Although it may seem simplistic from the surface, a camera running along some rails capturing some university blokes passing a blank piece of paper and cut that’s all the excitement for one day but wait there so much more… The beauty of an expertise exercise is you get to master a skill and then add that cinematic practise of the skill to your repertoire eventually having a wild variety of great techniques to incorporate in your next film which will put more meaning into each frame of each shot.

Mainly the aim of the expertise exercise for me was to master the skill of the tracker shot and for those of you who don’t know what a tracking shot is pay close attention to the TRACK in tracking. A tracking shot is any shot where the camera moves alongside the object or objects it is recording. In cinematography, the term refers to a shot in which the camera is mounted on a camera dolly that is then placed on rails – like a railroad track. The camera is then pushed along the track while the image is being filmed. I think shots that are moving can have a strong profound effect on the audience, it can indicate a shifting in time, place, person and narrative. I think the one thing movement in shots emphasise is the sense of life. With a static steady cam the audience won’t be distracted by the camera movement therefore more focused on the subject therefore when focusing on the subject or intricate details the audience will be purely fixated on the action.

Moving the camera is important as it can reveal detail that a fixed camera on a tripod can’t do, it can skim around a 360 degree radius revealing clues quite literally moving the story forward. In these shots, the camera itself moves forwards, backwards or sideways. You can track in (move forwards) to move through a space, to build intensity in a closeup, to follow a character, or to show what a they’re seeing (a point of view shot). A track out (backwards) can reveal more of a scene, or a character can follow the moving camera.

With tracking shots I have used before it has taken great communication between the director, cinematographer and actor to get the actors to walk at the right pace for the pan. To master this skill does take skill and each set of rails used will tend to operate slightly differently. Particularly it can be frustrating working with very inexperienced actors as remembering dialogue may be one thing but walking is a bridge too far.

Tracking shots usually look better if you zoom out or use a wide angle lens or adapter (especially if you’re using the camera handheld). You’ll be able to get closer, so the shot will look more dramatic and camera shake will be less obvious. Camera shake unless being used as an intended effect, like in a war reenactment where bombs exploding can be replicated through camera shake movement, the more slick the shot is in movement the better so usually I am quite weary of camera shake.

Overall I like incorporating the tracking shot, I believe the effect it can have mixed in with where you cut the shot can have an array of different effects on the audience, in my next blog post I was explain some of the inspirations I have had from other successful film incorporating the dolly tracking shot and using uninterrupted shots to play a role in building suspense, developing a story or creating a memorable piece of cinematic history.

Michael Serpell