FILM SCHOOL ABRIDGED - SHOT SIZES

I thought long and hard about what I wanted to start this undertaking off with and I ultimately decided to start with the subject covered in the one and only episode of Lens Cracker. Specifically; SHOT SIZES. This really is the most basic of the concepts on the cheat sheet to understand, as well as among the most helpful in the realm of planning your shoot.

So on your cheat sheet, look on the far right side of the sheet.

Hm, let's lay that out a bit cleaner. Click below to get a larger view.
And below is the same idea expressed differently. Right, let's go through this, eh?

ECU - Extreme Close-Up
CU - Close-Up
MCU - Medium Close-Up
MS - Medium Shot
MLS - Medium Long Shot
LS - Long Shot
WS - Wide Shot



Through these thumbnail descriptors, you'll be able to describe 99% of all shots you've ever seen in every film/video/tv show/comic book/advertizement/poster/video game/logo you've encountered, including your own (whether you used them consciously or not). If you do a search for 'shot size', you'll find every source will have slightly different names but this I find to be the most practical to remember and put into practice.

Now, there's a reason I've got the abbreviated form of each shot size on the Cheat Sheet in place of its full description. Before I talk about each of those in detail, I want to talk about why.

One of the most important elements of directing is going in knowing exactly what you're going to shoot and being able to communicate this with everyone else. This gives a universal short-hand to aid in both. And while many more challenging shots are helpful to storyboard to assist others to visualize, most shots don't need anything more than 'MCU John, deep focus'. Often even a more complicated shot can be described this way, too: 'Dolly back from MCU to LS John; reveal MS Claire (facing camera) on "The world sucks...".' or 'Crane up MCU John to LS overhead, slow clockwise spin.'. This, as you can imagine, saves a great deal of effort; pertinent information conveyed in as little as 2 words per shot rather than taking the time and effort to storyboard an entire project.

Wide Shot (WS)
A good way to think of a Wide Shot is that it places your subject in the full context of their environment. This shot size can be used to make a person seem small and lonely, or just to help to establish location. In fact, it's sometimes called an 'Establishing Shot' for that very reason.

There is no limit on how far back you can take the camera.

EXAMPLE FROM 'YOJIMBO'


Long Shot (LS)
Head to toe. Because this shot shows the full movement of a person, it's often used in sitcoms or broad humor.

Like a Wide Shot, this shot size is good for giving an audience a sense of placement of the characters to their environment and relation to each other. You may notice that many older films use this size of shot quite a bit. Going for a bit of a tangent here, but generally that's for one of two reasons; first because early filmmakers often treated films like stage plays. And second because playing a scene wider meant the need for less coverage as everything can cleanly be seen on screen in a single frame. In many cases this allowed for tighter shooting schedules.

EXAMPLE FROM 'FAWLTY TOWERS'


Medium Long Shot (MLS)
Head to just above the knees. Also called a Cowboy because it was used in westerns to show the gun holster. This is used more often than you'd think.

If you're going to go wider than the knees, as a rule you should jump straight to a Long Shot; it really does feel weird when there's a picture that's framed so it cuts a subjects legs off half-way down the shins. Framing like that generally feels tentative and unbalanced.


EXAMPLE FROM 'COWBOYS & ALIENS'


Medium Shot (MS)
Head to waist. This is the closest shot size most sitcoms will go.

Now we're transitioning into more intimate shot sizes. It's less about the character in relation to the space they're in, or capturing the totality of movements. Starting here and especially moving forward, a closer shot size can capture more subtlety of performance. A medium shot is a good balance of that as it remains far enough away that the character isn't imposing on personal space.

Getting much closer than this during frenetic action scenes will make it difficult to comprehend what's happening and who's doing what. On a more practical level, this is still wide enough to smoothly follow movement with a camera during live events and such. Much closer and there's not much wiggle room.

Most homebrew review shows use this shot size nearly exclusively.

EXAMPLE FROM 'STAR WARS EPISODE I'... OR MAYBE 'EPISODE II'...


Medium Close Up (MCU)
Head and shoulders. Dramas tend to spend a lot of time here. It's more intimate than a Medium, but still allows for breathing room. Used heavily for conversations.

This actually has the most amount of wiggle room out of any of the shot sizes discussed so far save for WS. Framing belly button up still counts as an Medium Close Up. As does framing with just a couple inches of shoulders showing.

In addition to allowing more subtle performances to come through, the closer the camera is to the subject the more intense it feels. This is especially the case when used in conjunction with editing so it gets tighter and tighter. That approach can be seen in many interrogation scenes where the staging has little to no movement.

EXAMPLE FROM 'THE KING'S SPEECH'


Close Up (CU)
The full face. Can be as wide as head and neck. This is a very intimate shot size. A lot of subtlety comes across, and performances are often underplayed because of that.

Generally you're not going to want to have a lot of movement in a close up. It's hard to keep a close up when the actor is running down a hallway. Likewise, there's very little information in a close up alone as to where the character is in relation to the space they're in.

EXAMPLE FROM 'JCVD'


Extreme Close Up (ECU)
A part of the whole. An easy way to think of this is that an ECU is close enough on the subject that it completely fills the screen.

As with MCUs, there is actually a lot of variety for what can be considered an Extreme Close Up. If you get a little closer with a Close Up so the chin is cut off, you've got an ECU. Likewise is a shot where someone's eye is taking up the whole screen such as in this shot from Blade Runner.

Used to call attention to something such as being close on the eyes widening in realization, or close on a clock to establish the time. A shot like this is stylized by its nature. It was used to striking effect in the Dollar trilogy of Westerns by Sergio Leone when he juxtaposed Wide Shots with ECUs.

EXAMPLE FROM 'THE QUICK AND THE DEAD'


That's if from me for now. Next time... General tips! With less pictures! Probably!

Any questions about film technique? Leave a comment below, and I'll try answer them next article.

THE ANTI-CRITIC BREAKDOWN: TJ TV

BREAKING DOWN THE BREAKDOWN
Well, ladies and gentlemen, this is the follow-up to my look at Suburban Knights and this time I'm doing something different. I've been trying to think how best to use this blog, and I came onto the idea of the open-letter critique.

Let me explain.

Most people who have given in-depth feedback of homebrew reviewers follow one of two paths. Either they provide the feedback privately, or they do it publicly and with intent to ridicule. I think there is room for respect in public critique, and that's what I intend to bring with this and future Breakdowns.

And how I do that is by bringing the voice of the video's creator into the conversation.

Every Breakdown I will start with a profile of the person behind the reviewer and allow them to talk about the ideas and processes behind their show. Then, with unflinching honesty, I will look at an episode of their choosing. Before posting I will give the reviewer the chance to preview the article and respond to the criticism in their own words.

In this way I hope to challenge some preconceptions and, hopefully, to give other homebrew reviewers and videomakers insight into their own shows.

INTRODUCING TJOMEGA!
In real life, TJOmega is Tyler James.

He has been an avid collector of action figures and plastic collectables for close to ten years and writing about them since 2005.

In his own words: It's something I share with my dad. He got me started on Transformers when I was a kid because of how much he liked them. But aside from that, it's a source of inspiration for me knowing there's 28 years of characters that are all unique. It's a reminder of how unlimited creativity can be!

In late 2007, dissatisfied with the majority of toy review shows on the internet, Tyler started his own, Plastic Addict, on YouTube. Since then his channel has accumulated nearly 9,000 subscribers and averages a respectable 20,000-30,000 views an episode.

On the chopping block today is his second show, TJ TV, which Tyler started in early 2010.

As he describes: I was doing toy reviews on YouTube for years and decided I needed to expand with something more mainstream and approachable. Since I never gave up on cartoons just from age I figured it was where my depths of knowledge gave me the best source of material for reviews.

When I first did TJ TV there were no critics for cartoons and TV shows. Even when the Nostalgia Critic did a cartoon it was rare, but that's where my nostalgia was; waking up at the crack of dawn for my Saturday morning shows.

Tyler asked that I look at his eleventh episode for this breakdown, a review of the Double Dragon cartoon from the 1990's.

BEHIND THE SCENES
INSPIRATION:
In a previous review I had created an evil me from the future and ended up having so much fun portraying the character that I wanted to reintroduce him as something I could bring up more often. Looking through my available cartoons, this one seemed to be the best vehicle for giving him more screen time, and I knew I could do split screening well.

• Writing took 6 hours
• Filming took 2 hours
• Editing took 14 hours (4 hours longer than average)

CHALLENGES:
To make the split screen work as cleanly as possible I had to consider lighting placement and intensity, eye lines for discussions, and timing. It was challenging making sure the humor was balanced in the writing. Also challenging was keeping up a harsh voice for that long. By the end my throat was on fire, and I was a sweaty mess from Evil TJ's leather jacket and the filming lights on me for so long. The final struggle was actually the series itself since the whole climax of the review was the fact that episode two of Double Dradon completely discarded episode one. I had to be careful to properly explain the show without giving that away.

ADMITTED FAULTS:
If I could do it again, I'd better explain the events in Season 2 as the show degenerated into a shameless toy shill. I also regret not mentioned how Marian as the damsel in distress is one of the few things the show got right from the games.

The split screen also isn't perfect, there's a slight seam and the bowing gag which was one of my favorites in the episode should have been edited better to avoid the changes in shadows.

BREAKDOWN: DOUBLE DRAGON (TJ TV EPISODE 11)

Here's the episode if you'd like to follow along.

TV PRE-ROLL THROUGH INTRO (00:00 - 01:00)
The first image of any video helps to set the tone for the viewer's experience. Here 30 seconds are dedicated to non sequitur clips and 30 seconds to the title sequence, meaning it takes a full minute to get to the video proper. As I plan to talk about in more detail later, a long intro for a web show will often bring down the quality and can lower potential viewership of an otherwise decent show.

In proof that every rule has an exception, this intro works for me. The non sequitur clips pay off the 'TV' portion of 'TJ TV', and the title sequence is both appropriate to the concept and visually interesting. Even the music with it's build up more relaxed pace suits the flow of the show. Everything in this first minute builds towards setting the right tone and putting the audience into the proper frame of mind.

Minor pixelation around the edge of the television image used does break the illusion a little.

SERIES RUNDOWN (01:00 - 05:30)
The opening shot immediately proves little thought was put into the set or framing. There is a bed, a curtain behind it, and the uninteresting half of a sword. This communicates nothing about the show to the audience except for an overwhelming sense of green. In the filming of a review, where often the entire review is filmed from one camera angle, it becomes even more essential to make what's seen on screen work for you instead of just being there or even working against you.

Assuming the location was restricted to this room, the bed will be cited as being in the way of any other frame. This is an empty excuse as it is perfectly acceptable to pick the bed up and move it into the hall for the duration of filming. Or to place it against a wall. In this way, more space is freed up to find an interesting composition.

There's also too little head room (the space between the top of the subject's head and the top of the frame), but this is an improvement over the tendency of others to place the actor's head in the dead center of the screen.

As far as the rundown of the series, this section flows well. After the title sequence, no time is wasted getting into the rhythm and the episode's subject is introduced after a well-handled 15 second segue. The writing towards the middle could've been tightened up, and the bit comparing the Rastafarian tiger to Jar-Jar Binks went on longer than it needed to.

TIME-TRAVELING EVIL DOPPELGANGER (05:30 - 08:00)
And so we're introduced to TJ's descendant from 1000 years in the future. For all intents and purposes, he is an evil doppelganger.

Okay, there's a lot I need to address in this shot.

• There's nothing to visually tie the previous location to this one, so there's no way to give any indication of where the two characters are in relation to each other. Remember, you create what's to the right of the character; it's more important that it feel right to the audience than it be accurate to the actual space you're working in.
  
• No seriously, even the color schemes are different. The frame with TJ Omega was sparsely set-dressed and dominated with green and white; this frame in contrast is densely packed with toy shelves and dominated with browns and muted colors. Without the reaction and sound effects placing the Evil Doppelganger somewhere on screen-left of TJ, he could be in someone else's house.
• Evil Dopp... screw it, ED's position is leaving nearly half the frame unused. It would feel far more natural to have him further screen-left, giving more room towards where he's oriented towards than where he's oriented away from.
• With the camera placement and the shelves pointing into the corner, Tyler's created some decent leading lines (lines that lead the eye). Unfortunately, those lines lead past the frame's subject and into the corner. Placing ED visually in the corner means the eye is more naturally led to him.
  
• ED's coat is blending into the background on the right side of the screen. Adding a back light would help the character stand out.
  
• Head room's a little tight.

And now's where it get's tricky to explain it clearly, but the eye line is off. Bear with me through this. Tyler is inter-cutting between the two camera angles thus far established. Now I'm betting that when filming this sequence Tyler kept the camera in the same position making the set up looked something like this.

In the real space this makes sense. But for the audience it feels off, and I'll tell you why.

• The Evil Doppelganger is in a medium shot (head to waist) where TJ is nearer to a medium close-up (head to chest). Because of this, TJ feels like he's closer to the screen with ED feeling further away.
• The first frame is dead-on TJ with him looking 90 degrees to screen-left. The second frame has ED at a 3/4 angle looking ahead.
• As stated above, there is nothing that gives a sense of placement between the two locations.
  

So their relative spacial positions in filmic reality end up feeling like this.

The interchange between ED and TJ is quite well written and well paced. I really enjoy the word play, with my personal favorite line being "This is not the time to be conjugating temporal verbs in the past and possible never-tense.".

There is a minor logical issue where after the music is established to be source (heard by characters) and not score (only heard by audience), it then suddenly shifts back to being score. (established as source from 06:10 - 06:35 and contradicted shortly after 07:05 for those following along at home).

It should be mentioned that the editing, pacing, and audio work are all handled well, with the character exchanges making up for shortcomings in other departments. Tyler avoids the trap that many beginning editors fall into of always cutting to a character when they start talking and only cutting away when they stop. That praise applies to the rest of the video, too.

THE FIRST EPISODE (08:00 - 15:45)
Now we get to the MST3k section of the video. Also known as Summary/Snark.

The split screen effect itself is actually quite decently handled here. I had to look for the split. The shadow projected on the curtain does occasionally break the illusion, but not as much as you'd think.


The shot feels crowded because of how close ED and TJ are to the edges of the frame. This would've been solved simply by moving either the actors... um, actor away from the camera or by moving the camera itself backwards.

The snark itself is fine but feels too long. There's little of it that really jumps out at me as being either exceptionally funny or especially poor, but it's an inherent issue with this style that going through an episode beat by beat can be tedious unless those beats themselves are interesting and/or the snark being especially insightful. Especially so given this style is so prolific in the homebrew reviewing community. This section could easily have been cut in half without effecting the tempo.

REVIEW SUMMATION (15:45 - 17:00)
The reveal that the first episode had nothing to do with the rest of the series was a good lead-in to the review portion itself. No major issues.

FINAL THOUGHTS
The format of having half the episode devoted to talking about the series as a whole and the second half doing the now more traditional Summary/Snark approach is a good shake-up of the formula.

Though the inclusion of ED generated some of the highlights of the video, everything ground to a halt in the middle of the for nearly a sixth of the video's total run time to make the character's introduction. Beyond that I didn't feel his inclusion added much to this review. During off-screen snark, I kept thinking Tayler was trying to imitate the voice of one of the show's characters before I realized it was supposed to be ED.

I think there be a missed opportunity of playing more with the 'TV' concept in the body of the episode itself. Specifically imagining that the video is playing on a television controlled by someone who obsessively changes the channel periodically. The current format is fine, though.

Likewise, the writing could really have stood to be tightened up.

That's it from my end. Over to you Tyler!

Tyler's response coming soon.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Though every effort has been made to preserve Tyler's original intent, the quotes he provided have been edited for both brevity and clarity. Also, given the fairly critical stance I've taken here on the technicals I feel I need to reinforce that I do actually like 'TJ TV'; it has more going for it than against it.