Shot Types

Alice, Amy, Anya, Phoebe + Dan

Establishing Shot The clue is in the name. A

shot, at the head of the scene, that clearly shows the locale the action is set in. Often comes after the aerial shot. Beloved by TV directors and thick people.

Extreme Long Shot (ELS)

This can be taken from as much as a quarter of a mile away, and is generally used as a scene setting, establishing shot. It normally shows an exterior (e.g. the outside building or a landscape and is often used to show scenes of thrilling action (e.g. in a war or disaster film). There will be very little detail visible in the shot, it’s meant to give a general impression rather than specific information. The extreme long shot on the left is taken from a distance, but denotes a precise location – it might even connote all of the entertainment industry if used as the opening shot in a news story.

High Angle Shot

A shot looking down on a character or subject often isolating them in the frame. Nothing says Billy No Mates like a good old high angle shot.

Not so extreme as a bird's eye view. The camera is elevated above the action using a crane to give a general overview. High angles make the object photographed seem smaller, and less significant (or scary). The object or character often gets swallowed up by their setting - they become part of a wider picture.

Over The Shoulder Shot A shot where the camera is positioned behind

one subject's shoulder, usually during a conversation. It implies a connection between the speakers as opposed to the single shot that suggests distance.

Close Up A shot that keeps only the face full in the frame.

Perhaps the most important building block in cinematic storytelling.

This shows very little background, and concentrates on either a face, or a specific detail of mise en scène. Everything else is just a blur in the background. This shot magnifies the object

(think of how big it looks on a cinema screen) and shows the importance of things, be it words

written on paper, or the expression on someone's face. The close-up takes us into the mind of a

character. In reality, we only let people that we really trust get THAT close to our face - mothers, children and lovers, usually - so a close up of a

face is a very intimate shot. A film-maker may use this to make us feel extra comfortable or

extremely uncomfortable about a character, and usually uses a zoom lens in order to get the

required framing.

Medium Shot The shot that utilizes the most common

framing in movies, shows less than a long shot, more than a close-up. Obviously. A medium shot is half of a standing character

The shot that utilizes the most common framing in movies, shows less than a long shot, more than a close-up. Obviously.

Contains a figure from the knees/waist up and is normally used for dialogue scenes or to show some detail of action. Variations on this include the two shot (containing two figures from the waist up) and the three shot (contains 3 figures). If there are more than three figures and the shot tends to become a long shot. Background detail is minimal; because the location has been established earlier in the scene – the audience already know where they are an now want to focus on dialogue and character interaction. Another variation in this category is the over the shoulder shot, which positions the camera behind one figure, revealing the other figure and part of the first figures back, head and shoulder. 

Long Shot A shot that depicts an entire character or

object from head to foot. Not as long as an establishing shot. Aka a wide shot.

This is the most difficult to categorise precisely, but is generally one which shows the image as approximately "life" size i.e. corresponding to the real distance between the audience and the screen in a cinema (the figure of a man would appear as six feet tall). This category includes the full shot showing the entire human body, with the head near the top of the frame and the feet near the bottom. While the focus is on characters, plenty of background detail still emerges: we can tell the coffins on the right are in a Western-style setting, for instance.

Cowboy Shot

A shot framed from mid thigh up, so called because of its recurrent use in Westerns. When it comes, you know Clint Eastwood is about to shoot your ass.

Deep Focus

A shot that keeps the foreground, middle ground and background ALL in sharp focus. Beloved by Orson Welles (and cinematographer Gregg Toland). Production designers hate them. Means they have to put detail in the whole set.

Point of View Shot (POV)

A shot that depicts the point of view of a character so that we see exactly what they see. Often used in Horror cinema to see the world through a killer's eyes.

Tilt

A shot where the camera moves continuously Up to Down or Down To Up. A vertical panning shot. A tilt to the sky is traditionally a last shot in a movie.

A movement which scans a scene vertically, otherwise similar to a pan.

Dolly Shot

A shot that sees the camera track forward toward a subject while simultaneously zooming out creating a woozy, vertiginous effect. Initiated in Hitchcock's Vertigo (1959), it also appears in such scarefests as Michael Jackson's Thriller video (1983), Shaun Of The Dead (2004), The Evil Dead (1981) and The Goofy Movie (1995). It is the cinematic equivalent of the phrase "Uh-oh".

Top Shot

A shot looking directly down on a scene rather than at an angle. Also known as a Birds-Eye-View shot. Beloved by Busby Berkeley to shoot dance numbers in patterns resembling snowflakes.

Two - Shot

A medium shot that depicts two people in the frame. Used primarily when you want to establish links between characters or people who are beside rather than facing each other.

Locked Down Shot

A shot where the camera is fixed in one position while the action continues off-screen. It says life is messy and can not be contained by a camera. Beloved by Woody Allen and the dolly grips who can take the afternoon off.

Panning Shot

A shot where the camera moves continuously right to left or left to right. An abbreviation of "panning". Turns up a lot in car chases

Arc Shot

A shot in which the subject is circled by the camera.

The Sequence Shot

A long shot that covers a scene in its entirety in one continuous sweep without editing.

Zoom

A shot deploying a lens with a variable focal length that allows the cinematographer to change the distance between camera and object without physically moving the camera. Also see Crash Zooms that do the same but only quicker.

Crane Shot

A shot where the camera is placed on a crane or jib and moved up or down. Think a vertical tracking shot. Beloved by directors of musicals. Often used to highlight a character's loneliness or at the end of a movie, the camera moving away as if saying goodbye.