SHOT TYPES and angles
Across
- 2. Camera placement is on the ground.
- 5. The camera is mounted on a harness which prevents any sharp movement, so its like handheld but very smooth, often used in horror (famously in Halloween and The Shining) to signify a supernatural element.
- 7. The camera is canted, connoting that something is a little off, a bit weird/strange.
- 8. When character A and character B are framed together it tends to signify some type of bond or equivalence. We'll use an Agents of Shield clip as a great example of how this can be very selectively used (Tess of the D'Urbevilles is another).
- 9. When the camera moves horizontally without leaving the tripod position to follow a subject.
- 11. Camera looks down on subject, signifying them as weak and/or vulnerable.
- 14. Films/scenes typically (but not always, there are no fixed RULES, just CONVENTIONS!) open on an --- shot, an extreme long shot that literally sets the scene (the TV drama Tess... is a good example)
- 15. A --- close-up shows most of the face, but is more tightly framed than a simple close-up, so either the chin or top of the head are likely to be cropped, strongly conveying emotion and pushing the audience to feel this.
- 16. A --- shot is a long shot where the environment is the focus.
- 17. Camera looks up to subject, connoting them as powerful and/or menacing.
- 18. In a --- field of focus only the foreground (or some part of the frame) is sharply in focus, with the rest blurred to some degree, drawing the viewer's attention to something/someone.
- 19. An --- close-up highlights just 1 feature of the face, or very tightly focuses on part of an object. Typically used to force the audience to feel a character's emotion.
Down
- 1. Shows the whole of the face, strongly conveying emotion and pushing the audience to focus on this.
- 3. The --- shot goes from the knees up (or the equivalent length), and enables fairly strong body language including clearly visible facial expression, but a lot of background detail (dependent on focus!)
- 4. Typically used to signify realism, notably in social realist movies (also because its quicker and therefore cheaper!) and action scenes.
- 6. The --- shot frames half of the body, so is useful for retaining a lot of body language with tight detail on costume and make-up.
- 8. The camera moves to follow a subject
- 10. A focus --- is when the focus is moved from the background to the foreground (coming closer instead of further away).
- 12. The --- shot is expensive and denotes higher budgets, though convergence has seen it mostly replaced with drone shots (and the CGI recreation of --- shots going through a cityscape has become a cliche of superhero films like Spiderman)!
- 13. The rule of --- is a common convention to place the action or important detail in the central third - but this is also often broken to connote tension (or to suit a shot/reverse shot sequence), Hitchcock's North By Northwest being a classic example of how to break this.