Shot

In film, a shot is a continuous strip of motion picture film, created of a series of frames, that runs for an uninterrupted period of time. Shots are generally filmed with a single camera and can be of any duration. Frames, shots, scenes, and sequences form a hierarchy of units fundamental to many tasks in the creation of moving-image works.

The distance from the camera to the subject greatly affects the narrative power of a shot. The three basic kinds of shots are long shots, medium shots, and close-ups; more specific examples include the extreme long shot, the aerial shot, the bird's eye shot, the crane shot, the establishing shot, the freeze frame shot, the insert shot, the master shot, the over the shoulder shot, the point of view shot, and the two shot. There is even an American shot, a characterization from French film criticism for a type of shot in certain American films of the 1930s and 1940s.

The etymology of the term "shot" derives from the early days of film production when camera were hand-cranked. Hand-cranked cameras operated similarly to the hand-cranked machine guns of that era. Therefore, one "shot" film the way one would "shoot" bullets from a machine gun.^[1]

Film editing

Cutting between shots taken at different times is known as film editing, and is one of the central arts of filmmaking.

Duration

The length of shots is an important consideration that can greatly affect a film. The purpose of editing any given scene is to create a representation of the way the scene might be perceived by the "story teller." Shots with a longer duration can make a scene seem more relaxed and slower paced whereas shots with a shorter duration can make a scene seem urgent and faster paced.

The average shot length (ASL) of a film is one of its cinemetrical measures. For example, The Mist has a length of 117 minutes and consists of 1292 shots, so the ASL is 5.4 seconds.

Long takes

Shots with extremely long durations are difficult to do because any error in the shot would force the filmmaker to restart from scratch. They are thus only occasionally used. Films famous for their long cuts include Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather in which the entire first scene is a long take featuring Bonasera describing the assault of his daughter, Alfred Hitchcock's Rope that only cuts at the end of each reel, and does so surreptitiously so that it seems as the whole film is one take. A film that was actually a single take is the recent Russian Ark. Joss Whedon's feature film Serenity introduces the main characters with a long take.

See also

• Martini Shot
• Camera angle
• Film frame
• Filmmaking
• Master shot

References

1. ^ "Movie Speak; Scissorhands Revisited." 10 August 2009. Podcast. "KCRW's The Business." KCRW 89.9 FM. 12 August 2009.