Ron Doucet (Flooby Nooby): Types of Shots, Camera Angles and other basics of Cinematography as illustrated by The Incredibles
Back in 2013 Ron Doucet posted a massive analysis of the cinematography of The Incredibles on his blog: Flooby Nooby. Now, these posts quickly went viral in the online animation scene, so there’s a good chance you have seen them already. (If not scroll to the end of this post for links to the three individual posts) This series of blog-posts is super detailed and covers the entire feature film. In other words it’s going to take you some time to get through them, but you should. In fact I believe they should be required reading for all first-year animation and film students.
Before he starts his shot by shot analysis of the film, Ron Doucet does a quick summary of different types of shots, camera angles, and a few other basics of cinematography. I’ve collected this part of his post below (in a slightly edited version). Great reference, but as stated above, make sure to go to his blog and read the full posts, if you haven't already.
TYPES OF SHOTS
Extreme Wide Shot / Establishing Shot
These types of shots give us the big picture. It displays the location we are in, they tell us about the setting our characters are performing in. If the characters are in the shot at all they are usually so small we can barely see them, it's not about our characters it's about the environment and the world where the scene is taking place.
Long Shot /Far Shot
When we need to see our characters and what they are doing in their environment, we go for the Long Shot. With this type of shot they are not establishing the ‘world’ so much as establishing the character(s) in that world.
Full Shot
This is a full body shot of the character. There is some space above and below them inside the frame. No part of them is cropped off unless they are behind an object. The environment the character is in becomes less important. This shot is all about the ‘who’. This shot wants us to look at our characters, see them move about, full body gestures, walking around, interacting with others.
I consider Extreme Wide Shots, Long Shots, and Full shots to all be "wide shots".
They used wide shots through out the film to help establish or re-establish the location the characters were in. The closer you go in on a character the more clearly you can see what they are doing, and how they are interacting with their environment or other characters.
Medium Shot
Medium Shots are widely used through out the film, they are a reliable standard to show you the character nice and close, but not too close, usually cutoff at the waist, plenty of empty space is left around the character, giving him room to act out, gesture, and still see the character in relation to the environment he's in. It's not too intimate, but it's showing you something specific.
Close-up Shot
The close-up is usually the full head and sometimes a bit of the top is cropped off, and includes the neck and a bit of the shoulders. It's an emotion-teller and and information-giver. This shot is ALL about the subject, it tells us the important stuff we need to know to understand the story. We can tell what the character is feeling and thinking.
There are variations on these too, like the Medium Close-Up, which crops the character off somewhere between the ribs and the chest.
The closer you frame your main subject the more it becomes all about them. The background gets phased out as the focus closes in on the character or object you are centering on.
Extreme Close-up
It can be used for a very intense or super intimate moment or it can just be a very useful information tool. It depends what the director wants to show you and why. In this shot, nothing else matters but the subject matter. And it’s usually only a portion of that subject matter. Backgrounds are usually unrecognizable, you can only see the character or object as they cover most (if not all) the frame. It keeps the audience informed about the story, the characters and the situation, up close, in detail, clear information-giver.
There's not much room for the character to move, so the audience can focus on the expressions and emotions. You can call this a "cut-in" also, instead of zooming in, you cut the camera in closer, or to a different part of the body to show something important.
Depending on what the director wants to show the audience, every type of shot has it's purpose, how the filmmakers decide how close or wide to frame a scene, depends on what they want the focus to be and what information they are trying to display.
CAMERA ANGLES
Let's have a quick look at camera angles...
Straight-On
The camera is level to the ground and the lens is lined up parallel to the main subject.
Up Shot
The camera is pointing up at the subject. -This is called a 'Low Angle' in live action.
Down Shot
The camera is angled to point downwards towards the subject. -This is called a 'High Angle' in live action.
Up Shots place the viewer beneath the focus and Down Shots place the viewer above, both physically and psychologically.
Bird's Eye View
Worm's Eye View
More extreme version of up shots and down shots where the angle of the camera is pointing nearly (or entirely) straight up or down.
Over The Shoulder Shot (OTS)
One of the most efficient and widely used methods of shooting a conversation scene, or even to see the vantage point of one character as s/he glares at another. Sometimes the characters are in close proximity, sometimes they are far away, the shots reverse back and forth and can be used in combination with up shots and down shots, depending on the camera angle and height or placement of characters.
1 Shot
2 Shot
3 Shot
Group Shot
These are pretty self-explanatory, 1 shot: one subject in the frame. 2 shot: there's two, when you get more than 3 in there, you've got a group shot.
There are endless combination that can be used to describe a shot; here's a 2 Shot, Medium Shot, and a slight Up Shot all rolled into one:
Low Angles
When the camera is sitting right on the ground.
Each angle and framing technique and the combination they are used in -can all help to tell the story and to clearly display the information on screen so that the audience can follow along easily. Variety of shots is important, but as I will show you, the Incredibles excelled at using dynamic angles and perspective to make the film very visually exciting. I've noticed that different film theory books have slightly different terms for this sort of thing. My terms here are more akin to Animation Filmmaking, some studios and directors have variations on these as well.
Point of View (POV)
This shot places the audience in the character's shoes, seeing the world through their eyes.
Rack Focus
Shifting the attention of the viewer by changing the focus of the lens from a subject in the foreground to a subject in the background (or vice versa).
Foreground /Background
Framing characters or objects of varying depth can help to keep the image well balanced and keep the eyes moving. Framing the subject with elements in the foreground can also add scale and depth to pictures.
Overhanging tree branches, doorways, anything that covers at least two sides of the frame can give added depth that invites audience into the location.
Layers of foreground, mid-ground and background can help add depth to a composition. Rather than showing all of the character all the time, characters can be blocked by objects in the foreground and middle ground, helping to place the characters within the situation, making them part of their environment and the story.
Rule of Thirds
This has to do with the a basic principle of placing the subject matter away from the middle of the frame. In simple terms, the Rules of Thirds states that there are certain "hotspots" on screen, these are areas of intensity that exist within any given image, and if one were to align the subject within the range of influence of these hotspots, it will make for a more energetic and interesting composition.
Even the horizon line is often placed on the top or bottom line, allowing linear features in the image to flow from section to section.
There's lots more stuff like Pans, Truck-in & out, Camera Tilts/Rotations, View-Throughs, Wipes, Shot Progression, Triangular Composition... but we'll get to all that very soon. For now, you are familiar with the terms for shots and angles that I will be referring too the most.
Further Reading:
Flooby Nooby, The Cinematography of The Incredibles:
