headroom

HEADROOM
In photography, headroom or head room is a concept of aesthetic composition that addresses the relative vertical position of the subject within the frame of the image. Headroom refers specifically to the distance between the top of the subject's head and the top of the frame, but the term is sometimes used instead of lead room, nose room or 'looking room'to include the sense of space on both sides of the image. The amount of headroom that is considered aesthetically pleasing is a dynamic quantity; it changes relative to how much of the frame is filled by the subject. The rule of thumb taken from classic portrait painting techniques, called the "rule of thirds", is that the subject's eyes, or the center of interest, is ideally positioned one-third of the way down from the top of the frame. Moving images such as film and video cameras have the same headroom issues as still photography, but with the added factors of the movement of the subject, the movement of the camera, and the possibility of zooming in or out.
Perceptual psychological studies have been carried out with experimenters using a white dot placed in various positions within a frame to demonstrate that observers attribute potential motion to a static object within a frame, relative to its position. The unmoving object is described as 'pulling' toward the center or toward an edge or corner. Proper headroom is achieved when the object is no longer seen to be slipping out of the frame—when its potential for motion is seen to be neutral in all directions.
Headroom changes as the camera zooms in or out, and the camera must simultaneously tilt up or down to keep the center of interest approximately one-third of the way down from the top of the frame. The closer the subject, the less headroom needed. In extreme close-ups, the top of the head is out of the frame, but the concept of headroom still applies via the rule of thirds.
In television broadcast camera work, the amount of headroom seen by the production crew is slightly greater than the amount seen by home viewers, whose frames are reduced in area by about 5%. To adjust for this, broadcast camera headroom is slightly expanded so that home viewers will see the correct amount of headroom. Professional video camera viewfinders and professional video monitors often include an overscan setting to compare between full screen resolution and "domestic cut-off" as an aid to achieving good headroom and lead room.
One of the most common mistakes that casual camera users make is to have too much headroom: too much space above the subject's head.

Examples

A portrait of guitarist Adrian Legg demonstrates an excessive amount of headroom, with the subject's nose centered in the frame (a common mistake.)

A subtle lack of headroom with the subject's eyes only 28% of the way down from the top, not 33%

Good composition, with the subject's eyes one-third of the distance down from the top of the frame, following the rule of thirds

For moving images, the action of zooming in to fill the frame with the subject requires the simultaneous tilting up of the camera, shown by the red lines, to maintain the correct amount of headroom. Conversely, zooming out requires tilting down.

Rule of thirds

The rule of thirds is a compositional rule of thumb in visual arts such as painting, photography and design. The rule states that an image should be imagined as divided into nine equal parts by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines, and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines or their intersections. Proponents of the technique claim that aligning a subject with these points creates more tension, energy and interest in the composition than simply centering the subject would.

The photograph to the right demonstrates the application of the rule of thirds. The horizon sits at the horizontal line dividing the lower third of the photo from the upper two-thirds. The tree sits at the intersection of two lines, sometimes called a power point or a crash point. Points of interest in the photo don't have to actually touch one of these lines to take advantage of the rule of thirds. For example, the brightest part of the sky near the horizon where the sun recently set does not fall directly on one of the lines, but does fall near the intersection of two of the lines, close enough to take advantage of the rule.

The rule of thirds is applied by aligning a subject with the guide lines and their intersection points, placing the horizon on the top or bottom line, or allowing linear features in the image to flow from section to section. The main reason for observing the rule of thirds is to discourage placement of the subject at the center, or prevent a horizon from appearing to divide the picture in half.

When photographing or filming people, it is common to line the body up with a vertical line, and having the person's eyes in line with a horizontal one. If filming a moving subject, the same pattern is often followed, with the majority of the extra room being in front of the person (the way they are moving).

PANNING SHOT

PANNING SHOT
In photography, panning refers to the horizontal movement or rotation of a still or video camera, or the scanning of a subject horizontally on video or a display device. Panning a camera results in a motion similar to that of someone shaking their head "no" or of an aircraft performing a yaw rotation.
Movie and television cameras pan by turning horizontally on a vertical axis, but the effect may be enhanced by adding other techniques, such as rails to move the whole camera platform. Slow panning is also combined with zooming in or out on a single subject, leaving the subject in the same portion of the frame, to emphasize or de-emphasize the subject respectively.
In video technology, the use of a camera to scan a subject horizontally is called panning.
In still photography, the panning technique is used to suggest fast motion, and bring out foreground from background. In photographic pictures it is usually noted by a foreground subject in action appearing still (i.e. a runner frozen in mid-stride) while the background is streaked and/or skewed in the apparently opposite direction of the subject's travel.
The term panning is derived from panorama,a word originally coined in 1787 by Robert Barker for the 18th century version of these applications, a machine that unrolled or unfolded a long horizontal painting to give the impression the scene was passing by; Barker also invented the cyclorama in which a large painting encircles an audience.

Steadicam

A Steadicam is a stabilizing mount for a motion picture camera, which mechanically isolates the operator's movement from the camera, allowing a very smooth shot even when the operator is moving quickly over an uneven surface. Informally, the word may also be used to refer to the combination of the mount and camera.
Before the steadicam, a director had two choices for moving (or "tracking") shots.
The camera can be mounted on a "dolly", a wheeled mount that rolls on tracks or leveled boards. However, this is time consuming to set up and impractical in many situations. The camera operator can hold the camera in his hands. This allows greater speed and flexibility, but even the most skilled camera operator cannot prevent the image from shaking, if only minutely. Hand-held footage has therefore traditionally been considered suitable mostly for documentaries, news, reportage work, live action, unrehearsable footage, or as a special effect to evoke an atmosphere of authentic immediacy or "cinéma vérité" during dramatic sequences. A steadicam essentially combines the stabilised steady footage of a conventional tripod mount with the fluid motion of a dolly shot and the flexibility of hand-held camera work. While smoothly following the operator's broad movements, the steadicam's armature absorbs any jerks, bumps, and shakes.
The steadicam was introduced to the industry in 1976 by inventor and cameraman Garrett Brown,who originally named the invention the "Brown Stabilizer". After completing the first working prototype, Brown shot a 10-minute demo reel of the revolutionary moves this new device could produce. This reel was seen by numerous directors, including Stanley Kubrick and John Avildsen. The Steadicam was first used in the biopic Bound for Glory, but its breakthrough movies are considered to be Avildsen's Rocky in 1976, and Kubrick's 1980 film The Shining.

Tracking shot

In motion picture terminology, a tracking shot (also known as a dolly shot or trucking shot) is a segment in which the camera is mounted on a wheeled platform that is pushed on rails while the picture is being taken. One may dolly in on a stationary subject for emphasis, or dolly out, or dolly beside a moving subject (an action known as "dollying with").
The Italian feature film Cabiria (1914), directed by Giovanni Pastrone, was the first popular film to use dolly shots, which in fact were originally called "Cabiria movements" by contemporary filmmakers influenced by the film; however, some smaller American and English films prior to 1914 had used the technique prior to Cabiria.
The tracking shot can include smooth movements forward, backward, along the side of the subject, or on a curve. Dollies with hydraulic arms can also smoothly "boom" or "jib" the camera several feet on a vertical axis. Tracking shots, however, cannot include complex pivoting movements, aerial shots or crane shots.
Tracking shots are often confused with the long take such as the 10-minute takes in Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1948)

Crane shot

In motion picture terminology, a crane shot is a shot taken by a camera on a crane. The most obvious uses are to view the actors from above or to move up and away from them, a common way of ending a movie. Some filmmakers like to have the camera on a boom arm just to make it easier to move around between ordinary set-ups. Most cranes accommodate both the camera and an operator, but some can be operated by remote control. They are usually, but not always, found in what are supposed to be emotional or suspensful scenes. One example of this technique is the shots taken by remote cranes in the car-chase sequence of To Live and Die in L.A..

Focus puller

In cinematography, a focus puller or first assistant camera (1st AC) is a member of a film crew's camera department who is responsible for keeping the camera properly focused during a shoot.
Sharp focus is elemental to reproducing a realistic, appealing image, and a viewer's attention is automatically drawn to sharper areas. When done right, good pulling goes mostly unnoticed by the audience, but soft focus is distracting, nearly impossible to repair after the fact, and can ruin a take. Focus pullers are therefore expected to perform flawlessly every time.
To prepare for a take, the focus puller first measures the distances during rehearsals, sets reference marks with the help of the 2nd AC, compares them with the distance markers on the particular lens being used, and marks them on his/her follow focus ring. During a take, he/she modifies the focus based on the dialog, action, the DP's directions, and compensates on the fly for actors missing their marks or any unforeseen movement. In some situations, an actor's head moving even a few millimeters may require instantaneous focus correction.
Traditionally, the focus puller does not look at the recorded image to do his/her job; using the marks instead of just looking through the viewfinder produces far more reliable and repeatable results. With his/her position beside the camera he/she can see his off-frame marks, and also gain a three-dimensional view of the scene, critical for judging distances. This method evolved with film cameras, which have only one sharp viewing apparatus - taken by the camera operator. With the advent of digital video cameras and increasingly reliable LCD monitors, focus pullers do sometimes check their work on the screen.
Besides his/her eyes, the puller's main tools are a follow focus device and a distance measuring tool - usually with a tape measure or, more recently, with electronic tape measures using lasers (some discourage the use of lasers due to a potential liability resulting from damage that the light might inflict on an actor.
Professional 1st ACs have many tricks for pulling focus in difficult situations or when accurate measurement is impossible. Often, before a scene is even rehearsed or established, the 1st AC will take surveying measurements of the general environment in order to have a good idea of the distance between reference points, such as patterns on the floor or walls, furniture, and whatever else might be around. These reference measurements can be used to quickly establish rough distances between the camera and the subject in chaotic shooting circumstances when it is impossible to accurately measure the distance.

Defocus

In optics, defocus is the one aberration familiar to nearly everyone who has ever needed eyeglasses or used a camera, videocamera, microscope, telescope, or binoculars, as it simply means out of focus. Optically, defocus refers to a translation along the optical axis away from the plane or surface of best focus. In general, defocus reduces the sharpness and contrast of the image. What should be sharp, high-contrast edges in a scene become gradual transitions. Fine detail in the scene is blurred or even becomes invisible. Nearly all image-forming optical devices incorporate some form of focus adjustment to minimize defocus and maximize image quality.

The degree of image blurring for a given amount of focus shift depends inversely on the lens f-number. Low f-numbers, such as f/1.4 to f/2.8, are very sensitive to defocus and have very shallow depths of focus. High f-numbers, in the f/16 to f/32 range, are highly tolerant of defocus, and consequently have large depths of focus. The limiting case in f-number is the pinhole camera, operating at perhaps f/100 to f/1000, in which case all objects are in focus almost regardless of their distance from the pinhole aperture. The penalty for achieving this extreme depth of focus is very dim illumination at the imaging film or sensor, limited resolution due to diffraction, and very long exposure time, which introduces the potential for image degradation due to motion blur.

The amount of allowable defocus may be tied to the resolution of the imaging media. High-resolution black-and-white (B&W) films can resolve image details down to 3 micrometers or smaller, with usable contrast at 150 cycles/millimeter or higher. Modern digital imaging chips and color print films are not as sharp as high-resolution B&W films, but have resolution comparable to each other, and are slightly more tolerant of defocus. If an imaging chip has 10 micrometer pixels, one cycle is therefore two pixels, equal to 20 micrometers or 0.020 millimeters, and the spatial cutoff frequency (limit of resolution) is thus 50 cycles/millimeter at focus.

Defocus is modeled in Zernike polynomial format as a(2ρ2 − 1), where a is the defocus coefficient in wavelengths of light. This corresponds to the parabola-shaped optical path difference between two spherical wavefronts that are tangent at their vertices and have different radii of curvature.

ESTABLISHING SHOT

ESTABLISHING SHOT
In film and television, an establishing shot sets up, or "establishes", a scene's setting and/or its participants. Typically it is a shot at the beginning (or, occasionally, end) of a scene indicating where, and sometimes when,
the remainder of the scene takes place.
For example, an exterior shot of a building at night, followed by an interior shot of people talking, implies that the conversation is taking place at night inside that building. (Of course the conversation may in fact have been filmed on a studio set far from the apparent location, because of budget, permits, time limitations, etc.) Establishing shots may also use famous landmarks – such as the Eiffel Tower, the Colosseum, the Empire State Building, or the Statue of Liberty – to identify a city.Alternatively, an establishing shot might just be a long shot of a room that shows all the characters from a particular scene.
For example, a scene about a murder in a college lecture hall might begin with a shot that shows the entire room, including the lecturing professor and the students taking notes. A close-up shot can also be used at the beginning of a scene to establish the setting (such as, for the lecture hall scene, a shot of a pencil writing notes).Establishing shots were more common during the classical era of filmmaking than they are now. Today's filmmakers tend to skip the establishing shot in order to move the scene along more quickly. In addition, scenes in mysteries and the like often wish to obscure the setting and its participants and thus avoid clarifying them with an establishing shot. An establishing shot may also establish a concept, rather than a location.
For example, opening with a martial arts drill visually establishes the theme of martial arts.

TWO SHOTS

TWO SHOTS
A Two shot is a type of shot employed in the film industry in which the frame encompasses a view of two people (the subjects).
The subjects do not have to be next to each other, and there are many common two-shots which have one subject in the foreground
and the other subject in the background.
The shots are also used to show the emotional reactions between the subjects. For instance, in the movie Stand By Me,
this shot is used multiple times to show these emotions.
An 'American two shot' shows the two heads facing each other in profile to the camera.
Similarly, a three shot has three people in the composition of the frame. In these shots the characters are given more importance;
this type of image can also be seen in print advertising.
Four shot scenes are relatively uncommon, but when seen regularly comprise four persons within frame.
Five shot scenes, whilst more common, rarely have 5 people in them and typically have either
6 or 3.5 (the extra 0.5 allowing for a balance of dramatic irony and mise-en-scene

CLOSE UP SHOT

CLOSE UP SHOT
In film, television, still photography and the comic strip medium a close-up tightly frames a person or an object.
Close-ups are one of the standard shots used regularly with medium shots and long shots. Close-ups display the most detail,
but they do not include the broader scene. Moving in to a close-up or away from a close-up is a common type of zooming.
Close-ups are used in many ways, for many reasons. Close-ups are often used as cutaways from a more distant shot to show detail,
such as characters' emotions, or some intricate activity with their hands. Close cuts to characters' faces are used far more often
in television than in movies; they are especially common in soap operas. For a director to deliberately avoid close-ups may create
in the audience an emotional distance from the subject matter.
Close-ups are used for distinguishing main characters. Major characters are often given a close-up when they are introduced as a way
of indicating their importance. Leading characters will have multiple close-ups. There is a long-standing stereotype of insecure actors
desiring a close-up at every opportunity and counting the number of close-ups they received. An example of this stereotype occurs when
the character Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, announces "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up" as she is taken into
police custody in the film's finale.
Close-up shot of a dog.Close-up shots do not show the subject in the broad context of its surroundings.
If overused, close-ups may leave viewers uncertain as to what they are seeing. Close-ups are rarely done with wide angle lenses,
because perspective causes objects in the center of the picture to be unnaturally enlarged. Certain times, different directors will
use wide angle lenses, because they can convey the message of confusion, and bring life to certain characters.

MEDIUM SHOT

MEDIUM SHOT
In film, a medium shot is a camera shot from a medium distance. The dividing line between "long shot" and "medium shot" is fuzzy,
as is the line between "medium shot" and "close-up". In some standard texts and professional references, a full-length view of a human
subject is called a medium shot; in this terminology, a shot of the person from the knees up or the waist up is a close-up shot. In other texts,
these partial views are called medium shots. (For example, in Europe a medium shot is framed from the waist up.)
There is no evident reason for this variation. It is not a distinction caused by, for example, a difference between
TV and film language or 1930s and 1980s language.
Medium shots are relatively good in showing facial expressions but work well to show body language.
Depending where the characters are placed in the shot, a medium shot is used to represent importance and power.

LONG SHOT

LONG SHOT
In photography, film and video, a long shot (sometimes referred to as a full shot or a wide shot) typically shows the entire object or human figure
and is usually intended to place it in some relation to its surroundings. It has been suggested that long-shot ranges usually correspond to approximately
what would be the distance between the front row of the audience and the stage in live theatre. It is now common to refer to a long shot
as a "wide shot" because it often requires the use of a wide-angle lens. When a long shot is used to set up a location and its participants
in film and video, it is called an establishing shot.
A related notion is that of an extreme long shot. This can be taken from as much as a quarter of a mile away, and is generally used as a scene-setting, e
stablishing shot. It normally shows an exterior, eg the outside of a building, or a landscape, and is often used to show scenes of
thrilling action eg in a war film or disaster movie. There will be very little detail visible in the shot, as it is meant to give a general
impression rather than specific information.