From the course: Creating a Short Film: 05 Directing

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Cheating and stealing shots

Cheating and stealing shots

- Frequently in the world of filmmaking you'll hear about cheating shots and stealing shots. While these two concepts aren't really related and aren't nearly as immoral as they sound, both can help you get better shots. Before we steal shots, let's look at how to cheat. Usually, after shooting a master shot of the entire scene, we go in tighter for reverses or close-ups, and often when we go in closer, things don't look quite right. Characters might be too close together or the light might not be good enough or we might want to pull characters farther away from the background in order to create more separation. This is what is referred to as cheating in filmmaking. When filming the scene where Korda'a gets discovered, we created a POV, or point of view, shot so we could give the audience a sense of how intimidating it would be to be this little girl and have all these big adults just kind of coming and swarming at you. In reality, Natty wasn't that much shorter than everyone, as you…

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