Thursday, 13 October 2011

Understanding some of the main camera techniques

Match on action
This refers to film editing and video editing when the editor cuts from one shot to another view that matches the first shot's action. This emphasises continuity of space and time by matching the action of the preceding shot with the continuation of the action. The audience can easily distinguish what is happening in the scene through this continuity editing technique. So an example of this is in the film, "The Lord Of The Rings The Two Towers" when the archer fires his arrow in one shot and then in the next shot it shows where the arrow has ended up.


Shot/reverse shot

When the camera switches between one character and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character. It makes the characters seem like they are looking at one another. This helps the audience to understand what is happening as all characters are being shown in close proximity with one another in different shots. My example in the film "Snatch" shows this continuous dialog between both the "pikeys" and "tommy" and "turkish".

The 180-degree rule 

This is when two individuals in one scene filmed within 180 degree arc. This helps the audience to understand where the characters are in the scene when they are constantly placed in the same left/right relationship to each other. If the camera passes over the imaginary axis connecting the two subjects, it is called crossing the line. The new shot, from the opposite side, is known as a reverse angle. This can cause confusion from the audience as they may not be able to understand where the characters actually are in relation to one another. The 180-degree rule is shown in this example on "Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones".



Gollum has a debate with his good half, Smeagol, about the Ring and the hobbits, which ends with Smeagol sending Gollum "away".

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