Cinematography: Distance, Hight, Level and Angle

Cinematography: Distance, Height, Level and Angle

In today's blog, we are going to tackle cinematography. Cinematography is the movement of the camera to tell a story. The way they do this is through: distance between the focus and the camera. The height of the vertical movement of the camera without tilting it. Furthermore, the level of the height of the camera relative to the ground or eyes of the focus. Lastly Angle, the tilting of the camera. All forms of cinematography can work together in union create better effects some of these include a high angle, low angle and many more.

Stills from an existing film:

This still from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollow's part 2 represents a high angle. (Height can be used to convey conflict, development and character.)

This still from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse represents distance between the camera and the man falling. (Height can be used to convey conflict, development and character.) 

This still from The Hunger Games: Mockingjay- Part 2 is an eye level shot that has close distance. (Height can be used to convey conflict, development and character.)

This still from The Matrix uses height of the Agent Smith is exaggerated by the angle to create a scene of fear and imposed. (Height can be used to convey conflict, development and character.)

My attempts at it:

This still, is using of lower height or low angle shot. This shows a take-over she is overpowering the screen. When people feel small, they feel scared, and this works towards that.

This still, is using a ground level to emphasize the setting and to show movement.  

This still, is using distance to advantage to make the obvious focus the closer character but, at the other hot spot there is a character who is blurred (glare) to make it more ominous. In other words, conflict.

This still, is using a high angle shot to make the intended effect more of fear and makes the characters focus on the same point. This shows helplessness they can only on look.

Personal Problems with Cinematography:

This entry had a slew of easier problems to solve than mise en scéne because, more about camera positioning than contextual design in the camera. The problems I did personally experience was the overall mixing of ideas. They are all perfectly intertwine with each other. To get height, most examples also used, distance and angles to get the more intended effect. In my shots you can see this for angle and height are more intertwined than any other form.

Level and height also got mixed up while making both of those stills. The reason why, it happens because the level in geography is the vertical movement. This is different in film making: it is when the camera is balanced with something else. Some examples include eye level, ground level and etc.

Specifics in each Category:

While focusing on angles I came upon some cross-roads of sorts. Which angle should I do? High, low Dutch, which angle? I might have mentioned this in the about me section. So, I had multiple decisions to do. I did a simple low angle but, that was hard with-out showing the table and staying in universe with-out continuity errors. The Dutch Angle only had one problem could not get the exact shot I was looking for. So, I decided to do a high angle of the easier of the bunch.

When doing the level shot, I imminently knew that I wanted to use a ground level shot. This problem already happened with angle, but the continuity of the world was at risk with the table reveling itself.  But after like 4 attempts until I was satisfied with the still. Another problem occurred the static poses of the Lego people. So, I redid it to get the wanted still.