1 – What: Pan

How: Move the camera horizontally left or right. Ideally, you should use a tripod for a smooth effect. To be a great “panner”, practice the shot several times at several speeds before you feel comfortable with it.
Why: To follow a subject or show the distance between two objects. Pan shots also work great for panoramic views such as a shot from a mountaintop to the valley below.
. Look at the scene as the pan reaches the middle portion between the beginning and end of the scene. If there is nothing worth seeing, than the pan isn’t worth shooting.

2 – What: Tilt

How: Moving the camera up or down without raising its position.
Why: Like panning, to follow a subject or to show the top and bottom of a stationary object. With a tilt, you can also show how high something is.

In general, when you tilt up and shoot an object or a person they look larger and thicker. The subject looks smaller and thinner when you tilt down.
3 – What: Pedestal

How: Not tilting, but physically moving the height of the camera up or down, usually on a tripod.
Why: You pedestal the camera up or down to get the proper height you prefer. If you want to get “eye to eye” with a six-foot-six basketball player, you would pedestal up. While shooting a flower or a small child, you would pedestal down to their level.

The use of symmetry within The Shining plays to the outcome of the characters well,  often indicating the presence of the hotel’s effect on events occurring. This can be identified within this scene of The Shining, when Jack is encountered with the waiter in the bathroom, who is positioned opposite him with a mirror behind.  The idea of symmetry can somewhat suggest to the audience that the events are parallel, perhaps going in sync, therefore strengthening the supernatural control around the Overlook Hotel. The mirrors also imply that Jack is in fact gazing into a reflection, and the idea that the character opposite him is real is challenged, displaying the true detriment of Jack’s sanity.

An example of both Steadicam and symmetry in the Shining is highly prominent in the scene with Danny encountering the twin sisters in the corridor. Firstly, in relation to the use of Steadicam, the tension built whilst the camera follows Danny’s journey on the tricycle through the Hotel is transcending and thus has become an iconic moment in cinematic history. It was successful in placing the viewer’s perspective directly as Danny’s, raising the tension of the scene and sustaining the horror to an empathetic degree, thus retaining verisimilitude. The sisters also exemplify the connotation of reflection, therefore intertwining the supernatural quality that is also represented in the movie, such as the mentioned scene in the bathroom.

Reflection is quintessential in the  connotation embedded with symmetry within the movie.  Two imperative examples include:

The use of “REDRUM” with symmetry, which backwards spells murder toward the culmination of the movie, strongly suggests the importance of reflection, and conveys the idea that the representation of reflection in regards to the hotel could be a symbol of a different timeline of events undergoing. For instance, in the second image when Jack wakes up in bed, the camera alludes the audience with the whole shot in the mirror, however when panning to the right it is proven the shot was just a reflection. Therefore, this could be suggesting that what the audience is watching is very much an alternated form of events, engulfed with supernatural ambiguity.

Shallow focus is a photographic and cinematographic technique incorporating a small depth of field. In shallow focus one plane of the image is in focus while the rest is out of focus. Shallow focus is typically used to emphasize one part of the image over another.

Shallow focus is an effective shot that can gravitate the attention of the audience to a specific character or object, often aligning to the canon of the narrative, subliminally highlighting the significance of the chosen focus in a scene.

Deep focus is a photographic and cinematographic technique using a large depth of field, invented by the cinematographer Gregg Toland. Poland introduced the new method own the critically acclaimed Citizen Kane, and has remained a prominent voice of technique.  Depth of field is the front-to-back range of focus in an image — that is, how much of it appears sharp and clear. In deep focus the foreground, middle-ground and background are all in focus.

Trainspotting (1996) – Official Trailer – YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4L5B7F9Vr4

The Kuleshov effect is a film editing (montage) effect demonstrated by Soviet film-maker Lev Kuleshov in the 1910s and 1920s. It is a mental phenomenon by which viewers derive more meaning from the interaction of two sequential shots than from a single shot in isolation.

The sound editor is the one who is in charge of the sound  elements in the film such as dialogue, sound affects, automated dialogue, background sounds and chooses audio for the soundtrack while the sound mixer is the person who decides what the audience hears at release such as the volume of the soundtrack throughout the film.

During the scene in which Ray Liotta playing Henry Hill and his soon to be wife Karen enter the Copacobana Nightclub  through the back, the Steadicam follows the couple all the way through to the front of the dining area. The long take is fluid and seems so effortless, in which exemplifies how cinematography involving the perspective of the action can mirror how the audience perceives the character in focus, as the effortless capture of the highly active scene symbolizes the accessibility Hill had due to his connections,. Henry Hill is demonstrating to Karen how effortless this complex turn of events can be as he is a powerful figure in the underground crime scene, breezing through layers of the building. The various greetings from extras also adds a layer of notoriety that strengthens the intended demonstration of the protagonist.

The Steadicam strengthens the captivation of the events occurring on camera, with the fast, winding route Henry Hill and Karen journey through being captured in perspective of following them, adding verisimilitude to the scene and emphasizing the reality of the protagonists life.

Film in the 1900s

Why Citizen Kane is considered “The Greatest Film Ever Made”

Citizen Kane is often critically acclaimed as the greatest movie ever made, evident in multiple occasions, topping the list of greatest films from many considerably established institutions such as the AFI. Citizen Kane was responsible for embedding revolutionary cinematic techniques that would transcend film for years to come, setting a precedent that would not only result in the film being regarded the best noir film, with it’s existential exposure of chiaroscuro, but regarded one of the best movies ever made.

Citizen Kane can also be seen as one of the first movies to converge genres. The introductory scene is arguably gothic, with the visual of Xanadu being aesthetically ghastly which would indicate the movie to follow the monster genre that had been popular during that time. However, as the movie continues past the death of Kane into his biography, we begin to see the mystery side of the film, with the ambiguity of Rosebud and the transcendence of time fragmenting the traditional flow of a narrative, which arguably correlates with the representation of how a life is quantified. Perhaps the multitude of genres is a direct contrast into the complexity of categorizing one’s lifetime.

One of the cinematic techniques that were used in the film was what we now know as deep focus lens, which had been invented by the cinematographer of the film, Gregg Toland. A pivotal scene using this technique is the scene in which a young Kane is playing outside in the snow in the background of the shot, which we visualise through the window in the middle ground, whilst the foreground shows the transition of custody of Kane. The focus is further strengthened with layering of the mise-en-scene, which enhanced the perspective for the viewer. The sheets of paper, the chair beside the window and the beams on the ceiling all play a role in the shot, especially the table that was onset made to split in half so the camera could pan out from outside using a long take. Toland used deep focus and long take in this shot to retain verisimilitude, and his methods in doing so were nothing short of transcending.

Chiaroscuro, the balance of light to dark in film, is prominent throughout Citizen Kane. For instance, in the scene after the news reel of Kane’s life, the manipulation of shadow places the reporters in the room in the dark, with the presence of Kane being illuminated. Therefore, the audience can easily identify that Kane is the prominent focus of the shot, retaining relevance in the scene, whilst the reporters in the room are represented with silhouettes, denouncing their presence and conveying to the audience that their dialect is important not their identity.

Citizen Kane contains themes so significant that each time it is viewed, the depiction of what certain instances represent can be more relevant to a subjective belief, which in itself stands as one of the film’s most substantial messages. Welles wants to convey that life is however you perceive it, and uses the character of Kane to infatuate this, with his excessive materialistic lifestyle sadly being his detriment, and the iconic “Rosebud” suggesting that regardless of the supposed successes of his life, his content lay in the simplicity of his youth, and the quarrel of who he would have been for not the drastic departure of his early life.