The Rhetoric of Film
The Frame
A frame is a single photographic image printed on a length of film.
A freeze frame is a single frame repeated for an extended time, making the image appear like a still photograph within a moving picture.
Composition is the arrangement of the elements within the frame—not only characters and props, but also patterns of lighting. Composition directs the eye by lines and masses as they are related to other lines and masses. Like the composition of a painting, the composition within a frame can be viewed in terms of shape, balance, lines, texture, rhythm, color, and chiaroscuro (use of light and dark in an image). Lines provide a sense of direction. Vertical lines seem to soar, and the eye expectantly follows their uplifting energy. Horizontals imply stability and solidity. Diagonals usually convey feelings of confusion, division, or incompleteness.
By controlling the way the viewer perceives an image within the frame, composition contributes both to meaning and to mood.
Unlike the human eyes, the camera sees indiscriminately. Everything in its view will be recorded. Consequently, the relationships between foreground (in front where the main action occurs) and background (behind the main action) are extremely important. Depending on how a filmmaker places objects, they can either divert or attract attention. If a man’s face, for example, fills the right one-third of a screen in an action scene, the face either blocks out part of the action to lead the eye to what will happen, or the face provides a response to what is happening, becoming central for an instant. If the former is intended, the face will either be slightly or completely out of focus; if the latter is intended, the face will be completely in focus, while other parts of the action will be out of focus or in focus less sharply than the face. The director consciously leads the viewer’s eyes to where they will perceive the most significant details.
Movement toward and away from the eye, however, creates a sense o depth and of the viewer’s involvement in what occurs. Movement toward the camera generally intensifies action and creates a sense that something significant is about to happen. Movement away from the camera appears wistful and serious. Cross-screen movement always seems much more rapid than depth movement, creating a feeling of excitement, but frequently at the expense of a sense of direction and purpose. Depth movement, on the other hand, normally displays significant content, while cross-screen movement creates flurry and action.
A shot is a single uninterrupted action of a camera. Some shots last only one or two frames, although such short shots appear rarely in commercial films. Although longer shots are “standard,” few last over thirty seconds. The exceptions, of course, run for as long as a filmmaker chooses to keep film running through his camera. The average shot run from about two to thirty seconds.
Shots are categorized according to the apparent closeness of the camera to the person or object photographed. If an object or person seems very far away, the results is normally called an extreme long shot (ELS), also called an establishing shot because it places objects in context and prepares a viewer for a closer look later. If only a small part of a person or object appears, the shot is called an extreme close-up (ECU). In between like the long shot (LS), medium long shot (MLS), medium shot (MS), medium close-up (MCU), and close-up (CU).
In an extreme long shot a person might be visible, but the setting clearly dominates. The same person fills a good part of the vertical line of the frame in a long shot, although the setting also receives strong emphasis. A medium long shot reveals about three-fourths of the objct, while a medium shot (also called a mid-shot) would show the object from the waist up, focusing a viewer’s attention more on the subject than on the setting but maintaining a clear relationship between the two. A medium close-up shows a person from the shoulders up, and close-up shows only the head. An extreme close-up reveals only a small part of the face, such as the nose or an eye.
The sense of the frame moving also contributes to the effect of a shot. Not only does the frame seem to move from shot to shot because of the mix among close-ups, mid-shots, and long shots, but the frame also appears to move during a shot.
A pan is used either to follow a horizontal action or to sweep across a stationery scene. A pan occurs when a stationery camera turns horizontally and the viewer sees new areas revealed in a movement from right to left or left to right. A pan can also direction the audience’s attention to an important action or convey a subjective sense of sharing the gaze of a person whose eyes are moving.
A tilt shot occurs when a stationary camera angles up or down, providing new views above or below the camera’s level. It often lets viewers feel as if they are following a subject or looking through a character’s eyes. The direction the camera moves is called “tilt up” or “tilt down.”
A dolly is a platform on wheels serving as a camera mount capable of movement in any direction (forward, backward, circular, sideways). During a dolly-in, the camera moves toward the subject, for a dolly-out, the camera travels away from the subject. The dolly provides a sense of dynamic movement, with the same kinds of changes in perspective the human eye sees when a person moves.
A tracking shot includes any shot with a camera moving on tracks. Since a viewer can’t tell whether a shot is a dolly shot or a tracking shot, the terms are used almost interchangeably to mean a “moving shot.” (Tracks allow a more precise control over a camera’s movement.) Often the term tracking shot refers to a shot which moves with a subject (beside, in front of, or behind).
A zoom shot is accomplished with a lens capable of smoothly and continuously changing focal lengths from wide0angle to telephoto. As the lens zooms in, the center of composition gradually fills the screen; the center diminishes as the lens zooms out.
While dolly (and tracking) shots and zoom shots resemble each other in their ability to move toward and away from a subject, they differ in effect. Once focus is set on a zoom lens, it need not be reset as he focal length is increased or decreased since the camera-to-subject distance is constant. A dolly shot, on the other hand, changes the relationship between camera and subject, requiring a change in focus and also bringing about a change in the relationship between subject and background. The effect is the difference between walking closer and closer to someone versus looking at her from a distance through increasingly powerful field glasses. Through the glasses, only the size of the subject changes, and that change occurs at the same rate that the background increases or decreases in size. The dolly, on the other hand, provides changing perspectives and consequently a strong sense of movement through space. Usually a dolly involves a relatively small change in the size of the image, while a zoom moves freely from very close to very far away.
A crane shot is taken from a boom that can move vertically and horizontally at the same time. A crane is a large camera trolley with a moveable arm (or boom) with a platform for the camera. The crane can move like a dolly, but the boom also allows movement both vertically and horizontally. A crane shot often provides dynamic sense of movement through space.
A filmmaker puts shots together to make up a scene. While a shot comes from a single operation of the camera, a scene is a series of shots with a continuous action. A viewer perceives a series of shots as taken at the same location during a rather brief period of time. The classic car chase furnishes a good example of a scene. Some action prompts a chase, usually filmed from a number of shot lengths and perspectives. Finally one person catches the other, usually after one ore more crashes, and the scene ends. Because the action of a chase is fast, a scene that lasts three minutes or less might have 50-100 separate shots.
A number of shots and scenes make up a sequence, forming a coherent dramatic action. A sequence is usually composed of a series of scenes that are related in location, time, generating action, point of view, or cast. Sequences are consequently much like chapters in a book with beginnings, middles, and ends.