chapter 4: fundamentals of camerawork and shot composition · 2014-04-01 · chapter 4:...

Rev. 01/10/2000 Cambridge Community TV Green Book: Fundamentals Page 4 - 1

Chapter 4: Fundamentals of Camerawork and Shot Composition

The Role of Camerawork

A television program is a series of video images synchronized to a series of audio clips. Described this way, it is easy to understand why camerawork is such a fundamental part of producing TV programs. One of the first steps in designing a TV program that motivates your audience to think, feel, or do what you want them to do, is to decide: • What to shoot; • How to shoot it; • When and where to shoot it; • How to sequence the various shots; and • How to transition between the shots. Camerawork is the first place you decide what to include and what to exclude from your “TV reality” (i.e. your program). So, as you make the above decisions, you’ll also be choosing what NOT to shoot, what angles and perspectives NOT to include, which relationships you will NOT establish through your shot sequence.

Different Realities: The Human Eye vs. the Camera Lens

Before we talk about how to shoot, it is important to realize the differences between the “reality” we see with our eyes and the “reality” that the camera sees. In television, we see only what the camera lens shows us, only when it shows it to us, and only how it shows it to us.

HUMAN EYE CAMERA LENS Active, easily stimulated by movement

Static, must stage movement and move camera to follow action

Wide field of view, can focus on many objects at once, non-selective

Narrow field of view, emphasis natur-ally given to objects placed in center

Peripheral vision makes objects appear closer than they are

Tunnelvision, creates exaggeration of space between objects

3-dimensional space Everything appears flattened to two dimensions

Sees detail and subtle differences Lacks resolution to show finest details and subtlest differences

Extensive contrast range (10,000:1), information within contrast range is easily discerned

Limited contrast range (20-30:1), detailed information is lost in dark or bright areas

Adapted from: Progressive Video Programming, by Jeffrey Glasser, Stephen Gach, Pamela Levine


This chart of differences may seem interesting but somewhat trivial as you read it; but when actually start making TV programs these differences will become very real and significant for you. The tunnelvision effect and the apparent flattening of space will affect how you arrange the set, the cameras, and the lighting. The limited contrast range will require you to spend a lot more time thinking about and dealing with lighting. You will find yourself becoming a composer painting shots with video, the TV screen will be your canvas. The artist in you will emerge. So, too, will the critic. For you will become a more active and observant TV viewer, and also much more aware of the constructed nature of television “reality.”

Basic Camera Operation

In learning how to compose the video portion of your program, two aspects need to be addressed: The mechanical aspect of operating cameras, and the subjective aspect of composing a story with camera shots. For the purposes of this manual, we are going to address each aspect separately. The appearance of an image seen through a camera lens depends on two things: 1) the focal length of the lens 2) the physical position of the camera relative to the subject.

Focal Length, Zoom Lenses, and Lens Movements: The longer the focal length (Telephoto), the larger the image appears; the shorter the focal length (Wide-angle), the smaller the image. A zoom lens is a lens with variable focal lengths from Wide-angle to Telephoto. Zooming in: Is the process of changing the focal length from a Wide-

angle (W) shot to a close-up or Telephoto (T) shot. Zooming out: Is the process of going from a close-up or Telephoto (T)

shot to a Wide-Angle (W) shot. Focusing: Most of us know that focusing means adjusting a lens to

give its sharpest resolution of an image. But did you know that there is ONE correct way to focus a zoom lens? Always begin by zooming the lens in on the subject as far as it will go, and then set the focus so that the image is at its sharpest. As long as the actual distance between the camera and the subject doesn’t change, the subject will stay in focus as you zoom in or out.


Physical Camera Location and Camera Movements Besides changing the focal length, the whole camera can be moved to change the appearance of a subject.

* Pan Left or Right:

While keeping the tripod/dolly still, swivel the camera lens horizontally to the left or right. In order to "see more right," the cameraperson will be directed to pan right. Pans should generally be executed very slowly. Follow Pan: Pan to keep a moving subject within the

frame. Swish Pan: A very fast pan that blurs the background.

* Tilt Up or Down:

While keeping the tripod/dolly still, move the camera lens up or down. In order to "see more down," the cameraperson will be directed to tilt down.

* Dolly In or Out:

Move the whole camera and tripod/dolly closer to or farther from the subject.

* Truck (or Track) Left or Right:

Move the whole camera and tripod/dolly to the left or right.

* Arc: Truck and Dolly the camera at the same time, moving in a semi-circular arc around the subject.

* Pedestal Up or Down:

Crank the center post of the tripod up or down. Note: Usually, the lens should be at eye level with the talent. And, for maximum stability, first extend the tripod legs to gain extra height before raising the pedestal.

One Last Word on Lens and Camera Movements Lens and camera movements that are not done smoothly, naturally, or without an obvious reason, will call attention to themselves. In many cases, this will detract from the content of the show, except when the jarring effect of a fast zoom is part of the message (as in Wayne’s World). The most prized camerapersons are those who execute camera and lens movements without calling the viewer’s attention to the fact that there ever was a cameraperson between them and their view of “reality.” For this reason, it is important when starting out to practice your camera work every chance you get, and to make an effort to get those chances. Seek out other producers, volunteer for shoots, or shoot your own program. Public Access is the perfect environment to learn by doing; it’s OK to make mistakes and learn from them. The sooner you master the mechanical aspects of running cameras, the sooner you’ll be able to focus (excuse the pun!) on the real fun stuff, composing with the camera!

Types of Shots

Rev. 01/10/2000 Cambridge Community TV Green Book: Fundamentals - 4

Now let’s start composing your television program using the fundamental video building blocks: The camera shots. To ease communication between producers, directors, writers, and camerapersons, the TV industry has developed a language to describe the kind of shot desired at each particular instant. You would do well to learn this language if you you want to fit right in with other crews at CCTV, crews in other Access centers, or crews in commercial or Public TV stations. While the terms Long, Medium, and Close-up are frequently used, some people prefer to use more precise descriptions like “knee,” “waist,” and “head and shoulders.” * Long Shot:

(LS) Shows entire body and some of the surroundings. Often used at the start of a program or a segment of a program to orient the viewer to where the talent is located. Imparts little or no emotional impact.

* Medium Shot:

(MS) "Waist shot." Generally includes the upper half of the body, cutting the person off near the waist. Provides a little more sense of intimacy with the talent, and is a "bread and butter" shot for interviews.

* Close-Up:

(CU) "Head and shoulders" shot. Provides an even greater sense of intimacy and emphasis than the Medium Shot. When focused on objects, can help viewers see details they might otherwise miss. Another commonly used shot for “talking heads” interviews.

* Extreme Close-Up: (ECU)

For even more dramatic effect, this tight shot frames only part of the face. It tells the viewer that what is being said is very important or emotional, and therefore this shot should be reserved for situations of deep emotion or high intensity.


* Establishing or Wide Shot: (ES)

Same as the long shot or even wider, this shot is often used at the start of a program or program seg-ment to establish its setting and context. Similarly, it is often used at the end of a program or right before a break to let the viewer know that the end is coming.

* Two Shot: A Medium Shot that frames two persons, instead of the usual one.

* Over-the-

Shoulder Shot: (O/S)

A shot that focuses on one subject by looking over the shoulder of another person who is facing the subject. Sometimes called a "Shot-Reverse-Shot."

Composition Techniques

As a Public Access producer, you are NOT bound by the same constraints that apply to professional commercial producers, and therefore have a terrific opportunity to experiment with new approaches to new subject matter. At the same time and in most cases, you are still trying to impact an audience whose expectations have been largely shaped by the practices of commercial TV producers. As a Public Access producer, therefore, you would do well to master the composition techniques described below that the commercial pro’s use; and then in the course of your own productions, decide whether the goals and audiences you are trying to reach would best be served by these techniques or by using your own methods. Mastery of the conventional methods also ensures that you will fit right in as a cameraperson at any station or production house, commercial or Public Access. The advantages of using conventional composition in your programs include: • Emphasis is placed where it is wanted; • The viewer's visual expectations are fulfilled;


• Feelings of balance and three-dimensional depth are conveyed; • Continuity between different cameras is assured. Here are some composition concepts and techniques you should master:

* Head Room: Is the space between the top of the subject's head and the top of the frame. A well-framed shot puts the subject's eyes about 1/3 of the way down the frame, leaving Head Room of about 10% at the top of the frame. However, more Head Room is OK for Long Shots, and less or no Head Room is OK for Extreme Close-Ups.

* Nose Room: Is the space in front a person who is

speaking towards one edge of the frame. For example, when a subject is conversing with someone seated beside them, they will be looking towards one edge of the frame instead of straight ahead to the camera. In this instance, framing should emphasize both the subject and the fact that there is someone or something of interest outside the frame. Put the subject off-center and add some Nose Room or "Talking Space" in the side of the frame to which they are looking.

Which of these looks good to you?

* Lead Room: Is similar to Nose Room, but applies when the subject is moving towards one edge of the frame. Put the subject off-center, by adding some Lead Room in the side of the frame towards which they are moving. A wider angle shot allows for slower, smoother movement.

Which of these looks good to you?

* Balance and the Rule of Thirds:

Most perfectly centered shots are static and boring. Balance is created by setting points of visual interest off against each other, thereby heightening the viewer's interest. Imagine the frame divided horizontally and vertically into thirds. If major points of interest are placed at the points where the lines intersect, the result is more pleasing to the eye than if a perfectly symmetrical arrangement were composed.


* Depth Composition:

A TV picture is two-dimensional; but the good selection and framing of props in the foreground and back-ground can lend a three-dimensional quality to the picture. The arrange-ment, or blocking, of talent can help create depth. Put them at varying distances to the camera; nothing is deadlier than a line of people all the same distance from the camera. With two people, an Over-the-Shoulder Shot gives more depth than a face-to-face profile shot. A feeling of depth can also be achieved by placing cameras at an angle to the subject.

* Safe Title

Area: Every TV set will crop an image differently. In order that every viewer will be able to see the important information in your show, you should not to put any vital information (titles or graphics, for example) near the edge of the screen but only within the inner 90% of the screen area, or “safe title area.” (This is another good reason for having “Head Room;” otherwise, some people’s TV sets will cut off the tops of your talents’ heads!)

Let the Rule of Thirds be Your Friend When Zooming In or Out


Camera Movement

We’ve been discussing camera shots as if they were static shots, but that doesn’t have to be the case. Moving camera shots can be executed on-line, and these movements would be considered part of your arsenal of fundamental video building blocks from which to construct your program. All of the mechanical operations of running cameras discussed earlier (zooming, focusing, panning, tilting, dollying, etc.) have subjective aspects, too. In other words, they carry meaning, impacting how the viewer “reads” or inteprets your TV program. Let’s look at them again.

Lens Movement: Zooming and Focusing Our eyes have no movement equivalent to the zoom; instead, zooming tends to evoke in us the sensation of physically moving closer to or farther from the subject.

Zoom In: In drawing us closer to the subject, zooming in tells the viewer “pay attention, what follows is important;” zoom ins are often used when a subject becomes emotional or to emphasize what is being said.

Zoom Out: For similar reasons, on-line zoom outs are used very sparingly, usually to signal the close of a segment or a show; otherwise, the viewer might interpret them to mean “don’t pay attention, what follows isn’t important.”

Adjusting focus is one technique used to transition, also called segue (pronounced SEG-WAY), between different parts of a program, or to shift the viewer’s attention between different subjects in the same scene.

Rack Focus: To adjust the camera’s focus from a blurry shot of the subject to a sharp image of the subject, or vice-versa. Often used to segue between different scenes (either in different locations, different realities, or the same location at a different time) by blurring out the first shot, then racking from a blurry to a sharp image of the second shot.

Pull Focus: To move from focusing on a background object or person to focusing on a foreground subject, or vice-versa. TV dramas use this technique fairly often to shift the viewer’s attention between different people in the same scene, playing up their differences while at the same establishing a relationship between them.

Camera Movement: Panning: As with any camera movement, panning is one way of

introducing the sense of movement into your program.


Tilting: Because the lens is in essence the viewer’s eye, tilting the lens up or down gives the viewer a sense of looking up or down at someone or something. Tilts are therefore used to emphasize the height or power of a person or object, relative to the viewer. And perfoming the tilt on-line reinforces the psychological impact that much more! To achieve the impression of a very powerful subject, the camera lens - instead of being placed at eye-level with the talent - is placed well below them and tilted up at a steep angle, giving the viewer the sense of looking up at an imposing subject. Similarly, to enhance the sense of a subject’s weakness or powerlessness, the camera lens is placed well above the subject’s eye and tilted down at them. Tilting can also be used for dramatic effect, such as tilting from a shot of a gun down to the wounded person.

Trucking & Trucking or dollying are camera movements that are Dollying: often used to reveal the three-dimensionality of a

stationary subject. They convey a sense of exploration and discovery. Dollying and zooming are both methods used to bring the subject closer or farther away, yet physically moving the camera and changing the focal length of a lens produce very different visual effects. Try them out and see the difference. Dollying in at a wide angle will retain the sense of the subject in relation to the background; the background focus is not altered, either. Zooming in blurs the background, creating the sense that the subject is far away from the background. The director or cameraperson should determine which effect best fits the needs of the program.

Finally, let’s remember that: • You should have an obvious reason for moving the cameras, if you

want the viewer to be paying attention to the subect instead of your mysterious camerawork.

• Similarly, camera movements that are not done smoothly or naturally will call attention to themselves. In many cases, this will detract from the content of the show, except when the jarring effect is part of the message.

• The most prized camerapersons are those who execute camera movements without calling the viewer’s attention to the fact that there ever was a cameraperson between them and their view of “reality.”


Transitions

We’ve said that still and moving camera shots are the video building blocks of your program. But just as having a pile of bricks doesn’t by itself make a house, so too does the television creator have to arrange these building blocks into some kind of order that is interesting, compelling, and logical. The goal, remember, is to compile a program (from beginning to middle to end) that keeps your viewer interested and motivates them to think, feel, or do what you wanted. In a live shoot, that is the director’s responsibility. In an edited program, it is the editor’s responsibility. In either case, this person has to be thinking about: • what sequence to assemble the shots in; • and what visual bridges or transitions to use to get from each shot to

the next one; all the while maintaining program continuity. Let’s look at a couple of examples.

Example 1 Suppose you videotaped a 3 ½ hour lecture, and wanted to condense it to a one-hour program. If you simply edited one sequence after another, deleting portions that you felt were unnecessary, you might create jump cuts at the points where two sequences were edited together. (A jump cut occurs when continuity is broken; a video jump cut looks like a sudden change in the location of the subject in the frame.) Assuming that you didn’t want jump cuts, you might cover it over with a cut-away. Having anticipated the jump-cut problem, you would have recorded many audience reaction shots, shots of the lecturer’s hands, etc. You would then perform a video only insert edit over the jump cut, not only sparing the viewer the disruption, but providing more information about the environment of the lecture as well.

Example 2 Suppose you wanted to record a child falling asleep and having a dream. You might intentionally lose (or rack) focus as the child falls asleep to indicate that a new reality, the dream, is about to take place. At the next edit point, you gradually resolve (or rack) the focus back to the first shot within the dream sequence. In this case, the lens movement and transition carried the important information: Namely, that we were entering a different reality. From both these examples we can see that is important for the cameraperson to anticipate the needs of the editor. And, indeed, these concerns should have been first raised during pre-production and incorporated into the script, storyboard, and shot sheet.

Common Types of Transitions and Cover Shots


Let’s review some of the techniques professionals have developed to segue between different segments of a program. You, of course, could develop your own techniques.

* Cut: The most common transition in television, generally used to show the same scene from a different angle. It is the instantaneous and complete replacement of one shot with another.

* Dissolve: After the cut, the most commonly used transition in television. It is the simultaneous fading out of one shot and fading into the next, and is often used to signal a change in time or location. This effect is accomplished in the Studio using a Special Effects Generator (SEG).

* Fade: A dissolve to or from black (or another color), sometimes used to simulate the passage of time. Fades may executed during the shoot by the cameraperson adjusting the Iris, or in post-production by the editor using the SEG.

* Wipe: The simultaneous push off the screen of one scene by the next one. It is the most eye-catching, and hence least used, transition in television. Generally, wipes are reserved for instances when it is the wipe itself that is carrying the information; for example, to signal a dream sequence.

* Defocus (Lose or Rack Focus):

The manual readjustment of the focus, blurring the picture. Can be used to both end one scene and begin the next one.

* Pull Focus: To move from focusing on a background object or person to focusing on a foreground subject, or vice-versa. TV dramas often use this technique to shift the viewer’s attention between different people in the same scene, playing up their differences while at the same establishing a relationship between them.

* Establishing Shot:

A wide view which orients the viewer to where the action is taking place. Often used whenever there is a change in location.

* Cut-away: A single shot inserted into a scene to add more information. Usually refers to a shot of something being talked about but not actually on the set. (You can never shoot too many of these or too many “reaction shots.”)

* Cut-in: Similar to a cut-away, but refers to a close-up of something on the set.

* Reaction Shot: A shot of someone reacting to what is being said or what action is happening on set.

chapter 4: fundamentals of camerawork and shot composition · 2014-04-01 · chapter 4:...

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