Steve's Tips
Covering the action from every angle
If you’ve never had the opportunity to work on the set of real movie, it may surprise you how much effort, and apparent redundancy, goes into shooting every sequence. In fact, the average feature film shoots 30 (yes, 30) times as much footage as it actually uses. And, while some of this footage involves takes and retakes of the same shot, a surprising amount of it is spent getting “coverage” --- the Hollywood term for shooting the scene from every conceivable angle. A good director knows the importance of an abundance of coverage. Better to have too many than too few options once you get to the cutting room.
But coverage isn’t merely the domain of the narrative filmmaker. Even those of us who spend the bulk of our time documenting real-life events can learn from the pros, as I’ll explain in a moment.
The basic principle of coverage is that every scene has a context, a focus and a unity. Your coverage, then, is a combination of long shots, medium shots and close-ups, all shot in such a way that the audience can understand what is happening to whom and where.
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I’ve included an illustration of a simple two-character shot diagram. (Click on it to see an enlarged version.) As you can see, the scene is shot first in close-up, with each character featured. (Note that most close-ups are shot from behind one character, usually with a portion of his head or shoulder in the shot to serve as a subtle reference to the second character.) A wider shot, a medium shot, captures both characters, usually from the waist up. There is usually a still wider shot – known as an establishing shot – which gives an even wider view of the scene, its purpose being primarily to establish the location. Finally, there is often a reverse shot, revealing the scene from a whole other angle. The reverse is often used to reveal something new in the scene, sometimes to comic effect. (To reveal, for instance, that the characters are in a different location than we’d assumed they were in or to reveal a previously unseen character.)
Most scenes have more than two characters in them, of course, and a good, imaginative director will often shoot the scene from several more, interesting angles. But the basic principle is the same. Lots of different angles. Combinations of close-ups and longer shots.
With the exception of the reverse shot, you’ll notice that all of the other shots are set up on the same side of the “line of action” – an imaginary line that forms the “center stage” of the scene. This helps to unify the footage, allowing the audience to orient themselves to the scene and to see the edited footage as if it were all from the same point of view.
In a feature film or a single-camera television show, the scene is actually performed again and again and again, with the camera repositioned and the lights all reset again and again for each shot. (This is why a two-minute scene in a movie can take an entire day to shoot.) The dialogue track for each characters is usually used from the isolated close-up shot of that character. (Watch carefully and you may be able to see that the words, in longer shots, don’t always match the lips!) And, as time and budget allow, all of these takes are edited and re-edited and sometimes audience tested and re-edited again until the mood, drama and timing are perfectly established.
While documentary moviemakers (even those of us who usually do it as a hobby) don’t have the luxury of restaging a scene over and over, the principles – and the importance of good coverage – are exactly the same. Every scene, whether scripted or real, happens to a unique person or people in a unique place at a unique time. Part of great moviemaking is capturing not just the event that’s happening, but where it’s happening, how it’s happening and how it affects the larger context of the story. A wedding, for instance, isn’t just about the bride and groom at the altar. It’s also about the teardrop in the bride’s father’s eye and about the flower girl who fell asleep and about the best man who‘s got a crush on one of the bridesmaids. What was the weather like that day? What did the church look like from outside? What did it all look like from the back of the church? Get those close-ups. But also get the medium shots. And the long shots. And the reverse shots. And certainly the reaction shots of those in attendance.
Remember, you’ll have hours, days, maybe even weeks to create your masterpiece, once you get into the cutting room. But that moment, that scene, that unique moment in time will happen only once. Cover it from every possible angle. Get close enough to show the main characters – then step far enough back to show the bigger context. Shoot way too much. When it comes time to edit, you’ll be grateful for the wealth of options.
November 2005
About Steve
Steve Grisetti earned a master's degree in writing for television and film from Ohio University. He has instructed college-level courses in television and video production, and has taught adult education classes on Photoshop and principles of design.
Steve spent nearly 10 years in the Los Angeles-based entertainment industry, working on the sets and in the production offices of several large television and film companies. Currently, he is employed as a graphic designer in the Marketing & Communications Department of a Milwaukee-based investment firm.
He also serves as host on Adobe's official Premiere Elements Support Forum and is author, with Chuck Engels, of "Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0 In a Snap," from Sams Publishing, Pearson Education.
