film stuffies

Question 1

Mise-en-scene

Answer 1

EVERYTHING is expressive in a film shot. Everything visible in a film is completely intentional and it communicates something with the audience. I tried this with Atelis, where the crew and I arranged Brandon’s books in a way to show his discontent with his studies. However, we were unable to change the fact that the tables didn’t look anything like a college apartment. Oops.

Question 2

Close-ups

Answer 2

close-up shots isolate a certain subject. It tends to give the object in question narrative weight. Ie, the family picture that a soldier looks at before he dies will typically be shown with a closeup in order to give it narrative weight in the soldier’s life

Question 3

Extreme close-up

Answer 3

Shots that are filmed extremely close-up. Ie, in Spongebob Squarepants, this is typically done for comedy. When a character whispers something, the audience sees an extreme close-up of the character’s lips

Question 4

Medium shot

Answer 4

Shots that are taken from the waist up.

Question 5

Quarter shot

Answer 5

Shots that are taken from the knees up

Question 6

Full shot

Answer 6

Shots that capture the full body.

Question 7

Long shot

Answer 7

Shots taken from a far distance.

Question 8

Extreme long shot

Answer 8

the subject is very far away in the shot. Ie, when the characters ride off into the sunset and the audience sees nothing but a speck of them and their horses.

Question 9

Medium close-ups

Answer 9

Shots that are taken from the chest up.

Question 10

Eye-level shot

Answer 10

a shot taken from the average height of an adult, which is the presumed ‘normal’ of filmmaking. However, this can be played with when the main character is extremely short or tall. Filming from their extreme position could be used to create a very cool illusion of perspective.

Question 11

Low-angle shot

Answer 11

the camera looks up at its subjects. Often, this is used to produce an illusion of the subject being put on a visual pedestal that has to be looked up to.

Question 12

High-angle shot

Answer 12

the camera looks down at its subjects. This can be used to show that this subject is ‘below’ the characters or the audience and has to be looked down at.

Question 13

Bird’s eye view

Answer 13

when a shot is seemingly taken from the sky or ceiling. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty does that pretty well, as it shows how small Walter feels in his new, unfamiliar surroundings.

Question 14

Dutch tilt/canted angle

Answer 14

when a shot is slanted horizontally or vertically. This can be used to create visual instability within a character. I’m working on a script that, I envision, has a lot of this.

Question 15

Two-shot

Answer 15

A shot in which two people equally appear, this is ideal for conversations. This is a very common shot.

Answer 16

When three people appear equally in a shot. This is typically used to frame them as a group, i.e. in Mean Girls and Heathers, The Plastics and The Heathers (respectively) are framed as an ‘unbreakable’ group.

Question 17

Master shot

Answer 17

a shot taken from a long distance that captures all characters as well as locations. This is used to establish a lot of houses and families in the film, such as The Loud House.

Question 18

Frame

Answer 18

The single images as seen in a film
OR the borders of the image on the screen. This is similar to picture frames For example, the borders of the television, the curtains of a movie theater, and the black areas when watching a film on a square iPad.

Question 19

Composition

Answer 19

the arrangement of objects within the viewing window of the film. For example, when you combine the facts that the audience’s eyes are drawn to the thirds and your own knowledge of how the film will look on screen, you’d typically put an object of great importance onto a place that would end up on one of the screen’s thirds.

Question 20

Subject-Camera Distance

Answer 20

The distance between the subject and camera. The distance between the subject and camera can lead to different emotional weights and emotional connections between the audience and the subject. for example, if the subject is very close to the camera, it can clue the audience in that this specific subject is very, very important.