Multiple camera shots and some advice.......

Hey man!
I'm still a film making baby myself.
A lot of movies don't have more than one camera, what they do is they have the actors act out the same scene or part of the script multiple times and place the camera in different places. Of course higher budget films can afford two camera's at once, but it limits how far you can pan or move each camera because you might get a shot of the other camera.
For most of us shooting on low budgets, its only filmed with one.

The biggest thing you have to watch out for is continuity which is making sure that everything in the scene is always the same. For instance you might be shooting two different shots of an actor with a glass of coke. You shoot your first one and the glass is full. Then between the time it takes you to set up your next angle perhaps he drank some, and so when you shoot it again his glass is going to be half full.

So when the two clips are edited together all of a sudden his glass loses some liquid spontaneously - which you really want to avoid. In big productions they'll have one continuity guy whose only job is looking out for these things.

I hope this all helped

Thanks for the advice 'sebbyp'

ok so they really do have a person hired for that job?...continuity guy...cool...I always saw mistakes like that in movies and thought to myself why don't they pay more attention?!....it's a big budget film!!!!!!!

Elee said:

ok so they really do have a person hired for that job?...continuity guy...cool...I always saw mistakes like that in movies and thought to myself why don't they pay more attention?!....it's a big budget film!!!!!!!

Click to expand...

No matter how hardcore you pay attention, or pay someone to, there are still going to be continuity errors. Things never happen exactly the same every time. For instance the wind might blow a strand of hair down for a specific take, and the next take the wind might do something different. As long as it's not drastic, you move on and don't stress about it. You can control things like liquid in drinks, lighting, hair and makeup, cigarettes...but you can't control other things like cloud cover, windy through hair...ect.

Make sure your actors know that their actions must be nearly identical for each take. If the actor picks up the coffee cup on 'Hello', takes a sip just before 'How are you?' and sets it down on 'Goodbye.' ...he must do the same thing every single take. This goes for ALL actions and blocking the actors do. Good actors know about this...inexperienced actors don't have a clue, so make sure you bring it up if you're not sure their level of experience...or else you'll have a headache in the editing room.

Another thing to remember...look up '180 degree rule'...it's a rule every beginning film maker must learn and follow.

The toughest thing about multiple and cut shots will be sound. Doing the scene once with multiple cameras keeps audio consistent. You may not be able to use multiple angles whenever you want with one camera, but for shots of the listening actor in a convo, or of a non-dialogue shot, its definitely not a problem and will greatly improve your cinematography. Just something to think about when shooting.

Thanks for the info guys. The 180 degree rule was something i wasn't aware of until now. And yes audio seems to be a major problem with multiple camera shots.