From the course: Pro Video Tips

Using camera height and POV to better tell your story

From the course: Pro Video Tips

Using camera height and POV to better tell your story

- Mastering the craft of filmmaking means more than simply mastering the camera and the technical mechanics. It also means mastering the art of visual storytelling. And that requires an understanding of the mental and emotional aspects of the visuals you're creating. So, this week on Pro Video Tips, we're stepping away from the technical to get into the practical application of visual storytelling. The camera represents the eyes of the audience. They experience the scene and characters, only as you choose to show them. By developing an understanding of the psychological effects of various lenses, framing and camera angles, we can better manipulate how our audience perceives a given character, setting or story event. One of the simplest but most powerful visual choices you'll have to make after choosing a lens, is choosing a camera height. Similar to the neutral visual choice of using a 50 millimeter normal lens, photojournalists and documentary filmmakers tend to shoot most people and scenes at eye level, because it most represents how we actually see other people in real life, more or less at the same height and eye line as ourselves. So with 50 millimeter as our normal lens, then eye level is our normal height. By raising or lower the camera, we can break from this natural visual perspective and change how the audience feels about our scene. For example, if we lower the camera and shoot up at someone or something, it tends to make the subject on the other end look much larger or more imposing. This low angle is a mostly unnatural viewpoint that we only experience as children looking up to adults, or grownups looking up to someone much larger and intimidating than ourselves. It's also the same angle we see when we ourselves are down on the ground for some reason, perhaps because we've fallen or been knocked down. Because low camera angles can give us the emotional feeling of being towered over, they are frequently used to set up characters or objects as strong opposition for a character. So, let's take a look at the potential storyboards for two different simple scenarios. A villain walks into the room to challenge our main hero. At a normal angle, the villain appears to be the equal to our main character, who is also shown at a normal eye level. However, shot from a low angle, we now have a much scarier looking villain that makes the audience question if such a powerful foe can be defeated at all. In our other opposition scenario, a young child stands on a pool deck gripping a ladder trying to work up the nerve to jump off the high dive for the very first time. Seen at a neutral, dead-on eye level as she climbs, we aren't made to visually feel much emotion one way or the other. But drop that camera down to the pool deck and point up at a seemingly endless ladder, and we've set our child hero up for an epic climb up an impossible ladder. Apart from setting up more daunting oppositions, low camera angles are also frequently used to instill characters and objects with the sense of authority, importance or power. The first time our character sees the beautiful woman of his dreams and falls in love at first sight, we might also choose to shoot from a low angle to show the emotional power she has over him. So those are some of the most common, but by no means, all of the applications of shooting from a low angle. But now let's look at the storytelling applications and implications of shooting from higher angles. Now as you may have guessed, high camera angles have an equally powerful, but opposite psychological effect. Placing your camera higher up and shooting down on a subject shows them from the viewpoint that we see young children as adults. This makes characters on the other end of the lens seem vulnerable, weak or less significant. With this in mind, let's revisit our previous storyboard scenarios, and look at how we might shoot some other parts of the same scenes. A low angle shot looking up at our villain might naturally be followed by a high angle over the shoulder from the villain's point of view. Now we're looking down on our hero, which would establish the relationship between these two characters, and heighten the drama of the confrontation even more. Going back to the high dive where we established a scary climb before the little girl by using a low angle shot looking up, we might choose to then show a reverse angle shooting down all the way from the top of the high dive, showing the lone tiny figure dwarfed in the center of the frame far below as she nervously makes her way up the ladder. Now this doesn't mean that we should always alter the camera height based on who is on screen. The most effective visual storytelling techniques are often the ones that are applied sparingly at key points to help tell the story visually. Pay careful attention the next time you watch a dramatic movie or TV show, and there's a good chance that you may notice a director subtly shifting the camera height for certain scenes to help tell the story at hand. Of course, the exact emotional effect of any given angle, high or low, if there even is a strong emotional effect, will always ultimately be determined by the actual context of the scene. For example, high and low angles might also be employed for purely logical reasons, with little or no emotional implications in scenes where two characters just happen to naturally be at different heights, such as someone sitting at a table talking to someone else who is standing, or a conversation between a parent and child. Remember, once you come to know and understand these visual conventions and techniques, you can then begin to discover creative and effective ways to deepen your storytelling by subtly playing with, manipulating or violating them outright for dramatic effect.

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