How do you watch movies? How do you perceive the art of cinema? Film 101 at The Lincoln Theatre will help you understand and appreciate what you see on the big screen while recommending classic and foreign films to expand your knowledge of cinema.
When watching movies it's essential to understand what you're looking at. To watch from a critical lens, we must be educated on shot types. Besides, the camera is our view into the world of a movie.
There are lots of types of shots and the easiest place to start is the very beginning. Establishing shots show us a new area and tell us where the following scenes will take place. It could be a building, a landscape, or even a new planet. It helps the audience understand the base context of the upcoming visuals. In Citizen Kane (dir. Orson Welles, 1941) the beginning starts with an establishing shot of the Kane Mansion. We see the gate adorned with a large "K" and the house in the distance. As the camera draws closer we see more elements of the surroundings but that beginning shot is essential and we can assume the next scene will occur inside the mansion.
Another way to identify a shot is the distance between the camera and the subject matter. A wide shot will have the character further away from the camera and include their whole body in the frame. You can think of scenes in westerns like Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid (dir. George Roy Hill, 1969) where they are riding their horses. You can see their full bodies and the landscape around them but it's harder to see the face of the actors.
As the camera gets a little closer we can see more details and the character's expressions. Shots that are from the knees or waist up are called medium shots. Medium shots are used during conversations where both characters remain in the same shot. In the parlor scene in Psycho (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) Norman and Marion are framed both sitting but it doesn't include their full bodies. Sometimes it switches between both of them and only one in the shot but it remains primarily a medium shot.
As the camera moves even closer we get the normal close-up shot. This shot includes the face of the actor and sometimes their shoulders. We don't see much of their surroundings and it's commonly used to give the audience a closer view of an actor's expression and only that. This is famously used in the shoot-out scene in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (dir. Sergio Leone, 1966). It switches between each character as they look at each other and we can see every flicker of their eyes and twitch of their mouth.
The last type of shot that is determined by camera distance is the extreme close-up. In the extreme close-up, we are looking at one thing. This could be a single part of an actor like their eye or hand, or even an object that the director wants us to focus on. In The Thing (dir. John Carpenter, 1982) we get an extreme close-up of each blood sample. The director wants us to be able to read the names on each of them as they are individually tested.
Another way we determine the type of shot is by how many people or characters are visible. One-shots and two-shots are the most common type; people analyzing film usually don't go beyond a three-shot. Using Psycho again, we can analyze the final shot from a few different perspectives. It starts as a wide shot where we can see his full body. As the camera zooms in we get to a medium, and then a close-up of him. It remains a one-shot the full time as no additional characters come into view of the camera.
The last major way we can look at a shot is the angle it's shot from. High-angle shots are shot from above eye level and can often make a character look smaller or weak. Low-angle shots are shot from below eye level and can give a character a power look or make them larger. Perspective is an important part is film and we can have a shot that is shown from the point of view of a character. The film A Man Escaped (dir. Robert Bresson, 1957) uses this technique to put us in the shoes of the main character as we become trapped with him. We can also see things through a character's view without breaking the "fourth wall" by having the camera placed just over their shoulder.
The job of the director and director of photography are very important as they are our eyes into the world the characters live in. By understanding the way the camera looks with its "eye", we can better understand how to look with our own.
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