Would using a star filter for cinematography be too weird?

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, there is a specific reason for the shot I wanted to rotate around the actor, it's because he is being surrounded by police officers, and as the camera turns around him to emphasize his world closing in, and anxiety. That was my intention for that shot least. But I thought for a close up that does that, it would look better on an 85 mm I thought, for the shaping of the face. Maybe a 50 could work, but that's still not wide though for a gimbal.

[Brian Drysdale]

It's quite an introverted shot, so I would be careful about using it.

Actors are usually good at anxiety, so you don't need any camera moves, all you need is to see their eyes in a CU. Your shot might imply that they're about to blow their brains out in that situation..

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay. I know the actors can act it, I just thought I would have the camera movement as well to add to it.

[Brian Drysdale]

You can over do camera movement, just as you can over cut.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, but I didn't think this was over doing it though, especially since there are a lot of static shots in the planning already.

[Brian Drysdale]

Lots of static shots makes it worse because it/s so different.

[Ryan Elder]

So you are saying that I can over do the movement but at the same time have too many static shots? I feel like if I move the camera during too many shots, then the movement becomes less impactful, when I want to have impact. But at the same time what would I be doing that would be over doing it?

[Paul R Johnson]

Every camera movement needs a purpose. If it has a valid purpose it's good. Surely these are first week film school things. You seem totally unable to produce conclusions from your research. We simply don't work like this. I've never in my life had to try to rationalise very basic processes into kind of black and white. When people ask if I liked a movie, I don't think about the mechanics - I just know it was good, or bad. We're now at the level of single shots in a movie. This is just crazy. If you cannot engage your intuition, theres no hope you will move out of the talking phase of development.

[Brian Drysdale]

Originally Posted by Ryan Elder

So you are saying that I can over do the movement but at the same time have too many static shots? I feel like if I move the camera during too many shots, then the movement becomes less impactful, when I want to have impact. But at the same time what would I be doing that would be over doing it?

In this case it may imply more that you're wanting. As I mentioned earlier, "impact" in this situation could imply he going to blow his own brains out, rather than just being anxious about the cops

Your use of this move in the short is different because it's closer to a music video in style than a drama. Although, I'm not entirely sure that you fully understand what's being conveyed by some of your camera moves and cuts. As you say, you're going for impact rather than any deeper emotion.

A slow track in or even a slow zoom in (bearing in mind that you currently don't have a suitable lens) would be a more appropriate move.

[Greg Smith]

Ryan, please study up on the difference between barrel distortion and wide angle perspective when used close to a subject.

The vast majority of modern lenses, even wide angle zooms, have very little to no noticeable distortion (barrel or pincushion), which is an optical design issue for the engineers. Wide lenses do, however, by their nature, exaggerate depth in a shot and can give unpleasant effects when used too close to human subjects or when shooting at extreme angles up or down in rectangular spaces.

Please try to use the terminology correctly.

All lenses and different fields of view have their own aesthetic uses and it's your job as a director to figure out what is appropriate for the action and emotion in each scene.

[Paul R Johnson]

Greg - you mean the often seen huge nose syndrome! It only just clicked what Ryan was banging on about!

[Brian Drysdale]

This was discussed in another thread, but seemingly it hasn't gotten through.

[Ryan Elder]

Originally Posted by Brian Drysdale

In this case it may imply more that you're wanting. As I mentioned earlier, "impact" in this situation could imply he going to blow his own brains out, rather than just being anxious about the cops

Your use of this move in the short is different because it's closer to a music video in style than a drama. Although, I'm not entirely sure that you fully understand what's being conveyed by some of your camera moves and cuts. As you say, you're going for impact rather than any deeper emotion.

A slow track in or even a slow zoom in (bearing in mind that you currently don't have a suitable lens) would be a more appropriate move.

Oh okay, but I feel that the zoom or dolly in, will not have quite the same emotional impact as the circling around in this case. I don't think there is a rule that this kind of camera movement belong in music videos only, I've seen movement just as elaborate than this done in movies, so I think it's okay. When I said impact, I meant emotional impact. I didn't mean to imply I wasn't going for emotion.

Originally Posted by Paul R Johnson

Greg - you mean the often seen huge nose syndrome! It only just clicked what Ryan was banging on about!

What just clicked? Did I miss something?

Originally Posted by Greg Smith

Ryan, please study up on the difference between barrel distortion and wide angle perspective when used close to a subject.

The vast majority of modern lenses, even wide angle zooms, have very little to no noticeable distortion (barrel or pincushion), which is an optical design issue for the engineers. Wide lenses do, however, by their nature, exaggerate depth in a shot and can give unpleasant effects when used too close to human subjects or when shooting at extreme angles up or down in rectangular spaces.

Please try to use the terminology correctly.

All lenses and different fields of view have their own aesthetic uses and it's your job as a director to figure out what is appropriate for the action and emotion in each scene.

Sorry if I used the wrong terminology but a wide lens and an 85mm lens shape the face differently in a close up though. You can't just throw a wide lens on and say the face will look exactly the same, unless there are some special wide lenses that shape the face, just like an 85? I couldn't find the right terminology for this though so far. I'll keep looking. When I look this up on websites, a lot of sites talk about how focal lengths shape the face differently, but no one ever uses an actual word terminology for it on the sites I have looked on. I will keep looking.

On this site for example, they call it 'facial distortion', not sure if that's right, but if you look at the focal length examples of the person's face:

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4164807

I would say that 70mm-100mm is where the face looks the best. So I would want to keep the focal length somewhere in there, assuming we are talking about a full frame camera. So since 85mm is a more popular focal length, I was thinking of using that one. I don't know the terminology for that, but that is what I mean. Sorry for using the wrong terminology. So for wide master shots, I can use a a 24 mm and it should look fine. It's just the CUs of faces that I do not like the look of on a wide lens.

[Pete Cofrancesco]

When I read his posts all I see is:

blahblabah...telephoto... blahblabah... wide angle... barrel distortion... blahblabah... compression... (repeat)

[Paul R Johnson]

You've also missed up the added horribleness that close in, wide angle AND MOVEMENT makes.

We're taking about compression or expansion - and usually we accept these two processes as distortion. Wide angles expand perspective and telephotos compress it. If the head turns, or the camera rotates around it, the poking out or going in bits change size - so the nose suddenly leaps out and then recedes as the ears enlarge.

We think you do know this, but keep calling it barrel distortion by mistake.


I've been thinking about all this emotional stuff - Maybe this is the part I lack? I'm not an emotional person and when selecting positions, angles, heights and movement all I think about is composition and shot purpose. I don't think I have ever designed a shot by thinking about emotion generation ever. The story generates the emotional content, and any movie that is emotional in intent is one to avoid like the plague for me. I like telling stories and I like images or image sequences to be smooth when required, or 'live' when some kind of excitement/realism is needed.

I can visualise this person looking out, and the camera rotating around them, and in my head the vertical height stays exactly the same, the horizon stays horizontal, and the rotational speed stays constant. The background will probably be sharp, and probably any edits in this sequence would also have identical movement parameters, but narrower angle with blurred background, which would cut together well. The purpose could be the subject seeing things important to the plot, or NOT seeing things he should, or maybe showing him thinking. emotion for me would not be there at all as a drive for the shot, as I don't understand the use of 'emotion' as a shot driver.