To appreciate a chapter you need to read the text, while referring to the images. You can then imagine how you could use the shot yourself, and picture how small changes to the shot would affect the result.
Use Master Shots 3 during preproduction, and then have the book nearby on-set, so that you can find alternative ideas, or add something extra to a scene. Combine several techniques in one scene to create something completely new. Sharing the book with actors can be an excellent way to make them aware of the lens, and how you’re capturing their magic.
ABOUT THE IMAGES
Each chapter features frame grabs from popular movies, to show how successfully the specific technique explored has been used before. The overhead shots show how the camera and actors move to achieve this effect. The white arrows show camera movement. The black arrows show actor movement.
The most essential points have been illustrated, but as this is an advanced text, some of the shots are not illustrated. In any given chapter, you may see one shot with an overhead diagram showing how it works. The next shot may not have an overhead diagram. This means you have to do more of the work yourself. You have to look at the shot, read the text, and decode the camera move. This takes some practice, but this is the practice every director needs.
In Chapter Eleven, there are more frame grabs from movies, but no overhead shots. This will further encourage you to imagine how the shots could be achieved. That is the purpose of this book: to get you used to imagining camera moves clearly.
CHAPTER 1
ADVANCED LENSING
1.1
LONG LENS DISTANT
A long lens focuses in on your subject, or main character, while revealing the environment around them. This works especially well when the camera is a long way from the actor, and the background is even farther back. In these frames from The Book of Eli, the long lens forces everything but the character out of focus, so our concentration is firmly on him and his expression.
Set the camera up a long way from your actor, with other objects or actors much closer to the camera. When you focus on the actor, the foreground objects or actors, as well as the background, are thrown out of focus. Get the foreground actors to cross horizontally in front of the screen to exaggerate the effect.
The actor will not appear to move fast toward the camera, but objects moving across the frame will appear to move quickly. This makes us see the character is trapped or struggling in a chaotic world.
The frames from Black Swan show how you can use a long lens to pan with a character, revealing foreground and background elements in the one shot. It’s often assumed that you need to start with a wide shot to establish the space, then use medium shots and close-ups on the actors, but a well-planned shot can do all this work for you.
Here, the camera does nothing but follow the character across the room, but by placing actors closer to the camera, as well as actors in the far background, the entire scene is revealed clearly in one shot.
When using a long lens, the background is drawn toward the subject, and the foreground is compressed toward the subject. In this frame from The Road, you can see how the foreground and background elements appear closer to the actor than they actually are. By placing the actor to one side of the frame, with the foreground filling the other side of the frame, you create a strong impression of the environment while drawing the viewer’s eye to the character.
The Book of Eli. Directed by the Hughes Brothers. Summit Entertainment, 2010. All rights reserved.
Black Swan. Directed by Darren Aronofsky. Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2010. All rights reserved.
The Road. Directed by John Hillcoat. FilmNation Entertainment, 2009. All rights reserved.
1.2
LONG LENS CLOSE
You might assume that a long lens is used like a telescope, to get you closer to the action, but it’s better if you think of it as a tool that narrows the camera’s view of the world. A long lens, when placed close to an actor, shows almost nothing except the actor you’re focused on, making it ideal for close-ups and extreme close-ups.
Place your camera close to the actors and use a long lens to focus on the eyes. As you can see with these first two frames from Hard Candy, you will need to focus on the eyes. The rest of the face will go slightly out of focus. If possible, ask the actors not to move their faces toward or away from the camera during these shots, or it will be difficult to maintain focus on the eyes. Don’t worry about the rest of the face being blurred, because this draws attention to the eyes.
The third frame is not quite as close, but still has the effect of drawing attention to the actor’s facial expression. Clothes, hair, and background may be glimpsed, but the camera has been placed so that the emphasis is on the character’s facial expression. This works especially well because she is framed right to the edge of the screen, rather than leaving the usual space over her shoulder. In the fourth frame, the same effect is created by framing him hard to the left.
The final frame shows how you can continue this sequence of long lens shots, by being slightly farther back, but shooting from the side. The actor’s face is framed even harder to the left, leaving a lot of empty screen space to the right, which can be filled by the actor’s hand movements. With the focus on his face, even his hands are slightly out of focus. By drawing our attention so tightly to the actors’ faces, a close long lens makes us watch them intently and hang on to their every word.
Hard Candy. Directed by David Slade. Lionsgate, 2006. All rights reserved.
1.3
LONG LENS STATIONARY
You can create powerful effects with a long lens without moving the camera during the shot. In these stills from The Road, a simple cut between two locked-off shots creates a sense of the characters’ struggle through the environment.
In the first shot, the camera is placed a long way back, and a medium-to-long lens is used to show the characters within the environment. The standard approach with a long lens is to make use of foreground, midground, and background, but here they are all blended together. With nothing intruding into the foreground, and the background drawn close to the characters, this shot removes all depth. This creates a sense of stasis, as though all movement is slow and difficult.
The next shot uses a longer lens, closer to the actors, and now the background trees extend out of the frame. This creates a sense of imprisonment, because the characters are moving forward — we can see them walking — but do not appear to get closer to the camera, and the environment now appears to be dwarfing them.
Set up your camera so that when the cut is made, the characters appear to be in exactly the same part of the frame, whatever else is shown. By doing this you create the sense of being trapped, making it difficult to move forward.
The frames from The Adjustment Bureau also show that with an extremely long lens you can use focus to reveal new detail. An extremely long lens, placed far back from your actor, will throw the background out of focus. The second actor can then walk into the background as a blur, and the camera is focused on him. This is achieved by pulling focus, not by moving the lens or camera. If your lens is long enough, the foreground actor will become extremely blurred, almost vanishing from the shot. By using extreme defocus, a stationary long lens creates the feeling of a cut without actually cutting, and without moving the camera.
The Road. Directed by John Hillcoat. FilmNation, 2009. All rights reserved.
The Adjustment Bureau. Directed by George Nolfi. Universal Pictures, 2011. All rights reserved.
1.4
LONG LENS IN MOTION
When you use a long lens, all sideways movement of the camera becomes exaggerated, even if it’s just a slight wobble. This means the long lens isn’t suitable for any camera move where there’s potentially a lot of movement, such as a long steadicam shot, or a handheld scene.
This doesn’t mean that the long lens should remain stationary. Although there are challenges related to focus and framing, a long lens can be used to cre
ate extremely powerful moving shots.
In Hard Candy, a simple dolly shot is made more interesting by using a long lens. When pushing in on a character, you normally use a short lens because it speeds up the feeling of the dolly move — things get big and close quickly. By using a long lens, you have to set up more track and push in a lot farther and faster for it to even look like a dolly shot. If you push in over just a few feet, nothing much will change in the frame. So set up your camera a long way back from the character, and then push in over ten feet or more. This will require extremely careful focusing, but don’t worry too much if focus slips slightly during the shot, so long as you are focused on the eyes when the camera comes to rest.
If so much track is needed, and if focus is critical, what’s the advantage to this sort of shot? The long lens narrows the angle of view, concealing the surrounding environment. This is why it’s used for close-ups; it focuses in on the actor. When combined with a dolly it exaggerates this focus on a character.
If you used a short lens, you would end up with a lot of background in the frame, or you would have to get so close to the actor that her face would appear distorted. The long lens also makes it easier to throw the background out of focus, so that actor is isolated in the frame. This effect is ideal for dramatic moments or revelations, such as this one, when we see the character for the first time.
You can achieve another strong effect by keeping the camera in one place, and tracking a fast-moving actor running through a crowded location. This is nothing more than a pan, but the long lens, combined with the actor’s movement, creates an impression of extreme speed.
Hard Candy. Directed by David Slade. Lionsgate, 2006. All rights reserved.
The Adjustment Bureau. Directed by George Nolfi. Universal Pictures, 2011. All rights reserved.
1.5
SHORT LENS DISTANT
Short lenses create a sense of space. Often used to show landscapes, they are just as effective at showing a large indoor space. They will make a small room appear larger, and a large space seem cavernous.
In this shot from The Adjustment Bureau, a slight dolly to the right increases this sense of space. There is no motion other than the camera dollying to the right, without panning. It’s important to have something or somebody roughly in the center of the space, if you want to draw attention to the size of the room. If they are too close to camera, the focus will be entirely on the character, and if they are too far away the sense of space will not be revealed by the sideways motion.
Short lenses also exaggerate movement toward or away from the camera, which means that when your actors move just a short distance away they appear to move rapidly away. This can be used to throw your characters from a seemingly normal space into a wide-open one. In these shots from Léon: The Professional, the actors stand outside a doorway in a seemingly dark, enclosed space, but as the camera dollies to the right, they move away from the camera and to the edge of the building.
The camera keeps moving, until the original background (the dark building) is completely out of shot. This creates a fantastic transition between a dark space that feels enclosed, and a huge, expansive city. When the shot begins, we don’t know if we’re in an alleyway, or other enclosed space, but the camera move reveals the characters to be part of a much bigger world.
This is a useful technique when you want to show the characters making a transition from one place, or one state of mind, to another. The camera move itself is exceptionally simple, dollying to the right as the actors make their move, but it is made effective by lens choice. The short lens creates the necessary movement away from the camera, and the sense of space and landscape beyond and around them.
The Adjustment Bureau. Directed by George Nolfi. Universal Pictures, 2011. All rights reserved.
Léon: The Professional. Directed by Luc Besson. Columbia Pictures/Gaumont Film Company, 1994. All rights reserved.
1.6
SHORT LENS CLOSE
The short lens exaggerates distance, so camera moves seem faster. People move more rapidly toward or away from the camera, and objects can appear distorted.
A small camera move, combined with a strong character move, creates a feeling of urgency. In these frames from Inception, we see a wide internal space. The camera pushes forward, but only slightly, as the character moves past the camera and into the room.
The camera move, although small, helps to make this more dynamic than if you only have the actor move. Make sure your actor passes close to the camera to get the greatest sense of movement away from the camera.
The first frame from A Very Long Engagement shows how effectively a short lens can be used to increase the presence of an object. The gun, which would have to be extremely close to the lens itself, appears much longer than it would be in real life. This distortion also amplifies its movement, so as the actor moves the gun around slightly, it appears to wobble wildly. This means that we keep our attention on the actor, who is in focus, but remain acutely aware of the gun. It feels as though it’s being pointed at us, and creates a more intense sense of danger than if a medium lens was used.
The next shot shows how short lenses distort faces. Whatever’s closer to the camera appears closer than it really is; in essence, this means that people appear to have slightly bigger noses than usual. To avoid this being too much of a problem (or a comedic effect), you can angle the camera from above. A slight tilt can also help. By positioning the camera in this way you can obtain the slightly dreamlike feeling of distortion offered by a short lens, without making faces look too unusual.
Inception. Directed by Christopher Nolan. Warner Bros. Pictures, 2010. All rights reserved.
A Very Long Engagement. Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Warner Independent Pictures, 2004. All rights reserved.
1.7
SHORT LENS STATIONARY
Traditionally, short lenses are used to show a wide view, whether that’s a landscape, or as shown here, a large room. In the frame from Black Swan you can see that a short lens doesn’t simply capture a wide view, but can exaggerate distances, so that a room appears larger. In this shot, by having somebody on the left close to camera, this effect is enhanced even more.
For more dynamic scenes, however, the stationary short lens can create extremely powerful shots when you let the actors move to fill the space. In this shot from Schindler’s List, the camera barely moves, only titling up and down to accommodate the actors’ heights as they move into shot.
When the scene begins, both are close to camera, but facing different directions. They then begin a sequence of moves, almost like a dance, where one moves away, as another moves forward, constantly rearranging themselves in front of the camera. It is as though the director set up seven different shots from the same position, and then got the actors to play the scene moving between these seven setups.
To get this effect, that is exactly what you should do. Position your camera low to the ground, so you can capture the full length of the characters. Make sure there is a motivation for the characters to kneel near the camera. (In this example, they are looking through old files and papers.) Then find the best six or seven compositions by positioning the actors around the room. When you’ve found the strongest looks, you can begin to work the story into the scene, connecting the images you’ve created to the actors’ movement. Alternatively, start with the script and let the actors improvise their movement, and find the images that work the best.
What you want to avoid is moving the actors just for the sake of it, or moving them into position artificially. Each movement toward or away from the camera should be motivated by a desire to go somewhere else, look at something else, or talk to another person. When the motivation is clear, this extreme movement toward and away from the camera appears entirely natural, and one lengthy shot feels like an elegant sequence of perfect compositions.
Black Swan. Directed by Darren Aronofsky. Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2010. All rights reserved.
Schindler’s
List. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Universal Pictures, 1993. All rights reserved.
1.8
SHORT LENS IN MOTION
The tendency for a short lens to exaggerate and increase a sense of movement becomes even more noticeable when the camera moves. A short lens creates a sense of great motion, when the subject stays relatively close to the camera and moves rapidly through the environment.
In the first example, from The Adjustment Bureau, the camera is quite close to the running actor, and catches up slightly during the shot. Due to the nature of the short lens, this slight catch-up feels quite extreme, but not as extreme as the surrounding motion. The scenery appears to rush past at an almost supernatural speed, which enhances the speed of the chase. When working outdoors, you might need to use extremely short lenses to create this effect, as the walls, trees, and objects are quite a distance to either side.
When working indoors you can use a short-to-medium lens to achieve the same effect as seen in the frames from Black Swan. As Natalie Portman moves forward, the camera remains roughly the same distance from her. The walls, people, and other objects are all close by, and so they appear to rush past, making her movement seem far more rapid than it really is.
MasterShots Vol 3 Page 2
