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For comparative purposes, so as to give an obvious relative measure of
the likelihood of a director choosing a particular scale of shot in a film, I have taken the actual number of shots of each scale in a film, and then normalized the number to correspond to the
number that would have occurred if the film was made up of 500 shots. If you want percentages, you can divide the figures by 5.
Camera Movement
I handle the objective treatment of camera movement by
tabulating the numbers of shots with the different kinds of camera movement in each film, and again normalizing to the number that would be expected if the film in question
contained 500 shots. The categories I use are Panning, Tilting, Panning and Tilting simultaneously, Tracking both without and with panning movements, movement involving the use of a
camera crane, and Zooming. I have divided this last category into Zooming straight in or out, and Zooming with panning and/or tilting in my treatment of television shows. Only
panning or tilting movements of more than 10 degrees are counted, as small movements to keep the actors well framed as they change their position slightly are made automatically by
camera operators, and in general need no special thought about their relation to the director's ideas of staging. The same applies to small movements of a foot or so in the
position of the rolling camera pedestal or dolly during the shot, and also of the height of the camera. I do not distinguish the different methods of supporting the camera, so that
hand-held tracking and Steadicam tracking go in together with the traditional tracking with the camera on a dolly, or rolling pedestal in the case of TV.
Analysing the complete film is obviously much preferable,
but you will not be too far out in general with a forty minute sample. Contrary to received ideas, the overall cutting rate for the second half most films is either the same speed, or not much
faster than that of their first halves, though there are exceptions.
Practical Details
Ideally, the analysis should be done by recording the
complete characteristics of each shot (scale, movement, length, etc.) in succession down the length of the film. This permits the most complete analysis of all the possible
interrelationships between the variables. But although I initially tried this thirty odd years ago, I found that it took about three times longer than the method I have since used, so I
have only used it for a few special cases since. My present method collects each quantity sequentially over the length of the film.
Up until recent years, I have always worked with prints of
the films I was analysing, and indeed almost exclusively with 35 mm. prints, and I worked with them on Steenbecks and other flat-bed editing machines, which is obviously ideal for
complete accuracy. But now I have turned to working from DVDs and VHS tapes. I feed these into a non-linear editing system (NLE), in fact Adobe Premiere on an ordinary PC (though a
cheaper NLE would do just as well), and while they were being digitized in real time, I record the camera moves from the window in the digitizing programme screen. For the experienced analyst,
this is just possible to do in real time, even for the fastest cut films. Then I go more slowly through the film in the NLE programme, recording the Scale of Shot, which usually
requires some stopping and starting and going back, particularly for the films with very short ASLs. I also record the Inserts on this pass. Two more passes are necessary to get the
numbers of reverse angles and POV shots. If I have a VHS tape, and one can always make one from a DVD, I usually do these last things on a VHS recorder with a jog-shuttle control,
as I can usually manage recording these last two quantities at high speed for most films. Alternatively, it is possible to do the complete analytical process entirely on a VHS
recorder with a jog-shuttle control, as I have done when analysing television programmes in the past. For my analytical procedure the standard control system for DVD players is very
awkward to use when trying to work directly with the DVD disc. Most recently I record all quantities from the timeline of an NLE.
There are important cautions to be made about the analytical
process when working from tape recordings or DVDs of films. The first of these relates purely to the use of recordings made for the PAL television system. These are initially
created from film prints that were shot at 24 frames per second when the original film were made, but are always transferred to the consumer medium at 25 frames per second. This
means that their running time when played on PAL system devices is shortened by 4% of the original running time. This means that a correction factor has to be applied to the ASL has
to be applied by multiplying it by a factor of 25/24. I have applied this correction in my results. No correction is necessary for NTSC recordings. More important is the question of
Scale of Shot determination from video and DVD copies of films. For old Academy screen ratio films, both 16 mm. copies and, even more so, video copies are cropped in all around the frame
on transfer to a greater extent than the screen masking when they are shown in the cinema, or on a Steenbeck. The effect of this on the Scale of Shot is fairly slight, as it shifts a very
small proportion of the CUs into the BCU category, and an even smaller proportion of the more distant shot Scales into the next closer category. Since nearly all American
feature films made since 1954 are intended to be masked to widescreen on projection, or are shot in one of the anamorphic ‘Scope systems, or in a wide film system, the difficulty
does not exist in quite this form for wide screen films. The problem is that films made since then which are shot ‘flat’, i.e. with spherical lenses on the camera, may have
the full Academy image, which was invariably recorded on the negative for American films, transferred to video, and not masked in to the widescreen proportions that were intended to be
seen in the cinema. Despite the fact that DVD transfers are virtually always given the correct masking, and there is an increasing trend to releasing VHS copies properly masked in
to wide screen, this problem has received a new boost from the shooting of many films in Super 35. In this process, the camera exposes what is called the ‘full’ aperture in
the gate of the camera, which is equivalent to the old silent period aperture. This image on the original film is masked in to widescreen or even to ‘Scope proportions by optical
printing when making the release prints of the film.
Where possible, I used DVD copies when
analysing the sample, and I also check with the VHS copy of the same film where possible. This check showed that in the case of Deep Blue Sea, which was shot in Super 35, the VHS copy had
been taken from the full frame, and the DVD copy, like the cinema prints, was taken from the middle of the original frame in ‘Scope proportions. This meant that for any shot much
more could be seen of the scene vertically in the VHS frame than could be seen in the DVD copy. That is, if I had analysed the VHS copy, I would have found that the film was shot from
much further back than it really was, with respect to the intended cinema release framing. Another difficulty that can occur with films shots in Panavision, or other ‘Scope systems,
(as opposed to merely being filmed with a Panavision camera with ordinary spherical lenses), is that full frame VHS copies can be made by ‘scanning and panning’ the 1:2.35
‘Scope frame. A pan made across the ‘Scope frame during the video transfer will show almost the true height of the frame, so creating no more of a problem than a video copy of
an old Academy ratio film, but a scanning cut from one end of the ‘Scope frame to the other, which sometimes happens, introduces an apparent extra cut into the film which
wasn’t there before. If there are a substantial number of these, this will affect the ASL slightly. Fortunately, the expert eye can detect most of them, but even I find I have
missed some scanning cuts on re-examining a film. But to repeat, as long as you stick to DVD copies most of these difficulties can be avoided.
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