The ABCs of Cinematography - An Intro to Filmmaking

did you know that cinema is a language [Music] the truth is most moviegoers don't really think about it that much but then again they shouldn't have to the whole point of cinema is to walk into a theater and lose yourself over to the movie up on screen and go on a journey into a life that is not your own so why would they worry about the distracting artifice behind it I mean not Ian's in theory understands that there's a lot of people putting in time and work but because of that invisible magic of cinema they also assume you can just sort of put a camera in front of some subjects and/or some fancy scenery or whatever and it'll all magically work out it doesn't heck if you've ever tried making your own stuff in high school you learn this really quickly Hollywood efforts don't just come to life because of production value or lavish sets it's because most filmmakers understand the language of cinematography they understand that certain shots angles and colors don't just show you what you're seeing they communicate how you should feel about it too and often those shots have meaning in enough themselves and if you want to know you should be able to learn it too and it often makes me upset how little critics talk about the basics of cinematography maybe they don't even know themselves but I just know how little we give the glossary of simple terms for the audience so that they can actually understand what they're seeing because there really is a proverbial ABCs of cinematic language so let's talk about it to that here's the glossary of moves and cinematography and how they affect the audience there are six larger groupings let's start with the first section one shot types now what actually judges what defines a traditional shot by the size of the subject relative to the frame for instance a wide shot means the viewer can see a lot of the space where the scene is set whether it be a landscape or even just a room it is most often used to establish the scope of the place the subjects are located in the geography between the subjects and the emotional context of the space at large then on the other end of the spectrum there is the close-up which is one of the most powerful tools a filmmaker has at their disposal it brings us near an actor to see every bit of emotion on their face their pain their sorrow their yearning or their desire and yes those are the only four emotions but there's a delicate art to the close-up letting us close to an actor's face makes for such a uniquely intimate moment if you use them too much over the course of a movie you can actually lose the potency of this powerful effect use it too little you will take away the audience's crucial need to connect in a mote with a moment now a medium shot is of course the halfway point between a wide and a close-up it generally shows an actor from the waist up the intent of this shot is to get some of the benefits of each you're close enough to get some intimacy with their facial expression but you can also see the actors relationship with the space that is their interaction with objects in the scene or most importantly of all other people which brings us to the two-shot this is really just the general term for anytime two actors are in screen at once there are a host of variations within this that mostly have to do with where a subject is facing in relationship to the camera for instance in an American two-shot the two subjects will face directly toward each other and we'll see them both in profile Wes Anderson has a lot of shots like this often to highlight the distance between the two people in question or there's another variation called a dirty two shot in which we're really emphasizing one subject in a medium or close-up but we can also see bits of the other character in frame usually just over their shoulder this gives us more context for understanding the space between the characters often it is used to gently remind us how much of the other person is present or has a bearing on the scene Zack Snyder reminds you about other things lastly an insert shot is any close-up of an object or gesture that gives us a piece of information sometimes it's an object the characters are fixating on sometimes it's what a character is doing like making coffee or sometimes it's about someone trying to hide something imagine two people talking over dinner but then we see a quick shot of one of them pulling a gun from out of their pocket below the table this would make us feel dread and a sense of dramatic irony all from an insert shot now as I go through all these examples note that I'm not strike two describe the shots in and of themselves I'm trying to show you the way that these shots have a direct effect on us as a viewer in the information that we will take away from them section two camera angles now let's talk about the angle of a shot which implies where the camera is in relationship to the subject not just the size of the subject a low angle shot is when the camera is lower in looking up at the subject this is most commonly used in horror movies when you want to make a terrifying monster feel all the more imposing meanwhile a high angle shot is when a camera is above the subject looking down on it which can make the subject feel meek and scared keep in mind these don't need to be used exclusively for horror they can be used subtly to emphasize power dynamics and relationships between your characters especially within the space at hand for example I think about how often they're used in films like remains of the day where characters are constantly looking up and down stairways to emphasize their status and class differences a Dutch angle is a shot where the frame itself is not parallel to the x axis of the scene in other words the camera is leaning in a direction to the left or right an excellent example of this might be seen in 1995's 12 monkeys this is a technique that makes the audience feel off-kilter or like something as a Miss but again it's all about purpose it works better in a paranoid movie like this one but I genuinely don't understand the near wall-to-wall use of it in a film like Battlefield Earth I think the error comes from a misconception the director may have wanted the movie to feel alien but using these shots it's just another case of luring an entire stetic over a film and not making choices for the emotion of the moment just because the world itself is bizarre doesn't mean you want to pummel the audience with the same paranoid feeling like you're trying to do in something like 12 monkeys it's all about using the language in a way where you understand how it makes the audience feel lastly a POV shot is when the camera is looking from the point of view of the character themselves there's a kind of voyeuristic quality to the shot as it literally puts the audience in the character's shoes there's a lot of examples of this in Silence of the Lambs where we're witnessing terrifying things from Clarice's act perspective but remember when you do this you have to signify it in the Edit by cutting from other establishing shots but of course the camera doesn't just sit still it moves section three camera movements so a static shot is when a camera doesn't move at all hey stillness is a move and it usually happens when the camera is locked onto a tripod I feel like a lot of young filmmakers are afraid to use too many static shots because it feels plain to them but this is the base language of all filmmaking and if you're properly editing between them and bringing shots closer and closer to your subjects and you build this tension that I can not only feel kinetic you have this perfect control over what information and emotion you want to emphasize and when which is only the most important thing in all of Me's on set next a camera tilt is when the camera stays at a fixed point on a tripod in tilts up or down now there's something interesting about this motion because it draws attention to the idea that the audience is in a fixed position and looking up and down effectively simulating a character's POV now sometimes this can actually take the viewer out of the story if there's no established context but you'll also see it done a lot in establishing shots to show where a high up in a certain building Mike you'll see them like Soderberg like he'll start up though like ground level and like looked up and like some it's like a light yeah that's what I mean by that now the term tilt I did it now the term tilt is also sometimes interchanged with another shot called a pan or panning shot that's actually when the camera is turned on the horizontal plane allowing us to follow a subject in their space the film Romo used this technique beautifully to show Cleo walking around the house she worked in highlighting the way the family often ignored her as she went on with her chores now truthfully people mix up these two words and they'll often say a pan up or tilt right and then add clients usually get it super wrong but the most important part is you simply know the direction the camera is moving but then there's what happens when the camera isn't locked down to a tripod at all a handheld shot is when the camera comes off the tripod and an operator uses it mounted on their shoulder usually the intent of this shot is to give the scene a documentary like affectation and make the scene feel more grounded in reality but this is actually one of the first big misconceptions of cinema not only can too much handheld make the viewer feel sick what handheld really does to an audience emotionally speaking it's make the audience feel out of control and uneasy and like things are in danger and when a film chooses that moment wisely it can be used to great effect but when making a film where everythings handheld you frequently lose the inherent subtle communication that comes with a lot of other kinds of controlled shots remember just because it's easier production-wise doesn't make it inherently effective mark my words there is never a one-size-fits-all stylistic approach when it comes to shot selection especially when there are so many other graceful alternatives now you may have heard the term tracking shot before but that phrase gets us into some complications because people often take a tracking shot to mean the shot tracks the subject but not only is that a bit of a misnomer that might not actually be where the term comes from back in the day you had to lay down actual track for equipment and hence the term tracking shot but the problem is once we started using more advanced equipment a lot of people kept calling them tracking shots and we stuck to the terminology and I'm talking like this now people think I'm being pedantic when I talk about this but I mention it because there's still miscommunication on set because of this usage issue that's why on set you'll see most people identify the shop based on the kind of equipment being used to that a dolly shot is when a camera is put on a dolly that is a cart with wheels that are on the aforementioned tracks it not only sets up a very careful and precise path it allows for the perfect repetition throughout takes for the audience it puts their own eye in motion but only on the horizontal plane this motion actually gives the viewer sense of control believe it or not we feel less like we are absorbing and more investigating a given location peering into the world and exploring it and because you are generally at ground level you feel like a mere human traveling through the scene a Steadicam shot uses a Steadicam it functions a lot like a dolly shot but with even more fluidity because now you can use the z-axis to glide up and as well no longer just a human being the camera now has a true gods eye it makes the audience feel all-seeing and all powerful capable floating around any environment and taking in ornate detail but like the close-up there should be warnings and wielding this kind of power because of the steadicams time-saving ease you see so many big movies shooting so much Steadicam these days to the point that it kind of loses its power and purpose it just makes the whole film feel effortless and easy but with certain shots that's what you actually want think of the famous shot in Goodfellas where lorraine bracco x' characters being guided through the restaurant which appears to be this kind of Wonderland and she's taken in the back way and given special treatment Scorsese is not just doing it because it looks cool he's doing it because it's this perfect way to emphasize her emotional experience of how dazzling and smooth and carefree his life can be but the rest of the movie it relies on so many other kinds of cinematic language that get into the various emotions of the moment lastly a crane shot and it makes use of a specialty crane that introduces even more range to the z-axis it allows you to get shots that would be completely impossible for any human being to achieve it's a god-sized view to the max and great for larger-than-life spectacle now there's a whole bunch of other super expensive equipment that you can use for cars but we'll cover that some other time section 4th lenses in focus so there's a reason most cinematographers don't really give a rat's ass about what camera you use to shoot your movie not only are most debates about modern camera resolution pointless this demo from Steve Gadlin linked below is incredible but also all the important information of you er needs is communicated through the choices a director and DP make together the visuals of the film are much much much more dependent on the lens selection than on the resolution of the camera for example your lens selection greatly affects your depth of field that is how much of the subjects within frame are actually in focus a lens with deep focus means you can capture a lot of detail close to the camera as well as detail that's far away this allows a director to show lots of information and both the foreground and deep in the background it's great when you want to show your subject within landscapes or what you want to communicate through the detailed context of the surrounding area think of a scene and something like 1981's blowout where you see John Travolta working busily with all the sound equipment and things scattered all over the room the viewers meant to notice the mess within his surroundings a lens with shallow focus will make anything that is not the same distance with the main subject blurred this has the benefit of making the audience concentrate on what really matters on the scene leaving everything in the background or immediate foreground hazy and unimportant imagine if a character was receiving some heartbreaking news you want the Cameron to emphasize all the pain on their face and fully register that and nothing else now a rack focus shot is when you actually change your focus from one distance to another there's a simple famous example of this in the opening of The Lion King first we see the worker ants crawling along the edge of a tree then the shot wrecks focus to legions of zebras galloping behind them on the ground this is also great when you want to emphasise people's reactions at different times within a shot or shift the audience's focuses ever so slightly so that they notice something now within lens selection there's also the question of the angle of the lens which is sort of a misnomer or at least it's confusing because that term also applies to things we mentioned in cinematography above what do you want for me I didn't make up these terms I'm just I'm trying but what we're really talking about is the focal length within the lens itself those are usually measured by millimetre ranges that go from about 8 to 170 millimeters aside from how these measurements capture the aforementioned that the field they also affect the distortion of the image for example a wide-angle lens will take in a lot of information but it'll also make everything that's too close to the camera seem huge and bulbous and everything far away seems small and tiny it's like looking through people essentially curving the image in a rather dramatic surreal way on the other hand there's a long telephoto lens which will not only be able to zoom in on objects far away but it will actually flatten the image instead of making a bulbous it will make it so that all the objects seem like they're at the same depth there's this famous shot in the Graduate where Dustin Hoffman is running down a road speed but because the image is flattened it seems like he's almost running in place which adds to the feeling of futility what this also allows for is a camera zoom where it makes it seem like the cameras rushing in quick or zooming out but all the movement is actually done within the camera itself a zoom can be done in a subtle way but often it can be jarring a way of hyper emphasizing a subject or throwing off the audience next we ran out of letters oh no what do we do well this is a fun thing that we can correspond to cinematography on set you actually marked the number of camera setups on the slate with an A for the first setup and a B for the second and so on but when you've done more than 26 camera setups in a scene well you start the alphabet over with a a and then a B and so on so we're keeping with a theme next we have a shot called the vertigo effect which is when the camera actively zooms in or out while the camera itself actually moves in the opposite direction like the scene in Goodfellas and it gives the viewer this surreal paranoid unnerving effect but keep in mind all these are just the extremes of what you can do with camera lenses there's so many options out there that have an endless amount of flexibility the famous photographer Henri cartier-bresson said he loved shooting with the 50 millimeter lens because it was the closest way to simulating the human eye now do you mind that's only true at certain distances because yeah I has this amazing ability to just focus yeah but you know finding the right lens and shot will take this constant tinkering especially in terms of how you're trying to capture the faces of your actors one lens might make them look gaunt well another gives them a fullness of life you're looking for the effect of this choice is so powerful section 5 eyelines let's hear it for eye lines yeah this simply refers to the direction the characters are looking and that may seem small but it's actually one of the most important things about cinematography not only does the character's eyes direct the viewers gaze from one person to another but they tell us so much about what the characters are concentrating on and why so when we discuss highline's the best way to talk about them is in terms of degrees imagine the character is looking right at the camera yep this is zero degrees and if they're looking completely away from you that's 100 80 degrees and if they're turned and perfect profile to the left or right that's 90 degrees got it cool because this will establish how we talk about the effects of different shots now most of the time a character's eye line will be within 45 degrees of the audience's gaze meaning they will be facing the camera on looking toward you but not directly at you this centers the character's eye line directly up the other subject they are talking to or looking at it gives us just enough visibility to see what their eyes are doing and communicate their emotions beautifully now having them look outside 45 degrees will actually draw the viewers eye away to something else maybe it's a new insert shot maybe it's something coming into the scene we don't know but it's something when a character looks past 90 degrees and away from the camera they instantly become a mystery to us it almost feels like they're trying to hide something but while this communicates that action itself it's important to remember that you are still denying the audience the emotional connection with what the subject is feeling for instance there's this beautiful monologue that Richard Jenkins gives in the movie Eat Pray Love we're talking about something he's so sad and ashamed of so they make the choice to have him turn away from the camera for a lot of it and yeah it's like I get it but in trying to communicate that overtly they actually denies the opportunity to connect with the deep emotion the characters feeling and we cannot emot-- alongside them which is only the entire damn point of what you were doing lastly when a character looks 0° and directly into camera please understand that this is creepy and that's because it effectively breaks the fourth wall and the social contract with the audience that makes us feel invisible so usually when someone's looking directly into a camera the camera should represent the POV perspective of the main character so that we can understand it's happening in turn this way there will be a purpose to the unnerving effect of having someone on screen look directly at us Silence of the Lambs was so good at using this because it wanted to creeped us out it didn't want to bring us closer we'll get to misuses in a second section 6 colors and lighting of course color tones and hues and lighting gradients prompt feelings within the viewer we have so many beautiful associations with color and moon in the meaning of both and there are endless permutations to this so again I'm gonna try and focus on the extreme ends and what they communicate to us specifically shots that use dominant hues now a cool blue sheen will make things feel distant cold or unemotional meanwhile blues complimentary color yellow will make things feel warm somewhat even swelteringly hot notice how both these colors were famously used for emotional effects in the movie traffic then a green hue of Oaks nature and can make things feel lush organic and renewed but when applied to urban and man-made environments it actually makes us feel sickly and unwell a red hue is of course the color of passion and sumptuousness darken that same color and a brown hue will make things feel antiquated and old which is largely informed by the old discoloration on photographs now a purple hue is often a tricky color because it's either regality or it's spring blooms or it's romance but it's often ruled by the context of different cultures so that one can go many different directions next a black u evokes of course darkness and mystery fear of the unknown all of which that we cannot see and a white u signifies the blinding intensity of being overwhelmed or perhaps enveloped in a blank detail list space now all of the previous examples were of course overt but a lot of times the approach will be more subtle in organic meaning you'll be mixing certain colors into overall color palettes for instance a warm summer palette that is red and yellow and white combines the emotions associated with those colors into a bigger form of happiness and you'll see it in a lot of romantic comedies a winter palette that is white and blue and purple delivers a cooling effect communicating isolation and detachment rather than relying on one collar palettes deliver a motion in a naturalistic way that doesn't feel overwhelming now we could make a whole video on endless permutations of lighting that could change a shot but they're really just two general modes to mention here and they have to do with the key of the lighting for instance a shot with high key lighting meaning everything is really brightly lit and detailed so there's no harsh contrast we'll make actors look and it has the added benefit of making the audience feel comfortable and safe meanwhile a lot of dramas use low-key lighting which is a bit of a contradiction because sometimes the magnitude of the key light itself can be very intense but that's neither here nor there what we're talking about is creating high contrast and lots of shadows often within interesting shades of grey and gradients it is essentially more designed and signifies to us a serious dangerous tragic and satin world like literally every film noir ever so there we have it the ABCs of cinematography I know it seems like a lot of information and I know it barely scratched the surface we could keep talking about the function of fill lights and kickers and color tones that gets us into the territory of construction that is the way we take all these ABCs and combine them into cinematic language we call this combination knees onsen and it's the end result of the way everything about a movie comes together and it's critical because no element of cinema is ever completely singular take the single most powerful tool in a filmmakers arsenal that's right shot reverse shop think about it the simplest of cuts between two subjects is remarkable it magically and quickly transports the viewer back and forth and they're able to take in to people's conversations in real time it's so dang important to virtually every scene in everything ever but the basic execution of shot reverse shot can be messed up easily too for instance I can be looking at two perfectly beautiful shots but when I put those two shots together and the eye lines don't match that's technically bad cinematography even though the issue is only revealed through the Edit of the two shots this is why constructing a scene needs forethought unity of vision an understanding of how everything ultimately goes hand and hand and hand and hand but it's not just about preventing the bad but emphasizing stronger emotions and sometimes it's counterintuitive remember when I said that utilizing close-ups too much could be wearing on an audience well that's certainly true but what if someone used the wearing quality for artistic effect 1968 John Cassavetes made a film called faces and it's largely a series of close-ups that brought you close to these brooder desperate in agonizing people who also had these bits of vulnerability the point was to feel too close and worn down and put off by these people so it's all about using the effect of a given shot to get what you actually want for instance remember when I said silence Lambs use a character looking directly into the camera to make it unnerving well I don't know if you've ever seen peep show but it's a comedy where the characters often stare directly into the camera when confronting one another but it uses the unnerving tension for laughs the camerawork just plays up their anger and comic fashion feels so over-the-top but that's the genius of it and likewise sometimes people get that function wrong for instance there's a certain director who uses this tactic a lot but he doesn't realize he's messing it up Tom Hooper often defends his cameras tearing by saying that he's using this to make it more intimate and emotional but like peep show it's not letting you in it's just pushing you away but what do I know he's an Academy award-winning director he can't make misguided decisions always wins folks look inventive camerawork isn't achieved by ignoring the rules it's using that knowledge to create new and purposeful effects like I think the way that David Lynch can take a shot of something that's bright and sunny and happy but he'll use this eerie sound pitch underneath it to make it feel terrifying it's all on purpose he's trying to set up the main thrusts of the film and how these worlds of darkness hide under shiny happy exteriors it may feel original but really he just understands the different effect of these two tactics he's using the established language correctly and just like someone trying to speak a new language in real life you really have to be able to use the words correctly in the first place I mean I can't go up to a French person and just say things that sound French to communicate not only would that be ineffective it would be downright insulting the same is true of cinematography just in a much more subtle and complex way and many people don't often notice until it's too late what this really tells us is that the ABCs of cinematography are like any language once you understand the cues that viscerally affect the audience you can use them to push the language engage the viewer stretch the limits of combinations juxtapose story and meaning and themes and symbols in order to guide our experience in order to be understood in the name of shaping something better and this this is just the beginning because the language of cinema is about so much more than camera moves it's sound it's a music it's a VFX it's rhythms it's edits it's everything there's still so much to talk about good thing we're gonna make more videos yeah hey everyone thank you so much for watching it means the world and for your patience and everything else we're already hard at work on the next one and we're very excited about it us but right now I just want to thank all the supporters on patreon who have been amazing and is the reason all of this is possible so just a few shout outs to Chris Branch cable nitwit who else we got in here we got a husband husband like on that one thank you to Neal not Neal thank you to Muhammad thank you to rec law that's cool Steven Pettigrew thank you to Shady crafts Shady traps thank you to Jose Garcia thank you to drake Lazarus thank you to David Lemieux thank you to Kemper Herren thank you - Clementine Webb thank you to Karen Walker thank you everybody it really means so much and again I'm really excited about the next video coming up you're gonna like it you

Channel: FILM CRIT HULK

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Keywords: filmcrithulk, cinema, video essay, cinematography, abcs, film, filmmaking, film school, movies

Id: GZW3OsHpjiY

Length: 28min 36sec (1716 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 25 2020