Elements of film

The shot, framing, focus, camera angles, camera movement, lighting, sound, and editing: A structural approach to film criticism

Based on the book by John Golden as well as a workshop for PPS educators he presented at Grant H.S., Portland, Ore.

Film and television, like narrative fiction, can be analyzed using a structural approach. This technique -- also called deconstruction or exposition -- studies the elements of film: the shot, framing, focus, camera angles, camera movement, lighting, sound, and editing. It is the director who “calls the shots” and decides what to put into his or her frame or onto the soundtrack. Remember, it is the effect of the film on the audience, not the film terms themselves, that are important to our discussion of film. It’s better to say or write, “I saw a low-angle shot that demonstrates __________” instead of “I saw a long-shot.”

The shot

The shot is the building block of all filmmaking. The shot is a single, uninterrupted piece of film. It is on the screen until it is replaced by another image through some type of editing.

Framing

Framing refers to how an object or person is positioned within the shot. The director decides how much of the frame the object will occupy. The three types of framing are:

❏ Long shot (LS): A shot taken from some distance; shows the full subject and perhaps the surrounding scene as well.

❏ Establishing shot (ES): Sets the scene or shows the space of a scene; often a long shot or series of shots.

❏ Close-up shot (CS): The image being shot takes up at least 80 percent of the frame. There is also the extreme close-up that would show one part of the body or a portion of an object.

❏ Medium shot (MS): In-between LS and CS; people are seen from the waist up.

Focus

There are ways for a director to adjust the focus to visually communicate something to the audience:

❏ Soft focus: When a director intentionally puts his or her object slightly out of focus to make the image look softer or unclear.

❏ Rack focus: When a director shifts the focus from one object to another in the same shot in order to direct the audience’s attention.

❏ Deep focus: When the foreground and background are equally in focus.

Camera angles

A director must also decide the point of view, or where the camera will be placed in relationship to the object or person. He or she may choose to use one of the following camera angles:

❏ Low angle (LA): Camera shoots subject from below; has the effect of making the subject look larger than normal -- strong, powerful, threatening.

❏ High angle (HA): Camera is above the subject; usually has the effect of making the subject look smaller than normal -- weak, powerless, trapped.

❏ Eye level (EL): Accounts for 90 to 95 percent of the shots seen because it is most natural; camera is even with the key character’s eyes.

❏ Dutch angle (DA): Shot that is tilted sideways on the horizontal line (also called “canted” angle); used to add tension to a static frame, it creates a sinister or distorted view of a character.

Camera movement

Early films used a stationary camera fixed upon a tripod. Eventually, camera operators created ways for the camera to love -- or appear to move. Here are the possibilities for camera movement:

❏ Pan: Stationary camera moves left or right.

❏ Tilt: Stationary camera moves up or down.

❏ Zoom: The camera is stationary but the lens moves, making the objects appear to grow larger or smaller.

❏ Dolly: The camera itself is moving with the action -- on a track, on wheels, or held by hand.

Lighting

The word “photography” literally means “light drawing.” A motion picture is literally a “moving light drawing.” The principal source of light on a movie set is called the “key light,” and other lights balance, soften, and shade the key light. Film lighting is either “low-key lighting” or “high-key lighting.” In low-key lighting, the scene is dark or black except for the object or person. In high-key lighting, the scene is bright and well lit with very few shadows. The types of lighting are:

❏ Low-key: Scene is flooded with shadows and darkness; creates suspense/suspicion.

❏ High-key: Scene is flooded with light; creates bright and open-looking scene.

❏ Neutral: Neither bright nor dark -- even lighting throughout the shot.

❏ Bottom/side: direct lighting from below or from one side; often dangerous or evil-looking, may convey split personality or moral ambiguity.

❏ Front/rear: soft, direct lighting on face or back of subject -- may suggest innocence, create a “halo” effect.

Sound

What you hear in a film is as important as what you see. As John Golden writes in his book Reading In The Dark: “A violin can make us feel sad during the deathbed speech, a gunshot can make us jump out of our seats, and a voice-over narration can help us follow the story, though we rarely comment on the ‘really awesome sound in that movie.’” There are many ways to classify sound in film -- dialogue,music, sound effects -- and there are various ways to analyze the sound in a film -- pitch, timbre, direction, whether it’s on-screen or off-screen -- but the categories that are most important for our use are these:

❏ Diegetic: Sound that could be heard logically by the characters within the film; sound can also be internal diegetic, meaning that the sound can only be heard within the mind of one character.

❏ Nondiegetic: Sound that could not be heard by the characters; sound given directly to the audience by the director.

Editing

How do shots get put together? Editing refers to methods by which a director chooses to move from one shot to another. The most common type of edit is called a “cut” -- one piece of film is literally cut and then attached to another piece of film. Others include the face, the dissolve, the crosscut, the flashback, and the eye-line match.

❏ Cut: The most common technique is a “cut” to another image.

❏ Fade: Scene fades to black or white; often implies that time has passed.

❏ Dissolve: An image fades into another; can create a connection between images.

❏ Crosscutting: Cut to action that is happening simultaneously; also called parallel editing.

❏ Flashback: Movement into action that has happened previously, often signified by a change in music, voice-over narration, or a dissolve; a “flash-forward” leads us ahead in time.

❏ Eye-line match: A shot of a person looking, then a cut to what he or she saw, followed by a cut back for reaction.

❏ Rhythm and Duration: One final aspect of editing is how long each shot is permitted to stay on-screen before it gets replaced by another shot through one of the editing techniques described above. The avera shot in a traditional American film lasts from about eight to ten seconds, with plenty of shots that are much shorter or longer depending upon the director’s purpose for the shot.

Mise-en-Scene

This term refers to what appears within the frame of the shot, including the costumes, props, acting lighting, and make-up, It’s borrowed from the theater and is used to describe what appears onstage. When we talk about the mise-en-scene of a particular shot or film, we should look at what significant props surround the characters, or whether the bad guy wears a black hat, or how the light plays off a character’s features.

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Elements of Film Quiz First/Last Name_________________________

English 5/6 – Rob Melton Date_______________________ Period ______

1. What is the name of the Grant H.S. teacher who wrote the book “Reading In The Dark”?

2. Film and television, like fiction, can be analyzed using a structural approach. What is this technique called?

3. It is the effect of the film on the _______________, not the film terms themselves, that are important to our discussion of film.

4. What is the name of the element that is the building block of all filmmaking?

5. What does framing refer to?

6. Camera angle is also known as point of view. Name two camera angles a director might use:

1)

2)

7. Name the four possibilities for camera movement:

1)

2)

3)

4)

8. Describe the difference between low-key lighting and high-key lighting:

9. What is diagetic sound? Nondiagetic sound?

10. List three examples of editing that directors use to move from one shot to another.

BONUS QUESTION: The word photography is from two Greek words, photo + graph. What do the two words mean?

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