Chapter 3: The Visual Language And Aesthetics Of Cinema
Film is a medium…. A medium is based on an agreement, a contract that has developed over a long period during which the speaker and the listener, the picture maker and the viewer, performer and audience, have established a system of meanings: a vocabulary, syntax and grammar of the language being used. For this reason, language emerges slowly, and will continue to evolve for as long as audiences and authors develop new ways of expressing themselves.
Camera position has a significant impact on the emotional connection a viewer makes with your character. Here, a man witnessing a disturbing encounter shot from four different angles: (a) frontal, (b) three-quarters frontal shot, (c) profile shot, and (d) three-quarters back shot. Notice that frontal shots involve actors looking slightly off the side of the lens, not directly into the lens.Panning and tilting. In a pan (a), the camera scans space left or right on the tripod’s axis. A tilt (b) shifts the camera’s perspective vertically on the tripod’s axis.In a pan, a subject is seen from different angles from a stationary point as the shot progresses. In this example, the runner is facing the camera at the beginning of the shot and is seen from behind at the end of it.Here the camera tracks with the runner, maintaining a consistent profile angle.
