Technology Description | Patent Info | Inventor Bio | Moving Camera
Introduction
* Light, scene, subject, story: camera. These are the critical elements to acquiring useful content for your production. Moving camera may help you tell your story, but how do you determine camera placement, pointing and framing? What about camera support, and more importantly what about CAMERA PATH? What camera path will best help you in your visual storytelling enterprise?
* What if you could experiment with different camera paths with no added cost? Imagine if you could make full use of the scene space and lighting with freedom of camera path. Imagine a hand held blend of crane and stabilizer with servo precision and floor-to-ceiling reach. Imagine freedom to choose your own camera path, with unlimited shooting orientation.
* Versatile and Mobile.
* All Hand Held.
* Unlimited shooting orientation.
* SHORT
Moving Camera and Other Important Concepts
* Historically, camera moves were most often accomplished in the horizontal domain since this is technically the easiest and cheapest type of move. In modern times of movie making however, this has changed with the advent of new camera support tools.
* Moving camera technique is often used to depict the passage of time, story line narration, scene transitions where a simple cut is not desired for continuity, simply to follow a moving subject, to change among characters during dialog, or to change from passive subject to subject to otherwise advance the story line. There are other ways.
* Moving forward vs. moving backward relative to the camera's direction of view can be analogous to time passing forward or backward, respectively, or looking into the future or into the past, respectively.
* Moving Camera can also generate heightened suspense within a scene by translating to and perhaps investigating each of any number of conflicting elements within that scene, thus setting the tension in the mind of the viewer.
* Moving camera theory exists from early in the history of production, and the power of moving camera is both real and risky in the art of visual story telling. This is true of motion in any direction, be it horizontal, spinning, vertical, etc. Camera motion may easily distract our audience from the story, a situation which we must always avoid.
* Because of its horizontal and vertical reach, a crane on a dolly can access a large volume of space for camera positioning, even if the dolly is on tracks, because you multiply cross section of the crane's sphere by the length of track run. Naturally the camera is not allowed to see the track, and this must be accounted for in the scene design and the camera path and pointing.
* Body mounted stabilizers do offer enough mobility for plenty of traditional style imagery across nearly all genres within motion picture/video production. Historically however, they have been tools of limited vertical reach, and limited shooting orientation. The broadcast production establishment uses mostly horizontal or nearly horizontal, moving camera as a result of this. It is often used with great mastery and adds tremendously to the imagery. But that imagery is still nearly always lacking the all powerful vertical camera.
* Point of view (POV) camera is an art in itself within Camera Support and Positioning, very often with tight physical constraints on location. The resulting small, lightweight installation often limits the application to smaller detector size and associated lower image quality. POV is still in demand for the supporting footage and novelty. So we see that for the value added by a unique or fresh point of view, we are sometimes willing to sacrafice image quality. This is a very important 'benefit to cost' concept applied to camera and camera support within broadcast production.
* Now, not only may image quality be maintained, but Point Of View may also be expanded to Path Of View. This is made possible using the correct combination of tools, including a 35 mm format camera and a servo stabilized hand held HD camera positioner to support and move that large format camera.
* Today technology is rapidly changing. Digital video technology, motion control technology, system integration and telecommunications technologies are very helpful to the Hand Held Camera Support and Positioning cause. All of these technologies are also advancing full speed ahead, which is good news for the future of hand held imagery. It is proving to be so with every new day that passes.
* The future of hand held Camera Positioning is wide open, and loaded with opportunity.
Vertical Camera
* Within the business of visual storytelling, camera moves through the vertical are typically saved for the very few 'money shot' moments within the story, and the power of vertical camera is rarely fully exploited in terms of story telling utility throughout any given production.
* Vertical camera motion is substantially underutilized, most likely due to associated added cost, but also....
* Worriedly, vertical camera motion may also be underutilized due to and internalized acceptance of a lack of vertical camera motion as the historic trend in the industry, a kind of complacence over the historic status quo. Nobody has been making extensive use of vertical camera motion, so no one is teaching it to directors, story board artists, producers, screen writers, or any one else involved with the shooting portion of production.
* Production culture should embrace vertical camera, having much to gain by producing better imagery, and little added risk beyond those already existing and accepted within the practice of that art and trade.
* Computer generated imagery (CGI) sometimes gives the glaring exception at the other extreme of the vertically moving camera spectrum, since there is no crane to pay for. CGI feature movies often use vertical camera to the point of exhausting the viewers. This is an important mistake that we can learn from and avoid.
* For every traditional way that horizontally moving camera is typically used in visually story telling, there is a corresponding way that vertical camera motion may also be used, offering a more novel, fresh look to the resulting imagery. Imagine any other business where only half of the tools are ever used for production, and the other half gather dust because no one has the instruction manuals for them. That is the state of the broadcast production industry. Like a circus with essentially no acts in the overhead. The vertical element is lacking.
* One example of a fundamental vertical relation we often observe in nature: predators look down on prey, prey look up at predators.
* There are many other metaphors which may be applied to visual storytelling in philosophy and technique using vertical camera motion and pointing.
* The Parental or All Knowing View is looking down, vs. the Child View, which is looking up. This visual relationship is not captured in the horizontal domain like it can be in the vertical dimension of camera motion. Likewise, full access to vertical camera positioning and complex or modern camera positioning often offers storytelling advantages not available in the old school two dimensional world of horizontal motion.
* Vertical moves can be used to define the macro or wide scene, and then some ever increasingly more detailed (micro) facet within that vast wide scene by moving the camera in on that facet. This gives a far more intuitive and captivating experience to the viewer than we would get with an optical zoom. The same is true of the reverse of this process: moving the camera out from some subject or senic detail is far more intuitive to the viewer than zooming out optically.
* For transition shots between scenes, vertical camera moves are often most effective for seamless storytelling continuity. By physically translating (moving) the camera down into a scene at the beginning or up and out of a scene at the end, the viewer may be mentally led through the story in a more intuitive fashion. This often eliminates the need for cuts and their associated risk of distracting the viewer from the story, especially at the critical moments of scene transitions.
The Transformative Power of the Vertical View Angle
* Vertical view angle can have a marked effect on audience's impression of some imagery. A nearly horizontal view angle usually means all is normal. Shock, awe, fear, surprise, dread, threat and even a feeling of omnipotence may be alternately generated in the mind of the audience using careful manipulation of the vertical view angle.
* A low angle looking up makes a subjest look towering and iconic, while a high angle looking down often serves to reduce the importance of a character or make them more like the others around them, more common. Horizontal moves won't get you there.
* Further emphasis may be added to the subject of a shot by moving the camera in toward and at a lower height than the subject, making it loom and tower in the frame as the camera advances.
* Beyond a certian vertical view angle we avoid the substantial risk of disorienting our viewer. This is most likely for the end-over-end or vertically inverted shot. Near the edge of this disorientation zone, however, lies the elusive and very powerful relm of etherial imagery. The feeling of floating while looking down steeply, the feeling of shrinking while looking up steeply, and the underlying dream-like emotional conceptualizations that these camera angles induce in the mind of the viewer can be an extremely useful tool in visual story telling.
* This is also true of tilted camera, rocking/rolling camera, spinning camera, and many other 'trick' or 'complex' types of motion. Beyond some extent we must avoid a very substantial elevated risk of disorienting the viewer. This may be the desire, however, if the story being told lends itself to such feelings within the viewing audience at that moment.
* Another dream-like analogy to looking vertically down is that of a God-like or angelic presence in the point of view. This sort of overhead camera position often causes the audience to anticipate discovery and knowlege beyond that of the subject they are looming above, like the mugger just around the corner or other forms of looming destiny, both good and bad, within the story line.
Zoom Is Not A Natural Move
* Zoom is not natural, translating camera motion is natural. Given the choice we should always move the camera, not the zoom, for more intuitive imagery. Zoom with the boom, not with the lens.
* Zoom should be accomplished by an actual approach of the camera to the subject within the Scene. This causes two distinct and important results: the background recedes in the image (and in importance) and the subject becomes emphasized, without the unnatural distraction of changing the field of view angle by zooming.
* Its good to use Basic Animal Motion to position camera: a dog or a 3 year old child will walk around a sibling & get down on the floor to see what toy is being played with. This is a very natural animal motion, even for a very young child. It involves translating the eyes (moving the camera horizontally) to the area of interest and then moving vertically to the approximate level of the subject or senic detail of interest (the toy being played with).
* An interesting aside fits here from the independent pursuits of helicopter operations and freefall skydiving. Both activities allow total freedom of motion in all three dimensions of space, just as we would like with our camera. When approaching to a hover in a helicopter or approaching a freefall formation as a freefall skydiver, the approach path is the same: a shallow sloped descent. The rate of approach is held at a relative constant rate, meaning that we slow down as we get close so that the destination looms larger in the image at a constant rate.
* In other words, the apparent rate of closure to our destination is constant. This keeps the pilot or jumper (or camera operator) in control while allowing plenty of time to study the approaching image/scene, and allows for gradual slowing until the rate of closure eventually reaches zero. When well executed, either of these approaches has almost no discernable ending 'event', it just keeps getting slower and then eventually isn't moving any more. This is one ideal moving camera technique when we have true freedom of three dimensional camera movement, with the gradual ending of the move so subtle that the audience is not distracted in any way by detectable halting of the motion. The motion just slowly fades and then isn't there any more.
* An important concept to mention here is that motion of the camera is exaggerated within the image frame whenever the camera is very close to the subject, so any floating of the camera position will be very noticable in the imagery. Overbearing in fact. Likewise, if we start a boom motion toward our subject or scene detail of interest, we must make sure not to overshoot the move because we will be left with complete garbage for an image at the end of the move. This is the type of situation were heartbeat and/or breathing my become the limiting factors on camera positioning performance. Drink less coffee and try to breath slow and deep. Yoga.
* A 'landing point' or something to steady the rig/camera against when we get to the end of the move may be helpful in the case of the approach move, ideally with a thick, soft pad to help soften the touch down on that landing point. Making a 'departing' or 'reverse' move instead of an approach is another option, with a padded 'launch point' to help, when the scene is one that lends itself to be played in reverse motion in post production. Falling water, wind blown flags, moving cars and pedestrians don't help with the reverse move idea. Sometimes folks may try to walk or drive backwards through the scene to make this work, but it doesn't, so don't.
* If our mind wants to know more about a thing, our body tries to transport us toward that thing, both horizontally and vertically, to get a closer look. Our eyes have no natural or built in zoom function. It is basic animal motion to move the eyes through the environment to learn about that environment. We approach each detail in the enviroment physically to bring it to the foreground of our vision, then move on to the next detail once we've seen enough of the first one. If we emulate this basic animal motion with our basic camera motion, we stand the greatest chance of maintaining an intuitive connection with our audience, giving no unnatural cuts or other artifacts within the imagery to distract or detract from the viewing experience.
* Likewise, if we want to know more about our surrounding situation, we can take a step back or up in height to get a wider view of the local scene. Moving the camera beats zooming for intuitive imagery both for zooming in and zooming out.
* If we want to deliberately hide a detail from the audience we may move the camera away from that detail or somehow beyond view of that detail, to deny our audience the satisfaction of that knowledge. Giving them a peek and then pulling back to conceal such details is another useful storytelling technique afforded by moving the camera instead of zooming with the lens. Moving camera for the reveal/conseal shots.
* Any of these concepts is more naturally accomplished using a translation move of the camera (vs. a zoom) for more intuitive imagery and therefore better visual storytelling continuity. A fine distinction perhaps, but better to opt for the potentially superior technique, given all other issues held constant. You'll never really know 'till you try it!
* As with any visual technique in the storytelling arts, too much may not be a good thing. Moving camera is often most effective when understated, giving a subtle awareness of scene space through a very slow forward rate within the scene. "The Secret Garden" is a wonderful example moving camera in a relatively large percentage of all of the shots in the movie. Very nice work.