Shot (filmmaking)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
Illustration: screen shot from L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
In film, a shot is a continuous strip of motion picture film, created of a series of frames, that runs for an uninterrupted period of time. It generally portrays a subject. Shots are generally filmed with a single camera and can be of any duration. A shot can be compared to a word with each frame being a letter, a scene as being a whole sentence, and a sequence as being an entire paragraph or chapter.
The distance from the camera to the subject greatly affects the narrative power of a shot. The three basic kinds of shots are long shots, medium shots, and close-ups.
Long takes
Shots with extremely long durations are difficult to do because any error in the shot would force the filmmaker to restart from scratch. They are thus only occasionally used. Films famous for their long cuts including Alfred Hitchcock's Rope that only cuts at the end of each reel, and does so surreptitiously so that it seems as the whole film is one take. A film that was actually a single take is the recent Russian Ark. Joss Whedon's feature film Serenity introduces the main characters with a long take.
Film editing
Cutting between shots taken at different times by different cameras is known as film editing, and is one of the central arts of filmmaking.
The length of shots is an important consideration that can greatly affect a film. The purpose of editing any given scene is to create a representation of the way the scene might be perceived by the "story teller." Shots with a longer duration can make a scene seem more relaxed and slower paced whereas shots with a shorter duration can make a scene seem urgent and faster paced.
See also
- Movie montage
- slow cutting
- fast cutting
- long take
- Long shot
- Medium shot
- Close-up
- Camera angle
- Point of view shot
- Mise en scène
