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I just saw Yorgos Lanthimos's Kinds of Kindness - shot almost entirely at extreme low angles to create the exact opposite effect of "showing someone who is powerful". In fact, in many scenes, the person in power is seated, in stasis, or not framed low, and the moron or fool or cuckolded character is shot with the extreme low angle. It's such an extreme inversion it's seemingly used to make every single actor feel small and powerless and tiny and insignificant. Pretty clever though. Funny movie too, obviously, if you're into Yorgos. It's about the locus of control and power and stuff, and it's obviously that direct inversion isn't unintentional, but it's still effective and powerful enough to make one question whether that rule of "low angles make you look powerful" creates that effect truly in an audience inherently -- or whether it's only because people haven't been shown enough films that do the opposite true. It definitely was true in Citizen Kane that low angles made him seem huge. But yeah. Just goes to show you can break the "rules" pretty aggressively and do it with style.

The 1955 film, East of Eden (directed by Elia Kazan) is perhaps one of the most distinct examples of how a cinematographer (Ted McCord for this specific film) could use high & low angles. Good content.

Lol. This a great movie?😂

los angeles is in the title right?

Excellent

Just by some of these clips i am interested in what films they come from. Do you happen to have a list of the movies you used to make this video? Thanks!

Hi Sareesh, did you keep the SCG T8 and, if so, how has it performed log term?

Another reason is depth. It's a lot easier tog get depth when shooting up because the ceiling or sky is higher. When looking down, the floor stops the scene much quicker.

Very interesting. Thank you.

Low angle shots just make people feel big and awesome. That's it. A great low angle shot will make the person in frame look 1000% cooler when compared to an equally great high angle shot. That's all there is to it.

Amazing as always! Thank you! 🍀

okay, but what about c0rn? it's not cinema but these are real people, though. Would better angles fix c0rn? Asking for a friend.

Great video as always, man! As a storyboard artist, I had been told earlier on in my career to use low angle shots more often than high angle ones when dealing with a sentient subject in frame. The reason most people gave me was that it helps to frame characters better in low angles and avoid background clutter distracting from the subject's actions. I was unconvinced with this explanation and prodded a lot of people to come to a better conclusion for this 'convention'. Most of the things you have said in the video were exactly what other artists and directors had told me. But the one pointer coming from a creative director for animated shows, one of the few people I actually revere as a co-worker/mentor, explained to me how characters and situations rather than conventions should influence the use of camera angles. I will try to paraphrase the essence of what he told me: " The camera angle is the first and arguably the most important blocking tool for telling a story. It tells the audience how to feel about the subject in frame. It is also the simplest to achieve as well as get wrong, depending on whether or not you know what you want to say in a scene. If a subject should be relatable for the audience, maintain an eye level angle at most times. If a subject demands respect or authority, use low angles. If they are pitiable or sneaky, use top angles. Once you have those conventions down pat, ignore them in scenarios where the story becomes the subject and controls the narrative, rather than the character dominant in that scene. The camera is the the eye of the audience, but you are in control to of what and how you want them to see!"

girl with dragon tatoo was great

Very astute observations. Excellent video!

GROSS is pronounced GROW-CE. like grocery, NOT grah-ss

Adding to the technical, often there is going to be stuff on the floor, cables, marks for the actors etc, or sometimes the floor just isn't cinematic, so another reason to angle the shot up so you don't see the floor!

Wow. Research, writing, editing, visuals. Why aren't you teaching at UCLA?

WOW this is eye-opening - literally and metaphorically!

great! thanks!

I have read book on cinematography or directing where was said that low angle is more natural for the people in the cinema theater. Now when people watch youtube and films on the laptop or phone eye level or slightly above angle feels better because the viewer hold screen below his head level.

“…what’s the point of a super-hero with a perfect jawline if you can’t see it?…” Hahahaha! Wisdom for the ages. Thank you as always for your excellent work, Suresh! 😊

Because some of us can't afford a crane.

Loveyour videos

really interesting observation!

The eyes and the face. Makes sense! The theatrical context given was mind opening. Thank you!

First

My favorite Nikon zoom lens was 43-86. Of the fixed lens rangefinder cameras I have, only the Olympus SP has a 42mm lens. Great video, love your explanations about the eye in relation to focal lengths!

This video is superb, I am studying for a test for a filmmaking school and it was perfect to understand low-key lighting and high-key lighting. Thank you very much 😁

Oh wow

no its not, my favorite movie aint boring like 7 samurai

Thank you! Extremely useful!

In the first place human eye see different than a camera lens. No way to compare.

54-30-16 percent rule math is explained in the ebook, Structure of a Masterpiece, A Step by Step Guide to Color and Composition, sold in the Apple store.

very interesting and well done video, I just don't understand why you only mentioned the directors instead of the directors of photography! they are the ones who choose or are passionate about certain focal lengths: for example you mentioned Terrence Malick for his passion for wide angles but it's all thanks to his DP Emmanuel Lubezki who often re-proposes wide shots as he did in The Revenant.

Most if these are mediorce.

I’ve just made a short film that is entirely made of masters. I think it works really well, as it was a stylistic rule applied that works for the film. Will see if the film festivals agree with me…

When he said a bucket of paint is cheap, I laughed. You don't have the budget of one bucket of paint, for the entire video. How much painting did he actual do to make this particular video? Zero. Zero paint was used. My budget for every video I make is $2, which goes towards a 2 liter of Dr Pepper or Pepsi....

for future videos change the script to get longer view times. because after like 1 min i was fed enough information to click off. which i did, but i came back just to give you this feedback. your problem is not giving an introduction to pique the interest, but giving the full answer already. what you should have done was the introduction that half answered the question (such that it feels satisfying, but you still need to know more) and then do the analysis, and then finally give the full answer.

I apprenticed with a Zen master photographer / teacher in early 70s who distilled effect composition into this simple statement: What contrasts with the background in the frame the most will attract and hold the most attention. Contrast comes in many forms. In nature contrasting MOVEMENT entering the periphery is what first catches our eye because the rods cells than line that part of the retina are 3000x more sensitive to light than the RGB cone cells concentrated in the 2° of the field of view around the optic nerve. Our eyes subconsciously flit around our environment in saccades until some contrasting thing triggers conscious awareness and then our brains ‘tunnel’ in on the signal coming from the color sensing cones. The eyes still ‘see’ what is happening in the periphery but the brain filters it out! That hair trigger detection of movement is an evolutionary trait because detecting threats is the key to survival. Movies can take advantage of of that in ways still photos don’t. In stills the most effective photos in terms of viewer reaction and long term retention are those which holistically use contrasts in tone, color, focus, relative size, pattern, and movement depicted with blur to attract and hold attention. What my mentor did when critiquing my photos was ask what my intended focal point was, then took a pair of L-shaped mat board cropping guides, pulled in tight on it then enlarged the crop outwards. It became painfully evident that way how many contrasting distractions I had let enter the frame by allowing myself to get ‘tunnel’ vision on the focal point. I got the job as his apprentice because I went home and cut down all my matted Zone System print to eliminate the contrasting distractions which when then so very obvious. The 2° “tunneling” FOV is about twice the width of a thumb held upright at arms length 👍 and that is actually a good way to mentally crop a scene from the intended focal point outwards asking yourself what could be done with clothing, lighting, focus, movement, etc. to make it contrast more while spotting distraction which contrast more which need to be cropped out or blended into the background tone and colorscape.

Loved this film, but what you're saying about its use of colour is such 'inside baseball' nonsense. Even if you're right and these colour choices were deliberate, I'd bet my bottom dollar that <1% of those who watched this movie noticed or cared. The fascinating story, the characters, and their struggles completely overshadowed any story that was being told with colours to the point that it was rendered completely irrelevant.

This is so difficult. Proves why cinematography is pure art.

Gregg Toland didn't light the scene in The Grapes of Wrath with candle light.

Peter Greenaway's 'The Belly of an Architect' doesn't have a single closeup in it, as far as i remember.

art degradation - that's why

Amazing vide9

Master!

Thanks bro