Camera angles

When shooting a short film or an extended piece of media you have a vast majority of shots to choose from.

Firstly you have the close-ups. Close-ups are used to condense a person or object into a magnifying shot drawing attention to it. Close-ups range differently, you can also use extreme close-ups which enhances the view on the object by great proportions.

Here is an example of a close up.

POV means point of view, so when you have a POV shot, you have the camera acting as a persons view. Normally you would have something called a head cam on someones head and then he/she would walk around as you see everything that they would see. It is a great way of putting the audience into the actor/actresses shoes. Here is a photo from a T.V. show called 'Peep Show' they talk to camera as they would the actor, making it look like he is talking to the audience.

Like the close-up there are a few different shots linked in with distance. There is the medium shot which covers the head to shoulders area and and a long shot covers the whole body and of course the extreme long shot is just further than a normal long shot.

The cutaway shot shot is when you purposely cut from the subject at matter for a short period of time to reveal something else concerning the subject. Similar to the 'cutaway', the cut-in shot normally cuts to close up of an object of importance, normally it is something a character is holding or something they don't know about.



A panning shot is when the camera rotates normally on a tri-pod) left to right or vies versa. The tilt shot is like the panning shot but works vertically.

A 'dolly shot' is often referred to as a tracking shot, it consists of the camera moving along a tack of some fashion, it then stays focused on a particular subject whether it be living thing or a vehicle.
To the right is picture of tracking shot in progress, you can see the track they use and how much it takes to set up this shot.

A crane shot is similar to the dolly shot as it is on a large pivoting device, it is used to swoop down onto a certain subject normally from a higher view.

Ensemble shots are simply shots of a group of 3-6 people often used to show a hierarchy in the group if a character is backed up with other characters behind her/him.