A flippant guide to filmmaking
This week let’s take a cynical look at some popular film techniques.
• The Dutch Tilt: This is a shot in which the camera leans slightly sideways. Dutch tilts were used frequently in the old Batman TV show whenever the villain was introduced. The technique can be used to make the audience feel literally off-balance and therefore uneasy. For example in Hear My Song (1991) there is exactly one Dutch tilt in the entire film used as a woman follows a man into his hotel room giving the audience the idea that the woman is making a bad decision. (She is.)
On the other hand Battlefield Earth (2000) uses Dutch tilts throughout pretty much its entire running time giving the audience the idea that buying a ticket was a bad decision. (It was.)
• Forced Perspective: A technique in which small objects can be made to appear huge by putting them in the foreground and large objects can be made to appear tiny by placing them in the background. This technique allowed normal-sized actors to portray Dwarves and Hobbits in The Lord of the Rings films. Kids often use this inexpensive effect in home movies to give the illusion that a Boba Fett action figure is crushing the family Subaru under his mighty foot.
• Freeze Frame: The instant that a motion picture stops moving becoming a… well a picture. This is a popular way to end corny old comedy films freezing the characters at climactic emotional moments such as triumph (a character leaps happily into the air and is suspended there) or surprise (a character puts on a hat not realizing it is filled with a disgusting substance and his shocked expression is frozen for all eternity).
• Fake Film Mishap: An illusion in which the film appears to melt or break leading to a stark white screen. At this point a character (preferably Bugs Bunny) wanders out into the blankness and addresses the audience directly.
• Close Up: A tight close camera angle in which the audience is invited to forget about the plot for a moment and to contemplate an actress’s nostrils and pores.
• Long Shot: The opposite of the close up. By shrinking the subject into a tiny speck the amount of empathy with the subject is similarly reduced which can change tragedy into comedy. For instance in Mr. Hulot’s Holiday (1953) a character is out on the seaside paddling a canoe which breaks in half. In a particularly funny long-shot scene the two halves of the boat close on the character like a beak. If this had been photographed inside the boat rather than a long distance away it would have been frightening.
• Gun Barrel POV shot: This is when the camera looks at the subject over the barrel of a gun. It gives the audience the point of view of an armed gunman and is consequently very dramatic. It differs from the “Crosshairs shot” (in which the subject is typically unaware of any danger) and also from the classic 007 opening in which the camera appears to be inside a gun barrel.
This angle was put to memorable use in the movie Doom (2005) in an extended sequence honouring the film’s video game origins. Many critics ridiculed this sequence despite the fact that including it was the entire point of making a Doom film in the first place.
Sam Raimi included a gun barrel POV shot in Darkman (1990) lending a bit of demented glee to a mob rubout scene. The technique was put to far more ominous use in The Sadist (1963) an effective suspense thriller based on the Charles Starkweather-Caril Fugate killing spree. Before we even see the title character (played by Arch Hall Jr.) we see the barrel of his gun pointing at the unsuspecting protagonists who soon find themselves terrorized by the unhinged madman. The innovative photography was done by Vilmos Zsigmond who later won an Oscar for Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).
• Dry for Wet: This describes “underwater” scenes filmed on dry land. It might involve sophisticated use of smoke filters wind machines slow motion and digital bubbles. On the other hand it might simply involve an actor wearing a diving helmet and walking slowly. My personal favourite Dry for Wet scene is from Shock! Shock! Shock! (1987) in which an actor pretends to drown in a large sheet of cellophane.
