Camera techniques for academic films

This is a presentation from 2016, but still relevant today. It demonstrates a useful range of easy to do techniques (shot styles) for making interesting films that engage the viewer. I get my inspiration from watching professionally made documentaries like Italy’s Invisible Cities (with Warwick’s Professor Michael Scott and Alexander Armstrong) – that’s one of the best to learn from, and includes the use of VR as well. Watch good productions like that and observe the clever, and often simple, techniques used.

I find that the biggest challenge for students and academics starting to make films is the transition from thinking textually to thinking visually. Break down your story or argument into chunks, and think about the shots that will most effectively achieve the goal of each chunk. Those goals can include getting facts across, but also adding emphasis (to direct the viewers attention and interest), framing, and triggering emotions – in academic work we are so often told to remove the emotional aspect, but the point of film is to create an emotional “journey”, so we need to think more about how a shot combines with words and sounds to do that. For example, in the Invisible Cities clips there’s a shot over Alexander Armstrong’s shoulder (his point of view, but with a bit of him included), looking at the Professor explaining something really interesting and exciting, with a lot of expression. Armstrong’s position makes him a proxy for us the audience, to get the full emotional power of Scott’s expressions. He stands in for us, as the learner, and we literally feel (empathise) with his feelings, his inquisitiveness and amazement. That makes the exchange so much more personal for us, we are literally drawn into it almost physically. I think that is so amazing!

Apologies for the sound problems in places, the video has bounced around several university video platforms since 2016, and seems to have acquired an echo near the end, but is still usable.

To learn more about designing and planning shots, Warwick Uni students and staff can access this LinkedIn Learning course, with videos about shot lists, and the Shot Designer free app.