Use of the camera

1) Different types of shots are used in a combination to give you information about where and when something is happening, the role of a character and his/her reaction, to draw attention to someone or something, or to create an impression or feeling. Look at the storyboard:

There are many variations and combinations of these shots.

2) Different camera movements can be used to create a specific effect, for
example:

A character walks into a room and the camera slowly pans across (moves from side to side). We feel as if we are the character looking around. By stopping something, our attention can be focused on this;

a feeling of unsteadiness or unease can be created by moving the camera diagonally (rolling). Our brains register that all is not well within this screen world;

the camera pulling backwards from a scene (tracking) indicates to the audience that the action that concerns us has now finished. In suspense films the action may start suddenly again at this point, thus surprising or shocking our expectations.

3) Mise-en-Scène. This is a French term meaning ‘what is put into the scene’ or frame. It is the director’s job to decide this and what is put in or left out can make a big difference to the signals we receive and the way we decode them.

If a director wants to show that the story takes place in Victorian times, he or she will signal this by the use of period clothes and props. The specific inclusion of a bed and rocking horse will signify a nursery. He may take this one step further and include a window with a storm outside, thus creating atmosphere. He may sit a child on a low stool in the middle of the floor, her toys lined up formally against the walls, thus signalling that she is isolated and repressed by this room and the society she lives in. So the selection of specific objects and images carry broader ideas.

Like the words chosen to make up a poem, each item in a frame may be carefully chosen and positioned. The director can draw our attention to an object, a gun, say, by placing it in the foreground, near the camera lens. We then decode that the gun will be important in this scene.
One director who emphasised the importance of mise-en-scène was André Bazin, who believed that it encouraged audiences to become more involved in a scene since they had to look actively and interpret what was included.

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