Pixiq

BASIC SHOT TYPES

Adequate coverage for video means getting a variety of shots. We can break those shots down into four types that you can always keep in mind: wide shots, medium shots, close shots/ close-ups, and extreme close shots/extreme close-ups. The film and television industries have done this for a long time, so there are certain conventions established for shot variety. (You might run into other terminology, like long shot instead of wide shot, or close shot compared to close up, but the exact words aren’t as important as the concepts.)

WIDE SHOT (WS)

The wide shot, as you would probably expect, is a wide view of a scene. It establishes a large setting or environment. A wide shot is sometimes called an establishing shot because it usually sets the stage for your subject and maybe your entire video. It might seem that this is simply a wideangle shot, but a wide shot has nothing to do with focal length (although a wide-angle lens could certainly be used). If you are close to your subject and its setting, you might need a wide-angle to get it all in the same shot; however, shooting a wide shot can also be done with a telephoto lens at a distance.

The wide shot refers to how the subject fits in and relates to a setting. A wide shot for a mountain is very different than a wide shot for a ladybug, and a wide shot for a commercial jet would be very different than a wide shot for a paper airplane. A wide shot usually gives context to the subject. You don’t need a lot of wide shots at any given location. This is sometimes a mistake that amateurs make—recording lots of wide shots of beautiful scenery. These shots might look fine as a slideshow or as prints on the wall, but they rarely go together well in an edited video.

MEDIUM SHOT (MS)

The medium shot visually comes closer to the subject than the wide shot. Setting and environment are less important than the subject itself. The environment gives context to the subject. The medium shot is great for creating and highlighting visual relationships. The medium shot gets us close enough that we can see these relationships, whether they are relationships with people or simply a visual relationship between the subject and something else in the composition. That could be anything from a butterfly visiting a flower, to a child playing with a kitten, to the lead cars in a race. The important thing to keep in mind is not how physically close you are to the scene, but how relationships are visually emphasized.

CLOSE SHOT/CLOSE-UP (CS/CU)

The close shot, or close-up, is exactly as it sounds—a close shot of your subject. The subject is large enough in the frame so that the viewer can see details. The environment or setting is not very important, even as a background. This shot concentrates the viewer’s attention on details and creates intimacy with the subject. A close shot is a traditional photographic close-up; however, a close shot is not automatically a close-up. In the case of video, a close shot refers to how close a subject looks in the frame, not how close the camera is to the subject. A close shot of the side of a building could show off details without being a close-up. You could also get physically close to shoot a flower or a bee, yet end up with a medium shot.

EXTREME CLOSE SHOT/CLOSE-UP (ECS/ECU or XCS/ XCU)

The extreme close shot crops into the subject to emphasize a detail, rather than show general details of the subject. This shot is often abstract and typically dramatic because it is so tight on the subject. The viewer sees only this highly emphasized detail. The extreme close-up shot is a very dramatic contrast to other shots. Amateurs often have a hard time with extreme close shots because it requires them to visually get in tight and close on that subject, tighter and closer than they are often comfortable. An extreme close shot needs other types of shots with it to create context, otherwise it can be confusing for the viewer. An example of an extreme close up would be the close-up of a person’s eye. To give context to the extreme close up, you could have a wide shot of a person sitting in the park, a medium shot of that person reading a book while sitting on a park bench, a close shot of the person’s face showing intense concentration, and then the extreme close shot of a moving eye.

CUTAWAYS

The cutaway is a unique type of shot that cuts away from the main action and acts as a bridge between the main action or storyline. It can be any type of shot and is a very important coverage shot because it creates more editing options. You might decide, for example, that your medium shot goes on too long. If you simply take a section out of that shot—this is called a jump cut—without doing anything else, there will be a jarring jump within that shot, which is very distracting to an audience. With few exceptions, jump cuts draw attention away from the scene and emphasize the edit. A clip looks very odd if it is simply chopped up into pieces. The cutaway is used over these cuts in the sequence to get rid of the jump cuts. Consider you are recording a track event. You shoot the competitors warming up to get ready for the event, getting into their starting position, and taking off at the sound of the gun. At some point during the event, you get a shot of the unbroken finish line tape and coaches reading their stopwatches. All of those shots are cutaways and can be used in editing between the main action shots to show a complete experience of the event. Cutaways are often close-ups of something in a scene. This could be a close shot within an overall scene, or a small gesture that a person makes. Such cutaways can give additional information about the subject and make your video more interesting. But cutaways are not necessarily all close-ups or medium shots—they can be just about any kind of composition. You may not know when you are shooting a particular shot that it will be used as a cutaway, but if you get in the habit of shooting enough coverage away from the main action, you’ll have better success when you go to edit.

REACTION SHOT

A reaction shot is a specific type of shot related to cutaways. It shows a reaction of someone or something to action seen in a previous shot. While not part of the main action, reaction shots can be useful to tell the story and can act as cutaways to help bridge other shots. To continue the track event example, shots of people intensely watching from the stands make good reaction shots.