Camera Angles and Cinematography terms!

A director uses these elements to enhance the TONE and the THEMES of the movie.  We'll be applying it to Twelve Angry Men.

Score: music composed for a specific film to enhance emotion.

Establishing Shot: a shot that introduces a location and/or character.  It gives us the context, the "big picture" of the movie...so we know where this is, what the setting is.

Pan: when the camera turns on a single axis.

Dolly Shot: a steady camera movement through a scene in a single shot.

Rack Focus: a shift of focus from one element on a screen to another.

Wide Shot: shows the whole character.  More of a distant feel to it.  It's used often in introducing characters.

Medium Shot: shows character from waist to head.  Often used for dialogue.  This is the most frequent type of shot used in American film, and most of a movie is at this distance.

 

Close Up: shows a character's head and shoulders (although it can be of an object like a knife).   This gives you a chance to see the character's facial expressions.  Often used when we need to see a character's emotions.

  

another close up.....

  

Extreme Close Up: shows only a portion of the the face, ex: eyes or mouth.  These are the closest shots you can get and are used to focus on emotion.

 

another extreme close up...

 

and another...

 

and one more!

Shot-by-shot breakdown of the 12 Angry Men trailer...

Shot-by-shot breakdown of the 12 Angry Men trailer...

0-3s: Group shot, 10 yelling at the group

3-7s: Medium shot, 4 stabbing the table, dolly-shot towards knife, pan downwards.

7-14s: closeup of 8 in back of knife, rack focus to knife, 8 stabs second knife into table.

14s-16: closeup rack shot from 4 to 3 standing in back of him, reacting to second knife.

16-43s: Begin by over the shoulder shot of 8, looking at group.  Dolly towards 3 who walks up to 8 and closeup of both, demonstrating knife angle.  Rack focus from 3 and 8, to group, back to 3 and 8.

43 - 56s:Slow pan down from sky, landscape of outside of courthouse.

56s - 58s: Medium shot of 8 and group.  8 says what he thinks happened.

58s - 1:00: Medium of 3 and group.  3 asks how the old witness can be positive about anything.

1:00 - 1:05: Closeup of 10 talking about how people are bringing up picky little points that mean nothing.

1:05 - 1:22: Closeup and top-down angle of jurors hands on table, passing back secret ballots.  Voiceover of judge from beginning, followed by voiceover of narrator telling viewer to pay attention, because one day, you may be one of them.

1:22 - 1:27: Medium of 8 talking to 4, with group behind.  Voiceover of narrator saying how the have the smell of violent death in their nostrils.

1:27 - 1:29: Medium of 8 with group behind, listening to 3's rant at the end of Act 1.

1:29 - 1:32: Closeup of 3 continuing rant

1:32 - 1:35: Closeup of 8 with three jurors behind asking 3 if he is the executioner

1:35 - 1:37: Extreme closeup of 3 saying "you got it"

1:37 - 1:39: Extreme closeup of 8 saying 3 is a self-appointed public avenger

1:39 - 1:43: Extreme closeup of 3's face, quivering eyebrow as 8 calls him a sadist off-camera

1:43 - 1:48: Over the shoulder of 8, Medium of 3 lunging towards 8 saying "I'll kill him" as held back by 5 and 6

1:48 - 1:50: Closeup of 8, 3, 9, and 12 standing in judgement of the last line, as 3 continues off-camera.  Voiceover of narrator talking about the men turning into animals.

1:50 - 1:57: Pan right, medium shot as 8 grabs tic-tac-toe sheet from 12 and 3.

1:57 - 2:15 (end) Pan up of landscape outer courtroom towards sky.  Dramatic music.

12 Angry Men Trailers

12 Angry Men Trailers

What to think about over the weekend

On Monday we will begin filming trailers for 12 Angry Men in your pre-assigned production groups.

Over the weekend, I'll post our brainstorm list of good qualities for movie trailers, a list and description of camera angles, and the rubric that you will be graded upon.  They will all be up by Sunday morning...stay tuned!

Watch these trailers

Your job:  watch the following trailers.  Write down five things that an effective movie trailer must do/have.  We will discuss tomorrow.  You will be called on to answer.

Example of a Prepositions Poster

Study for quiz #6!

Prepositions Notes

A preposition is a word that relates a noun or a pronoun to some other word in the sentence. 

The boy by the window is a dork.

The word by in the sentence above is a preposition.  By shows the relationship of the word boy to the nounwindow.

Here are some (45) commonly used prepositions:

about	before	during	off	to
above	behind	for	on	toward
across	below	from	onto	under
after	beneath	in	out	until
against	beside	inside	outside	up
along	between	into	over	upon
among	beyond	like	since	with
around	by	near	through	within
at	down	of	throughout	without

But wait, it gets even more complicated!  Some prepositions consist of more than one word…..uhg!           

Kate likes Sawyer instead of Jack!

Here are some (12) common compound prepositions:

according to	aside from	in front of	instead of
across from	because of	in place of	on account of
along with	far from	in spite of	on top of

Now…the moment you’ve been waiting for…..the REALLY tricky part: prepositional phrases!

A prepositional phrase is a group of words that begins with a preposition and ends with a noun or pronoun in the headword position, called the object of the preposition.  Prepositional phrases, as a whole unit, act like either an adjective or an adverb…..ai carumba!  The following three sentences each have two prepositional phrases.

The painting near you is by a Brazilian artist.

The dog across the street ran in front of the car.

The dork in front of you is really into grammar exercises.

Study for quiz 5!

MLA format notes