Shooting for the edit vs. too much coverage.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh well right now I'm doing the documentary project I was doing before so I can still find myself shooting real people

Just when it comes to my own projects I am not sure how to use stuffed animals since they don't move but I guess I can move them with my hands on camera if course.

[Paul R Johnson]

If it's done properly, these things are not even noticed. They often surface on YouTube and we kick ourselves we missed it. If they notice first screening it wasn't done right.

[Brian Drysdale]

These questions seem to endlessly repeat.

You can have quite a lot of the action in longer lasting shots. Note I said longer lasting shots, not wide shots.Steven Spielberg is a master of these; the closer shots are all in a single shot provided by camera moves interacting with the actor's performance. So, he also has the closer shots within that single shot. just no cuts It doesn't appear slow because everything is dynamic. He also uses the static shots as required, that may or may not be singles. because Spielberg often composes in depth.

However, for this to work, you need actors who have good sense of timing and a camera crew who can operate and move the camera to match the actor's performance. You may require a number of takes for everything to work precisely.

Regarding coverage, you need enough to tell the story. If your actors don;t have that sense of timing, you'll need use the edit to create that. Sometimes the politics on a production requires the director to over cover the scenes to give the producer options in the edit. Note that on some TV dramas the director may not be that involved in the editing.

Again, you're endlessly looking for rules. It's what's appropriate for a particular scene within the context of the story as a whole. How you'd shoot a scene in a soap opera will probably differ to a similar scene in a feature film with the same type of location.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh ok. Well when it comes to Spielberg's moving shots, those type of shots do create more risk of continuity errors, so I assume Spielberg gets a static master of everything as back of then, every time he chooses to do that type of shot?

[Brian Drysdale]

Why should he do that?

He's got a continuity person, keeping aye on things and noting it. Also, these day,s there's video assist being recorded from the film camera. They can play the video back if needed,

The master shot doesn't need to be a wide shot, just last the length of the scene. Spielberg's shots can vary, depending on the content, so it could be wide and at some point end up on a CU or a MS, then move on to a wide angle high view, before sweeping into a close view of something being put in someone's pocket.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay I thought the idea of a master was to capture everything and if during the master, the camera moves and leaves a character, that's not capturing everything. but as long as I can do that and it's still safe

[Brian Drysdale]

Why waste time doing that? It costs ,money for something you won't need, all you require is something that allows everyone to know where they're going, even if they're out of the shot. If they need a simple wide shot they'll shoot it.

Often a master shot on TV drama is an excuse for rehearsal time and it may not get used at all, At most, it's a safety shot.

It takes time to set up Spielberg's shots, so why waste time doing a static wide shot if you've got something that dramatically evolves and provides all the information that everyone needs.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh ok but there was one time where there was a problem with one of the close up shots and I did need the master to back to. So I thought it is good to get just in case since it turned out I needed to cut back to it once. Unless I am looking at it the wrong way?

[Brian Drysdale]

I don't think you're working at the same level as Steven Spielberg is!

If you're shooting with CUs, for most scenes there will usually be wider shots, otherwise you've just left with talking heads. Whether or not they could called a master shot is another matter. they could be two shots or a variety of other sizes, Sometimes, a cutaway to the other actor might work better, especially if their reaction is more telling than what the actor was saying.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh ok. Are you saying that I shouldn't have a static master of everything for safety if I don't intend to use, and should only shoot what I intend to use for sure, and that will be enough coverage?

[Brian Drysdale]

Shoot a wide master if you want to. It gets the DP thinking about the overall lighting of a scene, but the master doesn't need to be just a wide static shot. It can be lot ,ore more interesting and possibly the only shot needed. It depends on the scene.

Although, as I mentioned, it's good for rehearsing the actors and lets everyone see what's going on.

Half of this scene is a single shot:

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) - Hushabye Mountain Scene (3/12) | Movieclips - YouTube

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, do you think that that scene still used the 3+3 method that the film riot video I posted before talked about, just for back up coverage, in case they needed it?

[Brian Drysdale]

I doubt it, they probably planned for the song to be a single shot. Doing it in a single shot would allow them to stay on or ahead of schedule. If you know what you're doing you don't need back up coverage,

A number of directors don't shot master shots that won't get used. It's something you learn from shooting on film at film school, knowing what you want and you only shoot that (with some overlaps), so keeping the shooting ratio down.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay thanks. It's just for one my projects for example, there was an OTS shot, that was slightly out of focus. So I couldn't use it and was forced to cut back to the master whenever I wanted to show that character. So that is one example, where I had to cut back to a master. I just thought that if I have one shot only of an entire scene, with no other shots to cut too, it may seem risky, in case something goes wrong with that one shot.

[Brian Drysdale]

If you're using less experienced camera people having a safety wide should make sense, However, there is often more than one shot option, apart from the wide shot, in some respects the OTS is a wide shot. In some film scenes it might be the only one.

The answer is probably to get a reasonably sized monitor, so that soft shots can be more easily spotted.