Moving Images, Understanding Media

24 Moving Images: Making Movies, Understanding Media

disc spins in the player to make light move on the screen. And just as

fi gures move in front of the camera, fi lmmakers are naturally compelled

to move the camera around to shift its viewpoints and exploit the kinetic

experience of moving perspectives.

From their invention, cameras were steadied by placing them on tripods.

Most primitive shots duplicated the fi xed frames of still photography.

Although most early fi lms were shot from a lock-down position, eventually

fi lmmakers began to pan the camera side to side or tilt it up and down.

Th is was commonly seen in travelogue fi lms in which fi lmmakers strove

to provide a full view of a landscape, much as tourists do today.

Filmmakers also realized that they could place the camera on a

moving device. They discovered that they could put the tripod onto

a wheeled platform or set up carefully leveled railed tracks to film a

tracking shot. Any moving shot from a wheeled device became known

as a dolly shot, and this technique became one of the most expressive

storytelling methods available to directors. It allows directors to pass

across the action for a graceful view of the scene, to move towards

a subject to add dramatic emphasis, or to pull away from a view to

widen perspective. For a larger movement that provides a longer view

than a dolly or a significantly higher angle, filmmakers can mount a

camera on a device that raises or lowers the camera significantly for

a crane shot.

Today, small movements known as push-in and pull-out are oft en used

for quick dramatic emphasis. A push-in can provide accent to move a sequence

along and a push-in or pull-out can bring it to a close, like a punctuation

mark. For example, they are used many times in the Lord of the Rings fi lms

directed by Peter Jackson.

In twenty-fi rst century fi lms, camera movement is quite common

through hand-held use of the camera or an invention of the 1970s known

Figure 1-32 Storyboard indicating a pan right of the camera.

PAN

Figure 1-33 Storyboard

indicating a tilt down of the

camera.

TILT

TILT

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