Alan Valladares

Period 5
12-6-16
1
Film Directing Techniques

A future film director learns film directing techniques. These film directing techniques

can help the future film director. There are many techniques that go in the making of a movie.

The director decides when and how the techniques will be used in scenes of the film. The

techniques are what make a movie work.

The first of the techniques is composing the shots. Composing the shots is to have a

purpose in the scene. A shot is a single piece of film, uninterrupted by cuts. The first example is

a long shot. A long shot is a shot from some distance or farther. The director uses a long shot in

the opening scene of the film to establish the setting. The second example is a medium shot. A

medium shot shows the camera to be at a medium distance from the object being filmed. The

director uses a medium shot to show the character from the waist up. The third example is a

close up shot. A close up shot shows the head and shoulders only and takes up at least 80% of

the shot. The director films on the head and the audience sees the facial expression of the

character (zone.missouri.edu). A film director chooses what aspect ratio he wants to film and

decides how wide is the movie going to be. The aspect ratio is the ratio of an images height to

its width. The larger the ratio is, the wider the film is. The width of a movie image determines a

lot on how shots will be composed. The aspect ratios the movies are filmed in today are 1:85.1

and 2:35.1 widescreen. A film director captures widescreen images in the anamorphic system,

which uses special lenses to compress an image along one axis. The lenses are matted for 1.85:1

and anamorphic for 2.35:1 (allmovietalk.com). The aspect ratio gives the director plenty of room

to film in and most directors choose to film on 2.35:1 because that aspect ratio is wider than

1.85:1 and gives a lot more details. A movie shot in 1.85:1 was Spider-Man (2002) while the
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sequel Spider-Man 2 (2004) was shot in 2.35:1. The reason Spider-Man 2 was shot in 2.35:1

instead of 1.85:1 is that the director Sam Raimi needed a wider format to have Spider-Man and

Doctor Octopus in the same shot.

The second of the techniques is lighting the scene. Lighting is used for dramatic or

symbolic effects in the film (Sweeny). The first lighting is high key. High key lighting is a scene

flooded with light. The director uses high key to create a bright and open mood. Mood is the

overall emotion, which is created by the authors language, tone and subject matter. The second

lighting is low key. Low key lighting is a scene flooded with shadows and darkness. The director

uses low key to create the suspense and suspicion. The third lighting is neutral. Neutral lighting

is neither high key nor low key. The director uses neutral lighting to balance the shot

(www.skitsap.wednet.edu).

The third of the techniques is camera movement. Camera movement is a way to

communicate subtleties and moving the camera for psychological and thematic reasons

(Sweeny). The first of camera movement is panning the camera. In a camera pan, the camera

turns to the following subject. The director uses the pan to give a panoramic view. The second of

camera movement is tilting the camera. The camera is tilted up or down in specific scenes. The

director mostly uses the tilt for point of view shots. The third of camera movement is a track. The

camera moves towards or away from the subject. The director uses a tracking shot to follow the

character. The fourth of camera movement is hand held camera. Hand-held camera is a camera

move that is nowhere near as fluid as a tracking shot or a crane shot. Instead, hand-held camera

are shots where the camera is held by a camera operator. This allows the camera to move

anywhere a cameraman can carry, but without anything to stabilize the camera that the shot
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becomes jerky. FIlm directors use hand-held camera to achieve a documentary feel to the film.

The fifth of camera movement is zoom. The zoom is a type of lens that can go from wide to long,

allowing film shots to make distant objects look closer. While not technically a camera

movement, the zoom is a method of changing the audiences point of view without actually

moving the camera of cutting. Zooming tends to change the depth of field, allowing more objects

to be in more focus at once while wide and fewer objects in focus while long. Film directors use

zoom to also give a documentary feel to the movie. A reason is that in documentaries, film

directors have to zoom in order to capture unexpected events (allmovietalk.com).

The fourth of the techniques is camera angles. Camera angles can be a variation for a

particular effect in the film (Sweeny). One camera angle is high angle. In a high angle, the

camera is above the subject. The angle has the effect of making the subject look smaller than

normal, giving him or her the appearance of being weak, powerless, or trapped. This viewpoint

also decreases the speed of a moving subject. The second camera angle is low angle. In a low

angle, the camera shots below the subject. This angle usually has the effect of making the subject

look larger than normal and therefore, strong, powerful, or threatening. The third camera angle is

eye level. In an eye level, the shot is taken from a normal height (characters eye level). The

shots are eye level because it is the most natural angle. The fourth camera angle is birds eye. A

birds eye is a vertical shot or view from above. The fifth camera angle is oblique angle. Oblique

angle suggest a bizarre environment or psychological state. Other effects such as blurring could

contribute to oblique angle (zone.missouri.edu).

The fifth of the techniques is editing. Editing occurs during post production and the

editing process revives, assembles or prepares shots or scenes for the completion of the whole
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film. In editing, transitions and audio are added into the film (Sweeny). A transition would be a

cut, in which one shot is replaced by another. One transition is cross dissolve, which is when one

image dissolves into another. Cross dissolve suggest time passing or a relaxed atmosphere and

are used to shift from one scene to another. The second transition is fade down, when the image

fades away gradually. The two fades in film are fade-in and fade-out. A fade-in starts from a

solid color screen and slowly transitions to a shot in the movie. A fade out starts with a shot and

transitions into a solid color. Fade out is referred to as fade to black and is use at the end of the

film. The third transition is wipe, when the new image slides in from the side. Wipe is used to

shift from one scene to another (zone.missouri.edu). Cuts are made in the scenes. A cut is one

shot being replaced by another. This is the most common type of transition between shots in the

same scene (zone.missouri..edu). One cut is a smash cut, a cut whose purpose is suppose to be

startling to the viewer. Next is a match cut, a cut that joins two unrelated shots together in a way

that makes them seem related. Last is a jump cut, a cut that transitions into another scene

(allmovietalk.com). Sound effects are added into the film. Most sound effects are the artificial

audio added to the movie for impact. In sound effects multiple layers of sound are synthesized in

a studio rather than recorded in reality. Music is added into the film to create an atmospheric

effect. Special effects are added to make the movie both realistic and fantastic. Special effects

use today are computer generated imagery (CGI) (Sweeny).

A future film director learns film directing techniques. The techniques are what make a

movie work. Composing the shots and choosing the aspect ratio the director wants to film in can

make the movie wide and be an experience. Watching a movie in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio makes

the movie wide, draws you into the action and most big budget action films are shot in this
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format. Lighting can create the mood for the movie. High key lighting makes the movie bright

and happy and low key lighting makes the movie low and dark. Camera movement and camera

angles can give you the perspective of the character and what that character is going through in

the film. Both camera movement and camera angles can make the movie feel reel. Editing makes

the movie move and transitions, audio and visual effects are added to make the movie look like

everything is happening for real. Reading about how these techniques work can make my films

look great and visually appealing. I think that film directors have talent and they take their time

and put effort into the movies. A film director uses these techniques to make the film symbolic

and realistic for the audience to transported into the feature film. The film director tells the story

in a visual way through camera, characters and sound. The techniques can help the future film

director.
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Works Cited

"All Movie Talk." All Movie Talk The Film Buffs Dictionary. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Dec. 2016.

"Audio-Visual Techniques In Education." The British Medical Journal 3.5714 (1970): 101. Web.

O., and Each Shot Must Have A Purpose In The Scene. It Should Be As Short As Possible To

Achieve Thi. Basic Filming Techniques and Conventions (n.d.): n. pag. Web.

Sweeny, Brian. "Film: The Essential Study Guide." (2008): n. pag. Web.