist primarily as an expression of what is happening in the story at that moment and only incidentally as cool camera moves. They never stand out as something to be noticed in themselves, but blend in with all the threads which Hicks is weaving together — sound, editing, lighting — to create the whole cloth of his story about this troubled genius.
Moving Establishing Shots
Occasionally, at the very beginning of a scene, a director may make a camera move which is neither externally nor internally generated, but which moves to reveal to the audience everything they need to see to understand what happens next. It establishes the new environment, and so it is moving to tell the story and therefore disappears. These are moving establishing shots and they do the same thing which classic, static establishing shots do, except they move.
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