Five Things, part 2

5 PERFECT CAMERA MOVES

by Andrew Root

(Editor’s note: This article is the second part of a semi-regular series Andrew has agreed to write for this site. The first part (“5 Perfectly Delievered Lines”) can be found here.)

Some artists have made their mark simply by expressing themselves differently than their peers. Jackson Pollock springs to mind; he was not the first artist to express the type of energy, passion, and intensity that he did, but no one else had done it in Pollock’s definitive “drip” style. 

Hendrix played with his teeth. Ernest Vincent Wright wrote an entire novel without using the letter ‘e.’ Daniel Day Lewis lived in a cave for eight months subsisting on hunted deer, berries, and honey in preparation for voicing a cartoon bear (probably). 

Given that motion pictures literally couldn’t exist without them, surprisingly few filmmakers make creative uses of their cameras. When a piece of equipment is bottom-line essential to a creative process, it’s easy to forget that the equipment itself can be used for creative expression. 

This article is focused (har!) on perfect uses of the camera. It was difficult to pare the list down to include only creative elements which are purely camera driven. The most prominent feature which continually cropped up was when the camera pans, tilts, or zooms to reveal something which was not in the frame previously. This is called a reveal, and while effective, is more about directorial staging than the camera itself. Edgar Wright’s filmography, for example, contains many excellent examples of the reveal. Robert Altman makes masterful use of long tracking shots, following characters in and out of locales, jumping between conversations and giving an overall picture of a sprawling setting, but this approach is designed to reveal what has been happening off screen. It is a collaborative technique between the director, actors, set designers, and everyone else on location, not purely a camera move. See George Clooney’s Confessions of a Dangerous Mind for many excellent tracking shots and other assorted in-camera tricks. M. Night Shaymalan, for all his deriders, is masterful at framing his shots, while Sofia Coppola and the Coen Brothers have their actors move subtly within carefully constructed settings—but again, these shots are examples of directorial skill. 

What I was interested in were instances in which the camera itself reveals the emotional subtext of a scene without help from the actor, director, or soundtrack. Here are five instances of superbly executed creative uses of the motion picture camera…

1) The Graduate (1967) – dir. Mike Nichols, DOP. Robert Surtees (nominated for an Oscar for this film) 

Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) has been seduced by Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) and is now—somewhat impossibly—carrying on a relationship with both the older woman and her daughter, Elaine (Katherine Ross). The affair must out, and Mrs. Robinson threatens to expose her relationship with Benjamin in order to stop him from seeing her daughter (JER-RY! JER-RY! JER-RY!). Benjamin races to Elaine, hoping to tell her the whole truth—he had previously hinted at an affair with an unnamed older woman—before she hears the news in what is conceivably the worst way possible. As he is about to reveal the torrid truth, Mrs. Robinson appears in the ajar door behind Elaine. Benjamin spots her, and Elaine turns, seeing her mother who promptly flees in despair. When Elaine turns back to Benjamin, the scene slowly pulls into focus succulently mirroring Elaine’s dawning realization that her boyfriend is balling her mother. The timing is exquisite, and requires nothing from Ross to sublimely reveal her inner thoughts. 

Watch the scene here. 

2) Vertigo (1953) – dir. Alfred Hitchcock, DOP. Robert Burks 

Hitchcock once said that his camera was “absolute.” The man knew how to manipulate his equipment in order to produce harrowing effects, wringing anxious excitement out of every scene. James Stewart’s John “Scottie” Ferguson is a private detective who suffers from acrophobia, so it’s inconvenient when the anxiety-riddled Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak) rushes up a tall bell tower in a fit of disquiet. As Scottie does his best to climb the wooden stairs, he can’t help but look down. The staircase expands and contracts, the floor rising up and falling away simultaneously, subjecting the viewer to the same dizzying fear of heights that Scottie can’t control. Hitchcock achieves this effect by facing the camera directly downwards in the centre of the stairwell, then zooming in while the camera moves backwards, effectively fluctuating every fixed point, shredding perspective and creating an acrophobic nightmare. It’s possible that the infamous zoom-in/track-out bell tower is the first cinematographic technique that is more identifiable than the actual condition it is trying to emulate.  

Watch the scene here.

 
3) The Shining (1980) – dir. Stanley Kubrick, DOP. John Alcott 

It’s a bold move to disorient your audience in the opening seconds of your film, but Kubrick is nothing if not a bold filmmaker. As the film begins to unspool, a small, lonely island moves towards the camera on a pristine mountain lake. Immediately (and I mean immediately) after the viewer takes in the setting, the camera tilts sickeningly which - somehow – allows every aspect of the scenery to move in a different direction. Is the lake rising upwards? Is the island sinking? Are the mountains rushing towards you unnaturally quickly? Yes. All three. The camera – mounted on a helicopter – moving along the surface of the lake coupled with the very specific rotation exemplifies the elegant, psychologically subversive modus operandi of this most famous of horror films. What is right in front of your eyes will turn on you, much sooner than you are comfortable with. 

Watch the scene here.

4) Serenity (2005) – dir. Joss Whedon, DOP. Jack N. Green 

In X-Men: First Class, by putting his first two fingers to his temple and cocking an eyebrow, James McAvoy succeeded in making telepathy kind of boring. It was an effect that was added in post; intense music, a sound effect or two, and a slow zoom all gave the effect that McAvoy’s Professor X was looking directly into your mind’s eye. The filmmakers required the audience to buy in to the effect, or all was lost. In a different sci-fi film, the much simpler cinematic device of rotating the camera along a silky movement path communicates the same telepathic effect without all the post-production effort. In Joss Whedon’s Serenity, Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) and his crew are robbing a vault, but the vault is locked up tight. Enter their secret weapon, stepping nimbly over hostages on her delicate dancer’s feet; Summer Glau’s River Tam scans the room, hearing snatches of nervous conversation from the frightened crowd until the camera pans, rotates and floats over the room, coming to rest on the man who has the codes (and a gun). The deft camera rotation momentarily upsets the equilibrium of the viewer, but adroitly informs the audience of what it must feel like to have your consciousness drift out of your body and wander fluidly around the room. 

Watch the scene here.

 
5) Punch Drunk Love (2002) – dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, DOP Robert Elswit 

Barry Egan is an awkward guy. Director Paul Thomas Anderson puts actor Adam Sandler into some very uncomfortable situations, then zooms in slowly, teasing out the pathologically gauche nature of the central character. Getting up close and personal (and staying there) is a technique which puts the viewer inside the character’s head, whether we want to be there or not. When Barry calls a phone sex line, he paces around his apartment, the camera following intently as he feverishly tries to avoid his own personality. He gives a false name, and is reticent to reveal anything personal about himself to the operator. When the girl on the other end finally backs him into a corner, Barry lies (poorly) about having a girlfriend who is out of town. At the exact moment that he fabricates an absentee companion, the camera lurches to the left before settling back into the strained conversation. Apparently, the camera move was accidental at first (the result of the steady cam knocking into a table), but Anderson loved the effect so much that he kept it in the film, and rightly so. It perfectly captures the character’s aching earnestness. He is ill at ease with his natural personality, but he is clumsy and maladroit when he has to lie about himself. The reeling of the camera is the tightening of Barry’s chest, the falling sensation in his stomach, and the fresh beads of sweat on his forehead. 

Watch the scene here (camera move at 8:45) 

*For more images of directors using their cameras, I highly recommend checking out Directors Behind Cameras. 

 

Andrew Root is an unemployed but very employable teacher living near Lake Ontario. If you want to hire him, you totally can.