Camera art

The Art of Operating a Camera - by retired TV cameraman Dick Hibberd

If someone joins a video or film club, they will have, or be about to acquire, a camera. Ipso facto, they are a cameraman (it should be appreciated that Cameraman is a non sexist title).

If you own a camera, then you automatically know how to frame a picture, after all you watch television, go to the cinema, and so we all must know what is right and what is wrong

All too often today we see on professional television, badly framed, badly lit, out of focus, shaky camera work, with cameras never still for an instant. So if the professionals do it, it must be easy and OK for us to follow their example.

Sadly, in this day and age, accountants run television companies, not entrepreneurs with vision. Cost conscious Production Managers will employ, Researchers, Production Assistants, Gophers etc. And if the opportunity offers itself will even use amateur video clubs, and their members to ‘do it on the cheap’ for their productions. They do often employ professional Cameramen, and then you won’t notice the camera work, however expert it is. And this of course is exactly how it should be. The viewer should never, never notice the camera work.

And after all this preamble this is where I am leading. The viewer should never be aware of the camera, or its operation. Every pan. every tilt. re framing should be 'motiviated' and camera movement timed to coincide with artist movement, movement within the frame, or a musical phrase. Cutting between shots should hardly be noticed. and to achieve this, there have to be a few common denominators.

BCU, CU, MCU. MS, FLS, MLS, LS. as you will almost certainly know, these initials are used to describe the size of shot, and can be anything you personally want them to he. but usually they mean the following:

BCU - Big Close Up: Just above the eyebrows, to below the chin.

CU - Close Up The full head

MCU - Medium Close Up Just below the shoulders to just above the head

MS - Mid Shot From the waist to just above the head

FLS - Full Length Shot From just above the head to just below the toes

MLS - Medium Long Shot Head to toes with about one third of frame below the toes

LS - Long Shot Head to toes plus a lot of other room above and or below.

Its up to you!

When I worked as a Cameraman, very, very many years ago, I worked with a Camera Crew, where there were normally 4 cameramen. We all understood, when asked to take a MS, or MCU, what size of shot to take, and so when the cameras were switched/cut between,. there was no sudden jump in size. If you moved to onother crew there were slight variations to the size of the shots, and you very quickly learnt to adjust to the new standard!

Now, I am sure that most of what I have written you will already know, and please believe me I am not trying to teach my grandmother how to suck eggs. If, as a Club we are on some Public Service exercise, it will make the Editor, and the Director’s work a lot easier if we all understood, when asked to frame a BCU, or a MS, etc, the conventions which exist for framing such a shot.

I hope that I have been of some help, and not caused confusion. I could go on to explain some of the features of ‘framing’. You know what I mean. Triangulisation, Intersection of thirds, Contrary movement, Tone & Texture. All things that we have heard from a photographic stills expert, but what about how best to capture these elements on a video camera with a moving frame! But that is another story, and a lot more complicated one, and one perhaps better spoken about rather than written.