>Speaking of professional video camera work... How come I see so many >low-angle shots? Is that a technique used in your area? Every evening >my local news features have several shots where the camera was >obviously placed right on the ground, with a very wide angle lens. > >This low-angle shot is a technique I've only seen for the last few >years. It makes for a dramatic shot, but gives an easily identifiable >"newscamera" look.
Hi John, LOL. Yeah, it seems to be de rigeur. Every cameraman likes to try and do something slightly different to set apart from the rest of the crowd, and low angled shots are easy to do. You settle the camera on the ground, and shoot. As you can imagine, high angle shots are more difficult to come by, although a high vantage point for [say] a hive of activity like a press conference can be had by standing on a chair or desk. The point is, unlike stills, as many shots as possible are needed, bearing in mind factors like space and time constraints, access (movement may be restricted due to etiquette or order), tiredness and energy levels (don't laugh - true), equipment restrictions, health and safety etc etc in order to give the picture editor (as in 'moving' picture editor) as many variations as feasible so that the edited item will satisfy the requirements of the given programme. That might be as little as half a dozen shots on two minutes of tape, or 4 dozen on 20 mins. News camerawork is constrained by time limitations, so any extra vantage points are utilized ad-hoc: balconies, rooftops, fire department cherry-pickers, aircraft. One trick in a scrum is to literally hold the camera overhead at arm's length height with the viewfinder angled down to give a good view (modern viewfinders have a system that allows full-frame viewing either with one eye at contact distance, or both eyes at about 24 inches distance) but this is only viable for a maximum of 30 seconds - the camera with battery and bits aboard weighs in excess of 10 Kg (about 22 pounds). If there's a scrum (crowd) and the centre of attention is [say] a politician talking, the reporter is down at the front with a mic thrust forward, and if I'm late into it and am at the back, the camera goes up top, after 30 seconds when my arms give out, it gets lowered onto my head where my specially polished dome fits neatly into the padded shoulder recess, and I can carry on like that for a good 5 minutes before I mutter 'sod this for a lark' and rest it back on my shoulder, poked inbetween a couple of snappers. Not usually a problem as I'm 6'5". Much better to anticipate events and be at the front, which for die-hard long-in-the-tooths like me is 90% of the time. The youngsters end up at the back :-) Next time you watch a 2 minute news item, count the total number of shots, count the number of different angles of a scene, even ones only slightly different. Quick isn't the word. Bloody supersonic you have to be. Doesn't matter though, you're only as good as the last cock-up. Keep em far apart and keep em happy. HTH Cotty ____________________________________ Oh, swipe me! He paints with light! http://www.macads.co.uk/snaps/ ____________________________________ Free UK Macintosh Classified Ads at http://www.macads.co.uk/ ____________________________________
