Hi I’m Sareesh Sudhakaran. In this video I’ll show you how to film
a scene with one camera. First: Why one camera? Traditionally, film was expensive so you didn’t
want to waste more film than you had to. Today it’s still rare to use more than one
camera because it’s hard to light a scene for different angles and still make it look
good. You’ll see many Hollywood big and medium
budget films and TV shows use more than one camera - called a multicam setup, but for
most productions it’s still just one camera. The simplest way to shoot a scene is to let
the actors act out the entire scene in one go, and record all of it from one vantage
point. Film directors do this all the time. It’s not the most popular way, but it’s
definitely okay to do it, if that works. In this scene from The Shining, the characters
are on their way to the Overlook Hotel, and the entire scene plays out in one take, with
no cuts. The camera is positioned in one place and
never moves. The car’s moving, but it didn’t have to. You can imagine the same conversation if they’ve
parked on the side eating sandwiches. When the camera is in a fixed position, I
call it a static camera. Does a static camera help this scene? Let’s see. Notice the position of the actors. Jack is closest to the camera and is largest
in the frame. The lens is a wide angle lens and this is
why you get this size difference. Hitchcock said, the most important thing should
be the biggest in the frame, and this is a subtle but powerful example of it. Not only is Jack the biggest, he’s also
the nearest to us. Director Stanley Kubrick is telling us Jack
is the important one here. Jack Nicholson was already a star by this
point, but even if it was a different actor, this would be true. Notice how Wendy is the farthest and smallest,
as befitting her personality in the film, and Danny stands up and is between them. He’s part of the family, and isn’t sitting
at the back doing his own thing, as most kids tend to do. They start out by discussing something mundane
and end up by talking about an event involving cannibalism, so the dialogue plays its part. As you can see, even with a static camera,
you still have things you can do to make a scene interesting. Now let’s take another scene from The Shining
where the camera moves without cuts. I’ve picked The Shining because the camera
movements are relatively simple to understand, though hard enough to execute. This is the hotel tour scene, and it’s the
first time we see the enormity and magnificence of the interiors of the Overlook Hotel. It starts with a tracking shot where the camera
is moving parallel to the actors at the same speed. It stops when they stop, which is a camera
technique as old as cinema. Then the camera moves in while Dick approaches
the group. Notice how the exact same thing happens again
as Danny approaches. The camera tracks sideways, and then moves
in closer. The actors are all standing still. It’s almost like a tableau, a stage play,
but with important differences. First of all, the first time the scene plays
out, we see the Overlook Hotel along with the characters. By placing them in a long shot, we get the
sense of scale. The ballroom is really big, with a tall ceiling
and great depth. We see the floor and the ceiling, again because
of the wide angle lens used. We take in the room and we appreciate the
characters’ sense of awe. The tracking reveals more of the ballroom
as we move forward, so it maintains our interest. Notice Jack here. As he approaches the bar, he slows down. Nobody will catch this, but something keeps
him away from it, and he ends up at the extreme left. On the other hand Wendy is among the other
staff. She’s taking in everything that’s happening,
but Jack is sort of removed. As Dick approaches the camera dollies in. This is a technique to eliminate more of the
background and forces the audience to focus on the characters. Also notice how Jack’s got his hands in
his pockets. He’s in a defensive posture. He shakes hands with Dick, but the hands go
back into the pockets. It sounds weird I know. When Danny arrives, the tracking is quicker
than the previous shot, and when the camera moves in, notice Wendy calls Danny to her,
and he doesn’t stop with Jack. At this point in the story you’re not supposed
to know what’s going to happen, so all these things are subtle. The director hopes it builds up as the movie
goes on. The third way to shoot a scene is to film
parts of the scene from different angles. To do this with one camera, it means, you
let the actors act out only parts of the scene while you record it. Then you change camera position and film the
next part, and so on. You piece together the scene in editing. Let’s take a scene that happens a bit later,
as Dick shows Wendy and Danny around the kitchen. Notice how the position mirrors the position
in the car earlier, but this time Wendy is prominent here. She’s not a pushover, as we’ll find out
later. They walk through the kitchen and go into
two storage rooms. The first is the cold storage. Here the blocking of the scene is similar
to the second example. Moving camera, dollying in, while the actors
stand in place. It seems like it’s not very interesting,
but Kubrick is just building up to something. The second room they enter is the dry food
storage area. Notice the differences. Earlier Dick was on the left. Danny was with Wendy. Now Dick is on the right, and Danny is on
his own. Also notice the camera doesn’t move forward
here. Without us knowing, we instinctively feel
something is different about this room. The camera tracks sideways while they explore
more of the storage area. Notice how Danny stays back, mirroring Jack
earlier. It’s like a boundary being crossed. At this point as a director you ask yourself,
why would I want to break this scene into smaller parts? We cut to a mid shot of Danny. The director cuts after a string of uncut
scenes to break our reverie, for one. Second, we wouldn’t have been able to see
Danny’s reaction unless we saw it closer. So Kubrick thought it important to cut here. Once the first part of the scene was shot,
the camera was repositioned for this shot, and this section was shot again. In this mid shot the camera zooms into a closeup
to highlight Danny’s shock. This zooming in is Kubrick’s style. Some directors like Spielberg will move the
camera closer, others won’t move the camera all. At this point, the audience wants to know. Why is Danny frozen here? What’s the cause? To answer this natural question, Kubrick gives
us another cut. We cut to Dick, who’s talking to Wendy. If Kubrick had cut back to the wide shot we
wouldn’t see what’s coming next. Dick looks back at Danny and we get a voice
over. They can talk telepathically. Danny gets it, we know that because Kubrick
cuts back to him and we feel he has understood the message. To show us Wendy doesn’t observe this, Kubrick
goes back to the wide shot as it tracks back. Interesting how the camera movement and actor
blocking feel so simple, but is still complex. That’s Stanley Kubrick. Most directors never approach this level of
understanding. He sets us up through long uncut scenes, and
then we get two quick shot and reverse shot and it makes it more powerful. If the entire scene were shot with such angles,
would these two stand out or take on an importance they have here? Of course not. To shoot a scene from multiple angles with
one camera, you must first ensure there’s a reason for it. Once you’ve done that you must find the
least number of shots it will take to accomplish this. You shouldn’t just go about and shoot the
scene from a million angles. It takes a lot of time and money to shoot
all the extra shots, and the actors get numb. Experienced actors can take it, but inexperienced
actors will simply burn out, as will the rest of your crew, and your bank account. Some directors make their actors repeat the
entire scene in every take. Some only ask actors to do pieces. It depends on what the actors are doing or
saying, and what their emotional intensity is at that point. There’s no formula for it. Some directors are happy with 4 takes. Other directors like Kubrick and James Cameron
make their actors do 40 takes. Whatever works. The audio is recorded as many times, the lighting
changes slightly for each shot, and the continuity of action is to be maintained so they all
cut together. I go over the creating, staging, blocking,
rehearsing and shooting of dialogue scenes in great detail in my ultimate guide to shooting
dialogue scenes. I’ll link to it below. If you liked this video please hit like, and
don’t forget to subscribe and hit the bell you’ll see on the right - because YouTube
will remind you it’s time to get your mind blown again, when I post my next video.
