Where do I put the camera?

This might sound like a ridiculous title for an article but like so many of the questions I have answered here on LinkedIn, in books I have written, presentations and workshops I have given all around the world...

If I had charged a price for answering it...

I'd still be answering the question...

But I would have at least monetised my response : )

Before answering the question it is important to clarify that not every director comes from a background where they have been trained in lenses, f-stops, filters and marks...

Some have been brought to the craft of visual storytelling via other means.

When I started out those means might have been that they were an author or they had directed actors and stories in another medium (traditionally the theatre).

More and more directors come from all walks of life as the craft and requirement for those to tell visual stories has grown exponentially with the growth of visual content.

Increasingly brands are turning to internal resources for their hygiene and hub content and often marketing managers, assistant marketing managers, copywriters, photographers, designers and interns are being tasked with stepping behind the camera to tell a story for their brand.

So the question of where do I put the camera remains as relevant for this new audience as it once was for those who moved from the stage to the screen.

The question before that question

I'm not trying to be elusive in how I answer the main question in this article I'm actually just trying to provide you with the thought process you need to understand how the question is best answered.

So what is the question before the question you ask?

The question you should always ask before deciding where to put the camera is:

What is this scene about?

What are you trying to communicate to the audience and how does the framing and the placement of the camera and the arrangement of the talent and how they relate to the framing and placement of the camera affect the scene?

A scene (even in a corporate video or an interview or a piece to camera) is never just a scene...

It is not unconsidered...

Likewise when you break a scene down into its requisite parts (shots)...

Each shot should not be unconsidered.

Each shot needs to have meaning in what the scene is about and the message that we are conveying to the audience.

The psychology of the camera

Every shot and angle you select has a visual meaning to the audience and will affect their interpretation of the scene and the events taking place in it.

In other words, where you put the camera can either enhance or detract the audience’s understanding of what the scene is really about, and what the characters or on screen talent are feeling or projecting to the audience.

There are three angles of view for the camera:

• Objective: The audience point of view. (The camera is placed outside the action.)
• Subjective: The camera acts as the viewer’s eyes. (The camera is placed inside the action.)
• Point of View: What the character is seeing. (The camera is the action.)

Audiences will assume that every shot or word of dialogue in a piece of visual content storytelling is there to further the central idea, therefore, each shot you use should contribute to the story or the idea you are trying to convey.

Since viewer emotion is the ultimate goal of each and every scene (even in a corporate presentation or CEO piece to camera these same rules apply), where you place the camera involves knowing what emotion you want the audience to experience, at any given moment in the scene.

Avoid interesting and favour clarity instead

In is seminal work, On Directing Film - David Mamet talks endlessly about how a film should not be a record of what the protagonist does, that we shouldn't just follow them around with a steadicam or try and invent interesting ways to make the record of what they are doing more involving for the audience.

Mamet suggests (and he is right), that we should instead look to the work of famous soviet film pioneer Sergei Eisenstein and his rightly lauded theory of montage.

As Mamet says in his book:

This method has nothing to do with following the protagonist around but rather is a succession of images juxtaposed so that the contrast between these images moves the story forward in the mind of the audience.

You always want to tell the story in the cuts.

Which as Mamet goes on to say:

Which is to say, through a juxtaposition of images that are basically uninflected.

It is the juxtaposition of your shots that moves your visual content story forward. The shots make up the scene.

I once attended a lecture with famed cinematographer Oliver Stapleton B.S.C where he talked about transitioning from his earlier experimental film style (shooting Sex Pistols music videos and films with director Julian Temple like Absolute Beginners) to working with director Stephen Frears.

He said Frears taught him a significant lesson about where to place the camera early in their collaboration.

They were on the shoot filming and Stapleton got down on his belly on the cobblestone street and starting waxing lyrical about this amazingly novel camera angle and how interesting it would be for establishing a shot of a car arriving.

Frears apparently looked down at him with a mixture of curiosity and disdain and said something along the lines of:

What are you doing down there? Get up and put the camera here (indicating a more clear camera position)... If people can't understand where someone is coming and going from... There is little point.

Again what I think Frears is getting at is that choosing the angle which provides the most immediate connection between the essential information in the scene (the essence of the scene and what the scene is about - as in the case above a scene about someone arriving) is always preferable to novelty that tells the audience nothing.

Director Jeff Nichols (Midnight Special) was asked in an interview how he decides where to put the camera and he said the following:

So really for me, it all comes down to point-of-view. You just look at the beats in a scene and you say ‘Whose point-of-view is this?’ and that starts to tell you where the camera goes.

I would also agree with Nichols three rules on camera movement in a scene:

Rule 1 – all camera moves say something

Rule 2 – the camera moves need to feel like an organic representation of how the human eye sees the world

Rule 3 – The camera goes where the scene’s point-of-view is.

STILL NEED MORE HELP?

Reach out to me and the team at APV! We’d love to talk to you about how we can help you understand more about how to make amazing content that connects your story to your audience!

Thomas J Elliott is the Senior Producer/Director for APV an advertising agency specialising in video and animation with offices in Wan Chai Hong Kong. 

He is a winner of numerous international awards for video and animation and the author of five books on visual content.

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