The Essence of Cinema
In our last issue, I introduced you to the “Language of Visual Storytelling” and its main elements, such as frame composition, framing, camera angles and camera movements.
We also went together through the exercise of analyzing the script of a very simple scene, and deciding on what shots we’ll need to “collect” to tell the story of this scene visually.
The main difference between storytelling in the form we find it in books, novels and in oral stories, and Visual Storytelling is, precisely, that the old storytelling adage “Show, Don’t Tell” is in full force when it comes to movies!
In writing, some measure of “telling” is unavoidable, since the author needs to describe what’s happening –outside in the world or in the character’s mind– using words!
In cinema, we don’t have that limitation.
We can simply SHOW the viewer what’s going on!
“A picture is worth 1,000 words”
This is great, of course, but it also mean that we need to be completely deliberate about WHAT we show the spectator, and WHEN.
This is where framing (what’s inside the frame), camera angles, and camera movements come in!
As I mentioned in our last issue, the correct use of these cinematography tools to tell compelling stories is a BIG subject, so I’m not going to dump on you a bunch of information and jargon and call that “teaching”.
My goal is for you to master these tools to the point that using them becomes second nature, so we’ll go slow, and introduce every camera angle and camera movement in a completely practical way, just as we have been doing so far.
You can always get tons of information about these subjects online, but if you want to avoid getting confused and overwhelmed, I strongly suggest you arm yourself with a little patience and walk this journey of discovery alongside me…
So let’s go back to the work we’ve been doing together over the last few issues, and let the application of these new cinematography concepts do the telling by themselves…
If you remember, in this past issue we took our first frame and used an AI video service called Hailou to convert it into our first ever, AI-generated movie shot.
It looked like this:
Please take a minute to watch it again…
It does look stunning, no doubt!
But tell me: what’s wrong with this shot?
Watch it again…
Got it?
Supposedly, we’re been invited into the world of Akiko and her grandmother; this is the first time we see these characters and, as viewers, we need to care!
But instead of inviting us in to establish that emotional connection…
The camera is taking us OUT!
See why I said before that we must be DELIBERATE when using these visual storytelling tools?
This is not about we doing some fancy camera movements…
This is us TRYING TO TELL A STORY and, even more important: GETTING THE SPECTATOR TO FEEL SOMETHING! (and a VERY SPECIFIC SOMETHING at that!).
Don’t make the mistake to think, as many new comers to the art of making movies do, that you can just pick a random camera movement just because it looks sleek and call it a day!
Youtube’s obsession with “cinematic”, for instance, cannot be more in polar opposition with actual “cinema”.
Not because something “looks cinematic” belongs in a movie.
Don’t think for a moment that just because you decided to get 15 different shots of you riding a bike, including some extreme close-ups of your feet and the tires of the bike for some reason, and strung them together with half a dozen fancy camera movements and transitions and added a speed ramp in post-production for good measure, you’re doing cinema!
What’s the story?!?
Cinema is about telling stories. And doing it in a compelling, emotionally impactful way.
The rest, is just party tricks with your camera (cool to see, don’t take me wrong, but not what we’re doing here…)
As you’ll soon see, most of the really fancy camera movements you might have seen in Youtube, or in some ads, are rarely if ever used in movies.
EMOTIONAL IMPACT is the name of this game!
If I need to show that that a character takes a bike and rides it somewhere, I’ll show that in the most concise way possible, as this is most likely not a crucial part of the story I’m telling.
A shot taking the bike, and another quick shot riding it would be plenty.
I don’t need to zoom in to the pedals, or do an extreme close-up to show the tires rolling against the road, or show the character’s hands maneuvering the handlebar…
The spectator knows what a bike looks like, and how to ride one!
What I should be asking myself, on top of the magic directing question we saw in our last issue (“What I need to show the viewer next”) is:
“WHAT EXACTLY do I need to make the spectator FEEL now?
This much deeper question guides EVERYTHING in cinema, from the writing of the script, to the performances of the actors, and even the entirety of the production and set design!
When it comes to camera framing –deciding what to include and what NOT to include in a particular frame– camera angles, and camera movements, this is THE question you need to be asking yourself constantly.
Going back to our example clip above, it’s very clear that this clip would work perfectly if it were the last shot of the movie, where we’re leaving the characters and their world AFTER the full story has already taken place and the hero –Akiko in this case– already got the TRANSFORMATION the entire story was about.
It’d be just natural for us to leave, to emotionally disconnect from the characters and their world we had been briefly invited to at the end of the movie.
And that’s EXACTLY the emotional impact this camera movement, called “dolly out” or “pull out” creates in the spectator: the camera “walks away”, creating emotional distance and detachment between the characters and the spectator.
The opposite camera movement, the “dolly in”, sometimes simply called “punch in”, has the opposite effect: it invites the spectator in, creates an emotional connection with the characters in the scene.
Especially with the character who’s at the focus point of the camera.
This camera movement is, of course, a great way to start a scene. And even more so, if this is the first time we’re seeing these characters, or this particular setting.
Last time, when we used Hailou to create this shot, we didn’t prompt the AI for any camera movement in particular, so it assumed a dolly out movement would work fine.
And the shot does look great of course…
But it doesn’t help us to tell the story we want to tell, nor it creates the emotional connection with the viewer we need to establish in this scene.
Remember: ALWAYS BE DELIBERATE ABOUT YOUR SHOTS!
In cinema, every shot must count!
Every single shot needs to have a clear purpose, needs to help tell the story and contribute to creating the necessary emotions in the spectator.
So now that we know this, let’s try to generate that first shot again:
I will use the same first frame image as before, but this time I’ll nudge the AI with a simple prompt: “camera slowly dollies in”:
Here’s the result:
As you can see, the feeling is totally different now!
That’s the power of using the right camera movement to convey the emotion you want to convey, instead of a randomly selected fancy camera movement with no meaning and no story to tell!
A final word on dolly movements:
Remember that in a dolly in/dolly out camera movement the camera physically moves closer or away from the subject.
To the spectator, this physical movement of the camera feels like they are walking into or out of the scene.
They’re using “their legs” to either, get closer to the character in focus, or leave the scene.
This camera movement evokes a completely different emotion in the viewer than a regular Zoom In/Zoom Out.
In a Zoom, the camera stays fixed in place, it’s just the lenses’ focal length that is changed.
Zooms have their uses of course, but in general, are less powerful devices to create an emotional connection (or disconnection) than dollies.
The reason is simple: in real life, out eyes cannot zoom in/out, so this camera movement feel quite unnatural to our brains.
Because of that, it does not create the same natural experience and gut feeling that other more natural movements, like the dollies, do.
The camera physically moving feels like we’re walking inside the scene with our own feet, it creates a sense of presence.
If the camera dollies in (punches in) toward a character, it creates in the viewer a feeling of getting physically closer to them, a sense of closeness or intimacy.
Contrarily, when the camera dollies out (pulls out) we get a sense of emotional distancing, of progressive detachment from the character or events.
A dolly out can even convey a sense of isolation, loneliness… and even show how powerless the character feels, depending on the scene’s setting.
These powerful emotional effects cannot be achieved with zoom movements most of the time, due to the unnaturalness of this camera movement.
As a matter of fact, the camera doesn’t actually move, so zoom ins/outs can hardly be called “camera movements” in my opinion.
Ok, I feel this is enough information for today.
Make sure to practice your dolly ins and dolly outs with Hailou AI or whatever AI video generation service you prefer, and let’s meet next week where I’ll teach you how to make effective use of camera angles to convey the exact emotion you need to make your scene work!
See you then,
Leonardo
P. S. Enjoying Flawlessly Human?
Please take a few moments to support my mission of creating a new generation of storytellers by sharing it with your friends and colleagues.
That would mean the world to me!