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When composing shots, an important consideration is the angle that you use between the camera lens and your subject. The following are a few considerations:
- Shooting up from low angles: If you shoot your subject from below, it makes the subject appear bigger and more imposing. In Citizen Kane, director Orson Welles had sections of his sound stage floor removed so that he could get dramatic camera shots from far below the Kane character, making him appear larger than life. (Orson Welles later took a different, more culinary approach to making himself look larger than life.)
- Shooting down from high angles: Stand on a chair or a ladder or use a camera crane, and shoot down at your subject or actor and you make him or her appear small and meek. High angles are good to suggest adults looking at kids; low angles are good for suggesting kids looking at adults.
- Shooting at crazy angles: Tilting, or dutching, the camera at an angle to the ground (the MTV or Monday Night Football interview effect) can give a suggestion of hipness, coolness, or mystery to a shot — if used very sparingly. Crazy angles can also be used to suggest sloping ground or the "ship is sinking" effect, or to show the crazed psycho chasing down the innocent victim in a slasher film. Again, use crazy angles as a confection, not the main course.
Two other rules govern angles. Professionals call the first one the 180-degree rule, which suggests that you shouldn't change the "right and left" of a scene between cuts. You should try to avoid crossing the line of action: If you start on one side of the action, stay on that side of the action. Otherwise, the audience becomes confused — it's like constantly switching sidelines while watching your kid's soccer game. (The only time this works is in a Rocky-esque 360-degree shot, where the camera rolls all the way around the action to establish tension.)
The other rule is the 30-degree rule, which means that you should change the angle of the camera (relative to your subject) at least 30 degrees if you're cutting between two angles without a transition. Of course, you don't need to use your protractor and vast knowledge of trigonometry to figure out what equals 30 degrees; the idea is simply to make sure that you're changing the angle of the camera between two shots that are to be edited together. If you cut between two clips that don't have a dramatic enough difference in angles, it just looks like you bumped the camera or made a mistake in editing.
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