RESEARCH: Preparation for Preliminary Video

There are many types of shots, angles and editing techniques such as low and high angle, shot/reverse shot as well as "rules" that shouldn't be broken like the 180 degree rule to make our movie more professional and enjoyable to watch. No I will explain some of those.

Shots are very important while making a movie. They can establish location, introduce a new character or build up suspense. I will not write about all the shot types but I'll explain the basic ones which we will use in our preliminary video.

Shot/Reverse Shot


This is often used to show two or more people talking. It's basically a shot where the camera firstly shows one thing(or a person), then a second thing and comes back to the first thing. To make it clearer there is a picture explaining it a bit better:

Shot                       Reverse                       Shot

The camera shows the lady first, then we cut into to show the mens face and it comes back to the lady. It's used in dialogues because we often like to look at peoples faces when they talk. Also it gives a bit more action to the scene.

180 Degree Rule


180 degree rule is a rule that tells us that we shouldn't cross an imaginary line with our camera while filming two people. This line would go through the two people and the camera shouldn't pass through that line. This id done so that there is no confusion in the audience with the way that the actors stand and if they face each other or not. To explain it better this image shows the line and how it all works:

We can see that the cameras in the blank area can all work together but the camera 'x' can't. This is because if we look at the footage we can see that in camera 1,2 and 3 the lady is on the left side and she's looking to the right of the frame. If we were to use camera 'x' it would switch the women's location, she would somehow be on our right side and look in the same direction as the guy in other frames.

Match Cut

This is basically when we edit two shots together when one of the shot is showing some object or space and the other shot is showing a different (but similar in e.g. shape) object or space. This makes the two scenes continuous and linked together. This could be done to for example move from one scene to another scene in a smoother way. An example would be a famous match cut from "Lawrence of Arabia" where blowing off a flame from a matchstick cuts into a sunset.