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AS Media Studies MED2
Film & Television Textual Analysis Handbook 2 How to Read Texts - Camerawork
High Pavement 6th Form College New College Nottingham Stuart Grenville-Price Department of Film and Media Studies
How to Read Texts The reading, or decoding, of a moving image can be approached in the following way. The approach involves focussing on a number of technical factors (deconstructing the text) and then considering how they work together in order to make sense and meaning (reconstructing the text). The technical factors should hopefully function as a means of gaining knowledge about the meaning of a text, rather than just being features to spot. The • • • • •
formal elements can be broken down using the following framework: Camera Editing Sound Special effects Mise-en-scéne
These offer a comprehensive overview of the ways in which a film is visually constructed as a text, and are a good starting point for what is essentially a Structuralist analysis. Other dimensions can be added to create new layers of complexity.
Camera (Cinematography) This is the analysis of how the camera is manipulated in order to present the filmmaker’s visions of how things should look. It can have a number of desired effects. Here are some examples:
The long shot This shot shows a landscape or environment in an expansive way. As the term suggests, the frame captures a fair amount of space and is often used to establish a setting.
The extreme long shot This occurs when a camera captures an image from a distance, and is typically used to create a feeling of scope and magnitude, where a human figure may appear small. The archetypal long shot is the famous scene in Lawrence of Arabia, (1962), as seen above, where the camera remains fixed as a rider approaches from a great distance over a long period. This is efficient in visually reinforcing the ‘epic’ tone and scope of the film.
The establishing shot This is used at the beginning of a sequence in order to provide the context of what we are about to see. Take news broadcasts – they generally begin with a wider shot of the presenter as a lead in to the headlines and top story.
The medium long shot This is achieved when a figure is captured almost in full, but where the feet and ankles are cropped at the bottom of the frame.
The mid shot This is when a figure is filmed from head to waist. This may be used when a character is to be seen doing something with their hands. For example, the infamous scene in Taxi Driver (1976) when Robert De Niro is seen talking to himself in a mirror uses a mid shot to capture the moment.
The close up This involves the camera focussing on an object or individual in order to draw attention to the filmed subject. When an actor is involved in a close up, an emotional impact can be heightened, simply because more emotion can be seen on the face of the character. Close ups are often used in soap operas, as they are an efficient way of conveying emotional reactions.
The big close up This is a head shot only, drawing attention to an important emotional response.
The extreme close up This is a close up from the eyebrow to below the mouth (or sometimes closer), which may be used to make a figure seem threatening. For example in Ang Lee’s Hulk (2003), extreme close ups are used to focus on Bruce Banner’s face just before he transforms into the creature. This has the added effect of appearing like a panel of a comic book in this case.
The over the shoulder shot As the term implies, this involves positioning the camera over the shoulder of the subject and is also an effective way of creating tension.
Point of view shot (POV) Here, the camera is meant to capture what a subject sees. If a sequence involves a burglar, the filmmaker may give us his/her POV, accompanied by the sound of heavy breathing (is their face hidden?) to increase the tension.
The angle of shot Depending on what angle a figure is captured at, the subject can be made to appear powerful (low angle shot) or inferior (high angle shot). Neutrality is created by shooting at eye level. See the Desperate Housewives web site for gallery of images depicting eye level shots. http://abc.go.com/primetime/desperate/images/gallery/ep23/gallery.ht ml?photo=1
What effect do these shots have on you? What could they mean?
Your answer/response: The preferred shot angle in the American drama series, Desperate Housewives, level cinematography, these heads height shots…
favours eye-
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Camera Movement
Zoom (in and out)
This refers to when the camera focuses in or out of a subject. Zooming in can create tension, and zooming out can reveal something previously unseen. A simple way to see how a zoom in can attempt to create tension is to look at BBC2’s Mastermind, where the camera slowly zooms in on the subject as time elapses. An impressive example of zooming out to create scope can be seen in Peter Weir’s Master and commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), where Russell Crowe is filmed at the top of a mast, a zoom out TIFF QuickTime™ needed (Uncom to shot showing the insignificance of his ship against the magnitude are of the QuickTime™ TIFF needed (Uncompressed) toand see a this picture. decompressor ocean. are
Tracking This is when a camera seems to follow a subject as they move. It’s a movie shot made by a camera moving steadily on a track or dolly.
Steadi-cam A system involving the cameraman harnessing a camera to their bodies using a mechanical arm. In the strictest sense, it refers to a mount for a motion-picture camera, which mechanically isolates the movement of the camera from that of the operator, providing a very smooth shot even when the operator is moving quickly over an uneven surface. A good example of this is the famous long tracking scene in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990), where the camera follows Ray Liotta and Loraine Bracco as they enter a restaurant. The effect of this can give the viewer an affinity with the filmed subject, as we are literally behind them. View this famous shot at: http://www.gettysburg.edu/academics/english/jryan/Mavericks/Projects/QuentinTarantino/Glossary/tra cking.html
View the following and discern whether the following famous shots are tracking shots or steadicam shots.
Touch of Evil (1958, Welles, USA) -- Opening scene Goodfellas (1990, Scorsese, USA) -- Club Intro scene Notorious (1945, Hitchcock, USA) -- Tracking down to her ring Boogie Nights (1997, Anderson, USA) -- Pool Party scene The Player (1992, Altman, USA) -- Opening scene
Pan This is where a camera is turned or pivoted (left or right) around an area, often to reveal more about it.
Ped To ped up or down means the whole camera is raised (or rises) or falls of from a fixed point. Not to be confused with…
Tilt And this is where a camera is placed in a stationary position and ‘looks’ up or down.
Whip pan A fast pan, usually used in an action sequence.
Arc This involves circling the subject with a camera, which can intensify their vulnerability.
Crane shot This involves the camera ‘swooping’ up or down from a subject. A good example of this is the closing frames of Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys (1995) which ends with an impressive crane shot, or The Player (Altman, 1992)
Aerial shot This is a shot from the air, usually when a camera is connected to a plane or helicopter. The aerial shot is an effective way of showing the scope of an environment, as seen many times in Lord of the Rings (2001-3) trilogy or C.S.I.Crime Scene Investigations. This can also be used in a more metaphoric and symbolic way. For example, in American Beauty (1999) an aerial shot opens and closes the film, conveying at first the mundane nature of the suburbs and later the protagonist’s transcendence from them.
Hand-held camera
This is used to convey a sense of documentary realism, as in The Blair Witch Project (1999). This can also be used to create immediacy and confusion, as in the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan.
Contra- (or reverse) zoom As the camera lens zooms into the subject, the camera itself is pulled back on a Dolly. The effect of which draws the background of the scene closer
to the viewer as the subjects maintain their size and position within the frame. A strange example can be found in the scene below, from Goodfellas, a very dramatic use of this can be found in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. Note how the characters have remained taking up the same amount of screen space but the background has moved forward.
In Goodfellas (above), slowly the audience’s attention is drawn to a gentleman exiting a vehicle behind the main action of Robert DeNiro and Ray Liotta in discussion. In Jaws, Roy Shneider’s terror is emphasised as he witnesses a shark attack, the contra-zoom is quicker and adds greatly to the drama.
Crash-zoom Here the camera lens zooms into, or out from, a subject at a much faster rate than conventional zoom speeds. The effect is we, as an audience, are ‘thrown’ into a situation.
Cinematography- Quality This section explores some of the elements at play in the construction of a shot. As the critics at Cahiers du cinéma maintained, the "how" is as important as the "what" in the cinema. The look of an image, its balance of dark and light, the depth of the space in focus, the relation of background and foreground, etc. all affect the reception of the image. COLOUR Early films were shot in black and white but the cinema soon included colour images. These images were initially painted or stenciled onto the film but by the 1930s filmmakers were able to include colour sequences in their films. Apart from the added realism or glamour that a colour image could provide, colour is also used to create aesthetic patterns and to establish character or emotion in narrative cinema. CONTRAST The ratio of dark to light in an image. If the difference between the light and dark areas is large, the image is said to be "high contrast". If the difference is small, it is referred to as "low contrast" Most films use low contrast to achieve a more naturalistic lighting. High contrast is usually associated with the low key lighting of dark scenes in genres such as the horror film and the film noir. A common cliché is to use contrast between light and dark to distinguish between good and evil.
For instance, this shot from Orson Welles' Touch of Evil (1958) employs high contrast to further emphasize racial differences between a blonde American woman and a menacing Mexican man.
DEEP FOCUS Like deep space, deep focus involves staging an event on film such that significant elements occupy widely separated planes in the image. Unlike deep space, deep focus requires that elements at very different depths of the image both be in focus. In these two shots from Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958) Besieged (L'Assedio, Bernardo Bertolucci,1998) all of the different planes of the image are given equal importance through deep focus, not only to the characters (like the man peeking at the window in the first image), but also to the spaces (Shanduray's basement room in the second). While deep focus may be used occasionally, some auteurs use it consistently for they believe it achieves a truer representation of space. Directors like Jean Renoir, Orson Welles, Hou Hsao-Hsien, or Abbas Kiarostami all use deep focus as an essential part of their signature style.
SHALLOW FOCUS A restricted depth of field, which keeps only one plane in sharp focus; the opposite of deep focus. Used to direct the viewer's attention to one element of a scene. Shallow focus is very common in close-up, as in these two shots from Central Station (Central do Brasil, Walter Selles, Brazil, 1998). Shallow focus suggests psychological introspection, since a character appears as oblivious to the world around her/him. It is therefore commonly employed in genres such as the melodrama, where the actions and thoughts of an individual prevail over everything else.
Fig 1. Large depth of field –all numbers in focus
Fig 2. Short Depth of field – just no’s. 3/4 in focus
DEPTH OF FIELD The distance through which elements in an image are in sharp focus. A shallow depth of field is often used as a technique to focus audience attention on the most significant aspect of a scene. Depth of field is directly connected, but not to be confused, with focus. Focus is the quality (the "sharpness" of an object as it is registered in the image) and depth of field refers to the extent to which the space represented is in focus. EXPOSURE A camera lens has an aperture that controls how much light passes through the lens and onto the film. If the aperture is widened, more light comes through and the resultant image will become more exposed. If an image is so pale that the detail begins to disappear, it can be described as "overexposed". Conversely, a narrow aperture that allows through less light will produce a darker image than normal, known as "underexposed". Exposure can be manipulated to guide an audience's response to a scene.
In his film Traffic (2000), Steven Soderbergh decided to shot all of the sequences in the Northern Mexico desert overexposed. The resulting images give an impression of a barren, desolated land being mercilessly burnt by the sun, a no-man's land over which police and customs have no control.
RACKING FOCUS
(a.k.a. pull focus) Racking focus refers to the practice of changing the focus of a lens such that an element in one plane of the image goes out of focus and an element at another plane in the image comes into focus. This technique is an even more overt way of steering audience attention through the scene, as well as of linking two spaces or objects. For instance in this scene from Peking Opera Blues (Do Ma Daan, Tsui Hark, Honk Kong, 1986), a connection is made between an activist in hiding and a police officer who is pursuing him. Racking focus is usually done quite quickly; in a way, the technique tries to mimic a brief, fleeting glance that can be used to quicken the tempo or increase suspense.
RATE – (Slow-motion/Slo-mo or Fast-mo) A typical sound film is shot at a frame rate of 24 frames per second. If the number of frames exposed in each second is increased, the action will seem to move more slowly than normal when it is played back. Conversely, the fewer the number of frames exposed each second, the more rapid the resulting action appears to be. The extreme case of frame rate manipulation is stop-motion, when the camera takes only one frame then the subject is manipulated or allowed to change before taking another frame. In Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (Shichinin no samurai, Japan, 1954), slow motion is used to contrast the emotional rescue of a child with the death of the man who kidnapped him.
TELEPHOTO SHOT An image shot with an extremely long lens is called a telephoto shot. The effect of using a long lens is to compress the apparent depth of an image, so that elements that are relatively close or far away from the camera seem to lie at approximately the same distance. In the first shot from Payback (Brian Helgeland, 1999), we can clearly see there is a considerable distance between the fallen body and the red car.
Yet, when a telephoto lens is used for a close-up of Mel Gibson, his face looks like it is pressed against the car! Here a telephoto lens create a shallow space, which combines with extreme canted framing to suggest the physical and psychological disarray of a man who has been betrayed, shot, and left for dead.
Framing – or Composition Conventionally subjects are placed centrally within the frame, this signifies a world of balance and order. Conversely, a subject located off centre can infer a ‘dis-balance’ in their world or life.
CANTED FRAMING Canted Framing is a view in which the frame is not level; either the right or left side is lower than the other, causing objects in the scene to appear slanted out of an upright positon. Canted framings are used to create an impression of chaos and instability. They are therefore associated with the frantic rhythms of action films, music videos and animation. FOLLOWING SHOT A shot with framing that shifts to keep a moving figure onscreen. A following shot combines a camera movement, like panning, tracking, tilting or craning, with the specific function of directing our attention to a character or object as he/she/it moves inside the frame. In this shot from Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999) the camera pans slightly to accompany a couple into the ballroom floor. REFRAMING Short panning or tilting movements to adjust for the figures' movements, keeping them onscreen or centered. An important technique of continuity editing, thanks to its unobtrusive nature. The characters' actions take precedence over the camera movements, as in this dancing scene from Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999) WIDE ANGLE LENS A lens of short focal length that affects a scene's perspective by distorting straight lines near the edges of the frame and by exaggerating the distance between foreground and background planes. In doing so it allows for more space to enter the frame (hence the name "wide"), which makes it more convenient for shooting in a closed location, for instance a real room, rather than a three-wall studio room. In addition, a wider lens allows for a bigger depth of field. In 35mm filming, a wide angle lens is 30mm or less. See also telephoto lens.
Since a wide angle lens distorts the edges of an image, as in certain frames from Yi Yi (Edward Yang, Taiwan, 2000), extreme wide lenses are avoided in naturalistic styles, or they are used in unrestrained or open spaces, with no converging lines around the edges of the frame.
A fish-eye lens is a very wide-angle lens, depending on how wide the lens is the frames will bend vertical lines.
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ASPECT RATIO The ratio of the horizontal to the vertical sides of an image. Until the 1950s almost all film was shot in a 4:3 or 1.33:1 aspect ratio. Some filmmakers used multiple projectors to create a wider aspect ratio whereas others claimed that the screen should be square, not rectangular. Widescreen formats became more popular in the 1950s and now films are made in a variety of aspect ratios -- some of the most common being 1.66:1, 1.76:1, 1.85:1, and 2.35:1 (cinemascope). Widescreen films are often trimmed for television or video release, effectively altering the original compositions, this process is called Pan and Scan. Some DVD's have the option of showing the film in its original format and in a reduced ratio that fits the TV screen. Compare the same frame from Bertolucci's Besieged (L'Assedio, 1998). Objects appear much more cramped with the reduced aspect ratio, giving an impression of physical (and psychological) space different from the theatrical release.