For my technique/approach today, I’ve decided to try out a specific camera movement, after being inspired by the below shot from the HBO series Girls:
In this sequence, the camera tracks Lena Dunham’s character Hannah as she gets off the train onto the platform, stills as she yells across to the people in the building opposite the street, pans towards the group of people as they answer here, and then pans further right until we reach a 180 degree angle from the original position. Here, Dunham re-enters the frame from the right, and the camera stills as we observe her walk further away from the frame. I found it an interesting and unconventional choice how the shot remained the same yet Dunham enters the frame from different sides on two separate occasions.
I’ve made a (albeit crappy) diagram below to demonstrate the positioning of the camera and its movement along with the rest of the elements of the shot.
With this in mind, I set out to film a similar shot of a character in frame, exiting frame and reentering the frame at a different angle all in the same shot. I did both a handheld version and a still version to compare the difference.
Here’s the final product:
Version 1 (tripod)
Ex 5A Tripod from Jessica Xiao on Vimeo.
Version 2 (handheld)
Ex 5A Handheld from Jessica Xiao on Vimeo.
The two clips turned out to be more comedic than dramatic as I planned, but I was happy with the movement within the shot that I was trying to achieve. I think this will be a technique I use in a final short film. The comedic nature of the clips made it unsuitable to pair with music, so this is something I will think about with future clips. As for the effects of switching between the handheld and mounted cameras, I can see some noticeable differences. The handheld shot was more intimate and gave me more freedom to focus on the actors’ faces as they spoke, and I imagine will look good for dramatic scenes when paired with music. On the other hand, the tripod made for smoother movement, which is probably more cinematic.
Edit: After discussing the shot with Robin, he suggested the difference of having Kenton’s eyeline alert the audience where Sam is going, vs. a shot where he just looks down so that the audience is surprised to see that Sam reenters frame right after the camera pans away, when she has exited frame left. He talked about the nuances of every single shot that gives the scene or film its feel. For example, with this scene, I experimented with doing it with one continuous shot, but it would feel much different if the scene was covered using two different shots and cuts.
