Student Question
What visual film techniques are used in contemporary TV?
Quick answer:
Contemporary TV employs various visual film techniques to enhance storytelling. Techniques like Hitchcock's vertigo shot are used to create dynamic visuals, where the background moves while the subject remains stationary. Shows such as White Collar use close-ups, angle shots, dolly, and tracking shots. Lighting effects, including side and top lighting, are crucial for mood setting. Additionally, the adoption of faster frame rates and digital video technology is blurring the lines between TV and film aesthetics.
Visual film techniques are methods by which camera movements and
maneuverings convey the meaning of the scenes. Some of these techniques that
once were exclusively used for film, like Hitchcock's vertigo shot, are now
finding their way into TV productions. You may have noticed on highly technical
shows like Burn Notice, White Collar, or Flash Forward, a
camera technique whereby the subject stays stationary while the background
moves dizzingly away (and sometimes forward again!). This is a vertigo shot and
was innovated by Alfred Hitchcok for his famous film Vertigo, with
James Stewart.
Many TV shows, like The Dick Van Dyke Show, Cheers, Full House, and
Hot in Cleveland, are actually filmed onstage before a "live studio
audience," like a theater production, thus have a limited scope for visual film
techniques. Since The Great Train Robbery broke the rules, silver screen film has not been thus...
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limited to a proscenium. TV shows likeCharlie's Angels took TV filming out of doors, following in film's
footsteps and borrowing some of movie's film techniques.
Some other specific film techniques used in TV today are distance shots, angle
shots, dolly and tracking shots, close-up shots, and lighting effects. The
pilot episode of White Collar exemplifies some of these. It opens with
many cuts in a montage series of extreme close-ups of Neil
cutting his hair and shaving. Further shots incorporate angled
shots, with high shots (looking upward) of
medium or close-up shots and with crane shots
of the space Neil is in.
Lighting in this montage segment (which points out the role of
precision editing in visual effects) is
side-lighting mixed with top-lighting. After
Neil walks out, a series of pans, dolly shots, and
tracking shots take him from the inside of the prison to the
outside where we see him in an extreme long shot followed by a
depth of field shot with Neil in close-up and the focus on the
prison in the background.
References
What visual techniques from TV are now common in contemporary film?
Probably the most common television technique used in film today is the adoption of faster frame-rates. For years, cinema used the 24 frames-per-second standard, resulting in a specific visual quality that is widely recognised as "filmic." Television started with film but soon switched to a largely video-format, because of the lower cost; most video cameras recorded at a standard 30fps, giving television a different visual quality than film. This is most obvious in multi-camera sitcoms, where there is a minimum of post-production on the final image.
Today, because of the rapidly-decreasing cost of digital film and video, many low-budget films are shot on digital video and processed to film, whether 35mm or digital. Depending on the processing, the resulting image may have a smoother speed or higher resolution. This allows both cheaper and faster shooting, and as the formats increase resolution and adaptable frame-rates, the line between "TV look" and "movie look" is blurring.
References