Basic Shots

Basic shots are the building blocks of visual grammar. If you think of a scene as a sentence, you can consider individual shots the words in the sentence. Each shot must have a reason for being there, and it needs to convey important information to the audience. As a cinematographer, you have a responsibility to get enough shots to make sure there are different ways to assemble the scene in the editing room (see Chapter 12). Indeed, the entire process of image capture can be thought of as executing your vision while preserving your future options for different editorial and visual effects as the entire story comes together.

As noted in Chapter 3, getting the shots you need is called covering a scene, or ensuring that you have coverage. The cinematographer needs to know the editing style the director will want to achieve before deciding how to cover a scene. What kind of pace should the scene have? Will the scene be intimate or more clinical? Will the actors be moving around or staying in the same position? Different editing styles require different shots; some directors prefer to do scenes in long, single-camera takes, while others like to put together scenes with lots of short bits of imagery. As with every other aspect of filmmaking, the process is outcome-oriented; you start by conceptualizing what you want to finish with.

How can you “see” a scene? First, ask yourself if the audience should experience the scene objectively or subjectively. In an objective scene, the camera is a neutral observer, similar to a journalist viewing the action. In a subjective scene, the camera experiences the action through the eyes of one of the characters and imparts that character’s emotional state to the action. Next, you’ll determine the distance from which the camera will see things: from far away, which places the characters and action in the context of their surroundings; from a middle distance, where you can see most of people’s bodies as they interact with others; and at close range, where you can see the fine details of faces and motion. These three distances correspond to the three basic shots—long shots, medium shots, and close-ups. We’ll look at them as large categories, and examine the variations that provide nuance in the way they convey information. These basic shots comprise the standard approach to making certain a scene is well covered. Although you won’t typically use all of them at once, you’ll need enough of them to cut the scene together.

Long Shots

Long shots are valuable for setting characters and places in relationship to the world they’re in. Images of a person walking down a deserted city street, where you see boarded-up buildings along the sidewalks, is an example of a long shot, as are images of a little house on a wide-open prairie. Following are names and explanations for the three most common long shots:

image SHOOT THE MASTER FIRST

Shoot the master shot first; that way, you’ll be sure you have captured the entire scene. Later, when you shoot closer shots, you’ll match the lighting, action, and blocking in the master shot.

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A wide shot establishes the dinner-table scene in Talladega Nights (2006).

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An extreme wide shot captures the epic scope of Lawrence of Arabia (1962).

Medium Shots

Medium shots bring you closer to the action, but not too close—and for that reason, they’re the most common shot in films. They let you see the entire action of the scene and some of the background where the action is taking place. A character pulling a cell phone from her pocket, or two characters sitting and talking on a park bench, would both be well-covered in medium shots. There is no hard-and-fast rule for what differentiates a medium shot from a long shot—it’s a fuzzy dividing line. In this book, we take the view that long shots emphasize the place more than the characters, and medium shots move in to focus specific attention on the characters and the action. Following are names and explanations for the five most common medium shots:

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A medium shot in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

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MCU in City Light (1931)

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A full shot in Patton (1970)

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A cowboy shot in High Noon (1952)

image DON’T CUT UP YOUR ACTORS

Don’t frame a shot in which an actor is cut off at the joints (knees, ankles, wrists)—it will look as if part of the body has been cut off.

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A uniquely composed three shot in Chinatown (1974)

Close Shots

A close shot brings you right into the action and emotion of a scene; here, the actor’s face fills the screen, and you feel deeply, personally connected to the character. In this way, the close shot is the opposite of the long shot: the long shot is objective, and the close shot is subjective. Directors often choose close shots for the most powerful, impactful moments of storytelling, and they are standard shots in movies that center on relationships. Close shots of actions or objects are narrative devices that tell the story in visual terms, and they often don’t need any dialogue to make their point.

image WATCH THE BACKGROUND

When shooting inserts, make sure the background behind the featured object is consistent with the scene. In the example of someone reading a letter, the insert on the letter should be shot from the actor’s perspective, with the actor’s fingers visible holding the letter, and perhaps, beyond the letter’s edge, a part of the room where the letter is being read. Nothing says “fake” more than an insert that’s inconsistent with the rest of the scene.

Following are names and explanations for the three most common close shots:

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A loose close-up in Django Unchained (2012)

image COUNTING THE SHOTS

As you’ve just learned, every shot takes careful planning to set up. Using a 30-second commercial as an example, count the number of shots (setups). Then, list the kind of shot each one is (master shot, close-up, insert, and so on).

If you think creating all of these shots is time-consuming, you are right! Accomplishing a series of setups for each scene might take anywhere from half a day to two or three days for a particularly long scene. (See How to Shoot a Scene.)

Another way to cover a scene would be to do it in a single shot. The battlefield scene in Atonement (2007) is a good example of a complicated scene shot in a single take. The single shot is thrilling because it conveys a sense of scale and movement, but it also requires a lot of time to rehearse and choreograph and has potential storytelling risks. When you shoot a scene in pieces, you have the ability to shorten or lengthen the scene, and moments within the scene, and to orchestrate its movement in editorial to reflect character and storytelling dynamics. When you shoot a scene in a single shot, you have to live with it as it is.