David K. Irving explains how directors decide where to place the camera and choose a film’s look: aspect ratio, stock, lenses, framing and movement.
“People don’t always express their inner thoughts to one another; a conversation may be quite trivial, but often the eyes will reveal what a person thinks or feels.” ~Alfred Hitchcock
The camera is the director’s eye and since film is visual storytelling, the camera is the director’s most important tool. If the sound system in a theater were to cease functioning, and the audience would have no choice but to watch the film silently, the story should still be clear. Dialogue, sound effects and music are vital to a film, but the image is dominant.
The screenplay contributes the majority of information directors require to formulate a shooting plan. Broad strokes are established by the genre of the story. A comedy is usually bright and colorful whereas a horror film is misty and atmospheric. A script might scream out to be shot in black and white, sepia tones or pastels. Camera placement and moves are dictated by genre. Comedy can hold a static frame as the actors perform routines; while the conventions of a horror film prescribe low angle POV tracking shots to scare the audience into thinking “someone or something is coming to get me!”
But if the screenplay is a blueprint, the director produces ideas that visualize the drama. Directors examine the sequence and determine how to shoot it. They consider everything, from the grand (how does this sequence fit into the whole) to the minute (should the actor tap his watch to see if it is working or just read the time). Whether a director is making a grand or minuscule decision, the camera will play an important part in that judgment.
Major choices are made in pre-production: the look of the film, aspect ratio, and the choice of stock, lens selection, and variety of movement. The shot selection process is the same no matter how big or from what angle the image is taken. The basic unit of a film, the shot is to the whole as the tile is to the mosaic. As you cut from one scene to the next, imbue each shot with an emotional arc, information, composition, motivation and continuity. Only a shot containing these elements is worth sending on to the editing room. Underdeveloped shots, say one that contains no information or motivation or neglects continuity, are more often than not eliminated.
A gestalt is a pattern of elements so unified it’s impossible to see its constituents. That’s the way a good film appears—so unified that each shot fits in seamlessly with the design of the overall picture. You achieve this by choosing a lens, an angle and a camera position to get a shot that can be low, high, close, distant, soft, hard, static, and/or moving. Then frame-by-frame, you piece together the arc of the whole story.
Shooting Ratio
An early budget question is how much stock to purchase. This is the paper onto which directors write their story. Too much is a waste (film is non-refundable) and too little could jeopardize the integrity of the project forcing the editor to make difficult and/or awkward cuts. When shooting in 16 mm or 35 mm, the director of photography orders all stock from one batch. Because rolls have consecutive serial numbers, this guarantees consistent picture quality and control. Film not from sequential batches could be of slightly different grain size and color quality. Shooting on tape is less critical, and the cost is so minuscule that too much tape is never a question.
An average length of a feature film is about 150,000-feet although one can be shot on as little as 30,000 feet and as much as a million. The average length of a roll of 35 mm film is 1,000 feet. Therefore, every additional 1,000 feet you shoot adds a number to the shooting ratio. If a feature exposes 150,000 feet of film, the shooting ratio is 15:1. That means that for every foot used in the final print, 14 were left out. John Ford shot Grapes of Wrath on 30,000 feet of film. This means he shot an astoundingly low 3:1 ratio. It also means he knew exactly what he wanted out of each camera position. Some directors keep themselves to a low ratio. For instance Buñuel said he never used more than 20,000 meters (approximately 66,600 feet) of celluloid. It’s all in the planning.
150, 000’ – 200,000’ of film stock is an average for a film. Anything over 250,000’ is a lot. Under 50,000 is tight. In filmmaking the two things upon which a director never concedes is the amount of stock and the number of PAs. One must always have ample stock. At no point in the making of a motion picture should the production manager have to go to the director and say they cannot continue shooting because the company has run out of stock. A picture can have many slow downs for any number of reasons. Stock should not be one of them. So many people want to work in the movies that human labor is abundant and when a picture needs people to work the traffic or move crowds around the frame, a shortage of PAs should not be a factor.
Coverage
The first question a director asks upon arriving on set is how to cover the sequence scheduled for that day. Coverage (and its partner continuity) refers to the different angles from which a particular scene is shot. For instance, one can shoot two lovers kissing from several angles ensure choices in the editing room.
Once in the editing room, with a range of angles from which to choose, a sequence can cut together seamlessly to get the desired result. Scenes can be covered in myriad ways. From a single take (no edits) to multiple set-ups, the director maps out the plan for the shots and then with the director of photography, script supervisor and assistant director, determines the order in which to shoot them.
Continuity is ensuring all the elements from one shot match in every way the elements in the shot that follows. Props, wardrobe, hair, make-up and acting are the departments that bear close scrutiny by the script supervisor, director and cinematographer. If a character holds a book in the right hand during a sequence, every shot must show the book in the correct hand. If the character changes it to the left hand half way through the scene, all shots must match the correct progression of the book from one hand to the next. From outside we see a character walk into a building wearing a red shirt. Several days later the scene is shot when the character enters the same building. It is imperative that actor be wearing the same shirt. In this same example, should the character open the door to exit the building from the interior with a great huff, when the reverse shot is executed from the exterior, the energy level must match that of the character leaving the building, still in a huff. Should the character saunter out of the building, the cut from interior to exterior, which takes place in an instant, may jar the audience. Maintaining continuity is everyone’s job. Continuity errors do occur, and often go unnoticed by the audience. But don’t count on it. It’s similar to making a bad grammatical error in a beautiful piece of writing. It takes the focus away from what is important.
Shots
Shots are either static (the camera remains stationary) or in movement or a combination of the two. In the same way, actors may be stationary or in motion or a combination of the two. The interaction between camera and actor is referred to as choreography.
The most common types of shots used are the master, mini-master, two shot, over the shoulder, and close up. These may be shot static on a tripod or mounted on a dolly, jib arm, crane or hand held for movement.
The master shot is popular because it takes in all the action of the scene. Once a master is in the can, the coverage must match the master. This helps to guide the remaining plan. To break up a big or long scene, a director might select to shoot several mini-masters.
When two characters are in a scene, the director employs a two shot to hold them both on the screen. The director can still keep both characters in a scene but favor the back or 3/4 profile of one of the characters in an over-the-shoulder shot. The frame features the character looking towards the camera, but the dynamic of having both characters on screen remains.
The size of shot is also an important consideration as a piece of the sequence. Directors can choose between the following:
- extreme long shot (XLS)
- long shot (LS)
- medium long shot (MLS)
- medium shot (MS)
- medium close up (MCU – also referred to as a bust shot)
- close up (CU)
- extreme close up (XCU)
The director indicates to the director of photography and actors a specific frame size by using their hands to show the size of the shot. Showing one hand slightly over the head, and the other at chest level means a bust shot. When staging actors, directors also need to identify how many characters are in a shot. A two shot means two actors, a three shot has three actors, etc. The director also selects shots such as over-the-shoulder (OTS) to maintain the tension and relationship within the frame of two characters yet seeing the face of only one.
To isolate one of the characters, the director shoots a single or close up. The single takes in much of the actor’s torso and head, whereas the close-up features the face. The director wants to accent the eyes or another part of the face then an extreme close-up (XCU) is used.
Alfred Hitchcock used the camera to explore subtext; “The sound track says one thing, while the image says something else. That’s a fundamental of film directing. Isn’t it exactly the way it is in real life? People don’t always express their inner thoughts to one another; a conversation may be quite trivial, but often the eyes will reveal what a person thinks or feels.”
Two additional common shots are establishing and insert. An establishing shot is used when a director wants the audience to know where they are, to have a reference point. Two characters sitting on a park bench could be anywhere in the world. A wide, establishing shot of the Eiffel Tower cues the audience they are in Paris. The next shot, a two shot of our main characters on a bench, makes the geography of the scene clear.
An insert is a close shot of something to which the director wants the audience or a character to see. The hand of the man on the bench holds a wedding ring. The girl clutches a plane ticket to Kabul. These close-ups help tell the story.
Each shot has an angle. For the most part, directors shoot at eye level. However, great effect can come from a low angle shot, high angle, or tilted (canted or dutch). The director John Huston once said, “It would be very hard to make someone, even a comedian, amusing or funny by shooting up at them. I don’t say this couldn’t be done, but I think it probably comes from our memories as children — from those that are bigger, wiser, stronger, nobler. We look up — same as you do with sculpture, monumental sculpture. Would you look down at your superior, or even God Almighty?”
Lenses
Each shot is taken with a particular lens. These range from wide angle (10mm) to normal (35 mm/50 mm), to long (75 mm to 200 mm). Extreme lenses, employed for specific dramatic effect include fish eye (5.7 mm) and very long (500 mm and longer). A lens can keep the subject in the frame sharp, or in focus, depending on the amount of light striking the lens, the focal length of the lens, and the depth of field. A wide-angle lens, for example, lets in a lot of light, so most objects in the frame are always in focus. A longer lens, in a dimly lit set-up, may focus on the actor while everything else in the foreground and background are blurred, or out-of-focus. This latter example can make for a visually striking effect that implies to an audience that the character is in their own world, separated from the rest. The image of isolation can also be accomplished by shooting a character in an extremely wide long shot from a high angle set against a barren landscape. The combination of lens, proximity to the subject, depth of field and angle of the camera, make for hundreds of options available to the director to visualize the story.
Besides these basic shots, directors come to rely on shots which have specific relevance related to the story. These include the reveal, point of view, and the reaction shot.
The audience sees only what is in the rectangular image on the screen. Whatever is to the left or right, above or below the frame is said to be “off screen.” If the camera dollies, zooms, tilts or pans to show us what we cannot see, this is a “reveal.” It is excellent visual storytelling because the shot builds tension as the camera moves to inform the audience of something they do not know and about which they may be very curious. It is very satisfying when the camera settles on the thing revealed.
A powerful example of the reveal is in Alfred Hitchcock’s film Psycho. Immediately after the violent death of the main character in the shower, the camera tracks ever so slowly from her open eye, past the bathroom door, into the bedroom, over to the end table, and settles on the folded newspaper. This key prop hides the $40,000 Janet Leigh’s character has embezzled. The shock of the stabbing in the shower has the added emotional value that the main character has been killed and the film is only half over. This is unusual in a film and one of the great story twists in cinema. All the while processing this information; the violent murder, the violation of the privacy of a shower, the elimination of the main character, when the camera settles on the newspaper the audience realizes for the first time that this is no longer a story of a crime of greed, but a crime of passion. That one shot, that reveal, that seemingly innocuous shot of the newspaper, packs quite a wallop.
When the camera becomes the character, it is called a point of view shot. A character looks off camera, shouts, “Hey you!” and the cut is made to what the character sees. We see the character walking cautiously down an alley. The cut is made to the character’s point of view, hand held, so it has a bit of movement, as would a person walking and looking ahead. Add some tense music and the audience immediately wants to know, who or what is at the end of the alley.
One of the more common and important shots in film grammar is the reaction shot. When two or more characters are in a scene, the director has the choice of shooting the character that is speaking and/or the character listening. In most cases all the lines from one character are shot from a particular angle, and the camera is then reversed to shoot the other characters lines. Included in the shooting is the period when the character to whom they are speaking says nothing. This is their reaction shot. The editor then has the option of using either the on-screen dialogue or the reaction shot of the character who is listening. Although it is nice to see who is speaking, once the characters have been established, the value of the reaction shot is that the audience hears the dialogue at the same time they see the reaction of the person listening. We, as an audience, can then share both the characters as well as our own reaction to the dialogue.
Choreography
Once frame selections are made, the director has the option to keep the camera static or in motion. A static camera presents a stage, or proscenium, in which the drama unfolds. In the early days of cinema, cameras were so heavy and bulky, the static shot was the director’s sole option. Cinema was born out of a still camera and the static camera still has value today.
Once cameras were put on tracks, and became lighter and smaller, directors found that a moving frame created a tremendous amount of energy. This freedom of movement added an element to cinematic expression that compounded the tension within the shot.
Directors can move the actors in the frame, move the frame around the actors, or a combination of the two. Camera movement includes pans, tilts, zooms, dolly, crane and hand held. The movement may be short or long, fast or slow. The speed may be altered in any manner within the shot. Moving the actors within the camera choreography is the blocking. As with lighting, the movement of the camera should be purposeful. A flashy camera may overshadow a subtle film. In a busy restaurant the director can have the camera follow a waiter holding a tray of food through the room and settle on the main characters.
Composition, besides aesthetic value, is important in that it affords the director an opportunity to direct the audience’s eye to that part of the shot deemed most important to tell the story. If the entire frame were busy with action in a long shot, it would say, “everyone is bustling about.” But if the director wants the audience to focus on an argument at the lower right hand corner of the frame, he or she can compose the shot in such as way as to have the audience’s eye drawn to that specific section of the frame. This can be achieved through blocking, lighting, camera movement and sound.
To illustrate the example above, the blocking of the background extras could be staged so they moved more slowly than the animated actors engaged in the argument. The lighting could be dominant in the portion of the frame where the argument is taking place. The camera could dolly in the direction of the characters arguing. The sound of their heated discussion could be dominant over the ambient sounds associated with everything else in the frame.
Depth is part of the illusion of a flat two-dimensional screen. Directors take advantage not only of the composition within the frame, but also the planes in the frame—foreground, middle and background. Shooting a sequence with the branch of a tree covering the upper right part of the frame forces the audience to look beyond the tree, thus creating the illusion of depth on the screen. Action can be staged on all three planes layering the scene with complex imagery. The director can also call attention to a specific part of the frame by racking the focus, from background, to middle ground, to foreground.
Architecture, size, relationship and negative space are tools in the director and cinematographer’s palette to create a dynamic frame. In designing Psycho, Hitchcock consciously juxtaposed Norman Bates’ tall Gothic house with the low, modern hotel, “That’s our composition, a vertical block and a horizontal block.”
Besides what an audience sees on screen, the director should pay attention to what is happening off screen. The four sides of the frame are constantly shifting if the camera is moving. Therefore, new information is continually being revealed. Curious about this new information, an audience is eager to be surprised. Off screen sounds, illustrating off screen action, make an audience curious to know what else is going on. Remember, the reveal is one of the more dynamic uses of cinematic language.
Short Cuts
Responsible for the schedule, directors learn short cuts to keep the company moving at a swift and efficient pace. Two valuable techniques are the employment of a second unit and swing crews. Though both can be expensive, the time they save translates into the money they save and in the end the company comes out ahead. Both part of a “B” team, they help the “A” team move faster.
The B team is the second unit, composed of cinematographer/operator, first assistant camera, clapper/loader driver and a second assistant director. During principal photography, a second unit might be assigned to shoot second camera in an action sequence, or shots that do not require principal actors. These shots may have been assigned to a second unit on the original schedule or may be slop shots left over from a shoot the A team couldn’t finish. These types of shots would include pickups, inserts, drive bys, establishing exterior shots, etc.
Should the A team miss an insert, the second unit can put it on their “to do” list. As a small team, the second unit can move quickly, collecting shots that keep the film on schedule. Second unit can be employed for short periods, to act as second camera and collect bits and pieces of the production schedule.
If a swing crew arrives on set the night before a big interior sequence, they can “rough in” the lighting instruments called for by the lighting plan. Then, when the A team arrives on set the next morning, the cinematographer and gaffer complete the lighting plan and the company is ready for principal photography much earlier than had the A started from scratch.
David K. Irving is a film director, writer and producer, book author, and an Associate Professor in film production at New York University. He has written and directed dozens of documentaries, and his feature directing credits include Night of the Cyclone, C.H.U.D. II, The Emperor’s New Clothes, Sleeping Beauty and Rumpelstiltskin.
Related filmmaking guides
- Film directing: getting good performances
- Coverage and the master shot
- Camera angles in film: a beginner’s guide
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