10. Defining a "Money Shot"

In my earlier blog posts, I occasionally spoke of “pulling the audience out of the story”. I usually said this in a disparaging light: pulling the audience out of the story was achieved through clumsy camera movement, obvious lighting, or perhaps low quality audio. However, I want to go back to this notion of taking the viewer out of the story – and back into the context of watching a film – to define my interpretation of a “money shot”.

To me, a money shot does not possess any specific properties of light or composition. It merely has to be so striking in any facet of a shot that its beauty in the context of the piece “pulls the audience out of the story” to appreciate it. Keep in mind that beauty does not have to mean looking perfectly balanced and pretty – in a film trying to convey horror a money shot could be absolutely grotesque. A true money shot intertwines the form of a shot with the meaning of the piece it’s a part of so well that it earns distinction. Essentially, when I’m watching a film and I see a money shot, I know – because I am pulled out of the storyline’s grasp and cannot help but appreciate… or ponder… or stare at the individual shot.

A fantastic example of a money shot is from the miniseries Band of Brothers (incidentally the best thing I have ever seen broadcast on television). In the episode Crossroads, we follow Captain Winters as he types up a battle report and struggles with the memory of killing a young German soldier in his recollections. The shot in question is at 0:28 in the video. After a staccato sequence of Winters running, we see the killing that so plagues his thoughts. The shot is short, brutal, and to the point. Winters suddenly becomes a small silhouette in the background of the shot boy, reflecting how he has distanced his identity from himself and questions who he even is anymore. The stark simplicity of the shot, with distinct framing of the two characters on the left and on the right, with minimal color and a washed out sky serves to further impress the fact that this is realm there is no gray area for Winters, no maybes. He killed someone and feels guilty, and this is reflected in the sudden still moment of the shot. It is not an action sequence but a portrait. When we speak of form and meaning becoming one, this shot is a quintessential example.

The moment I saw the shot, it distinguished itself as a money shot because I immediately, involuntarily took a mental step back and saw how perfectly it fit the story. I believe finding money shots is not about analysis, and it is not a science. Simply put, you know them as soon as you see them – which is why, after all, they are money shots.

9. Garfield Scene Assignment: Camera Selection

My scene assignment is an adaptation of a Garfield comic strip. However, my vision of the world of Garfield is a far cry from the bright, inoffensive (some might say bland) cartoons produced by Jim Davis. Instead, I envision Jon Arbuckle not as the often-trod-upon owner of a sassy fat cat, but as the very height of loneliness, paranoia, and insanity. Why, in hundreds of panels, do we almost never see another human being in Garfield? Why does the strip deal with the same jokes over and over again, as if they are part of some strange ritual? Why is Jon interacting with a talking cat? As explored in several different ways by internet parodies and projects such as Garfield Minus Garfield, Jon could easily be construed as a psychotic man and Garfield as his hallucinatory personal demon. I wanted to explore this theme further in my project. Now, with this in mind, I knew I wanted the world to be utterly stark and serious, with hard lighting and tones of blue. I wanted the shots to reek of unease and barely hidden insanity. So: what to shoot this on?

I first had to ask myself what was required of the camera that was to shoot Garfield, based on both my vision of its tone and the shot list I created for the script. Essentially, I needed:

-       -The ability to crush the depth of field to produce a cinematic look

-        The ability to shoot in 60 fps for slow motion

-        The ability to capture a clean and crisp image

-        The ability to be mounted on a glidetrack, tripod, and even fig rig for handheld use

-        The ability to capture an image in relatively low light settings

These traits would help make my project both filmable and contribute to the tone. A crushed depth of field would produce a cinematic look associated with serious subject matter that contrasts with the Garfield comic strips. Slow motion was required for a shot where Jon Arbuckle first loses his temper and then recognizes his moment of anger. I wanted the highest quality of image resolution I could get, because I wanted his world to be fully realized and alarmingly close to home. I needed shots on a glidetrack for character dollies that highlighted the grotesque rituals of Jon’s life, and to capture the motivated movement of his footsteps. In addition, I needed still shots on a tripod and a following, tracking shot on the fig rig. Finally, I wanted control over the colors in low light to produce a cool-toned image in the darkness of an early morning room with a single window.

With these necessities in front of me, the choice was clear: DSLR. Furthermore, a 7D was my choice since it had the highest quality construction short of a 5D while retaining the capability to shoot in 60 fps. With Zeiss Prime lenses, all of the above requirements could be fulfilled adequately. And, besides – I had never shot with a DSLR before. Why not get my hands dirty with some equipment I was unfamiliar with? That prospect is always exciting, particularly when it coincides with the needs of a particular shoot.

8. The "Best" Camera

I was asked for this post to answer the question: what is the "best" camera? Naturally, as hinted by the quotation marks hovering around the word best, this was a trick question. There is no such thing as the best camera, only better cameras - for certain situations. Are you shooting documentary style footage from a shoulder mount? Or will you set up a still interview with planned lighting and a tripod? How about shooting underwater? All of these situations and factors influence what might be considered a “best” camera, and that camera’s worth is not qualified by its price tag. Surely, a $20,000 Sony F3 is far more expensive than a GoPro, and shoots sharper images from a tripod, but if you’re trying to get a subjective shot from behind the windshield of a speeding motorcycle, than the Sony would not be the “best” camera. Similarly, if you are shooting with only the limited natural light available to you, and desire to crush the depth of field, a DSLR might be – in that sliver of a situation – the “best” camera at your disposal. Fortunately, the stable of TCF Department cameras has equipment that is suited to many different factors; including mobility, sensitivity to light, the ability to attach prime versus zoom lenses, size, and on and on… I hope to consistently be able to choose the “best” camera to use in any given film situation I encounter.

7. An Analysis of Camera Movement

One of the most striking examples of camera movement in recent memory for me was in Gus Van Sant's Elephant. Elephant is the story of a school shooting, partially inspired by the Columbine massacre, that is horrifying in large part because of the juxtaposition of trivial high school life and the life-and-death tragedy of a murderous assault. The camera movement highlights this disconnect between the mundane and the terrible, and lends a sickening element to a movie that is ultimately designed to sicken. In the above scene, a Steadicam tracks behind an unnamed character as he goes about his day. The long, uncut shot is captured in a way that mimics how we see the world: moving steady, at walking pace, directly behind the character. We are brought into an intimate view of his life... lingering at pretty girls in the hallway, following him through fields and doors and corridors as we are given a slice of his life. The camera movement feels so natural as to be almost unnoticeable, and this sets up the entire scene to be broken down. The long, slow, steady follow shots of this character contrast heavily with the rapid firing of bullets and sudden onslaught of bloodshed. This perfectly captures the juxtaposition I mentioned earlier and is a result of intentional, deliberate camera movement at its finest.

In a lighter tone, Gotye's extremely popular music video for Somebody That I Used to Know uses some interesting camera movement in the opening shot. The camera smoothly tracks over the left side of Gotye's body from head to toe. The song contemplates past relationships leading into hurtful breakups, and I love how the initial camerawork reflects the first stages of this emotional and taxing process. The camera slowly explores his body, revealing only a small portion at a time, the same way a lover might learn and become close to you during the whirlwind of meeting. The movement of the camera separates us from truly knowing the whole image of Gotye's body, which works perfectly with the concept of the song.

These two examples of camera movement have given me insight into what makes camera movement effective and what makes camera movement bad. First and foremost, I feel that camera movement must be motivated. This means that there must be a reason, or meaning behind making the camera move a certain way. If the story told by a shot could be better told still, then it should be. If the camera is moved on a dolly, or glidetrack, or steadicam, or anything without having a meaningful reason to, then the movement feels very jarring and unnecessary. The scene just doesn't feel right and the movement can take the viewer out of the story.
Similarly, if the technique of movement is executed poorly, then the camera movement can snatch the audience from the enraptured state of receiving the story. For instance, if the movie is cut so that the beginning of a glidetrack shot is seen, then the audience can subconsciously (or very consciously, if the sudden movement of the camera sliding along the track is obvious enough) realize that "this was shot on a camera". If they become aware of the medium of the work on any level, the suspension of disbelief and depth of the story are compromised. This reminds me a little bit of reading a good book: there comes a point where the reader is not merely "reading the words", but walking through the story in their mind. Every film should strive to do the same, and camera movement should aid this cause rather than negate it.