Types of shot and camera angle

Dolly shot

 A dolly shot is used in a lot of filming including music video's. Here is a brief description of a dolly shot and how it is used.

A dolly is a cart which travels along tracks. The camera is mounted on the dolly and records the shot as it moves. Dolly shots have a number of applications and can provide very dramatic footage.

In many circles a dolly shot is also known as a tracking shot or trucking shot. However some professionals prefer the more rigid terminology which defines dolly as in-and-out movement (i.e. closer/further away from the subject), while tracking means side-to-side movement.

Something that we will be doing a lot of in our music video is Continuity cuts: These are cuts that take us seamlessly and logically from one sequence or scene to another. This is an unobtrusive cut that serves to move the narrative along. Although there is no real narrative in our video we will be using this to jump from different scenes instead of showing a whole long clip we will take the good parts and push them together.

This is one series from our story board which shows how we will use continuity cuts, in order to allow the bet parts of the scene to be shown in the video.



A technique that will be more frequently shown in our video is: Cross-cutting: Cutting between different sets of action that can be occurring simultaneously or at different times, (this term is used synonymously but somewhat incorrectly with parallel editing.) Cross-cutting is used to build suspense, or to show the relationship between the different sets of action.

Here is another series taken from our story board that displays the use of cross-cutting in our video. This is very continuous in our video and ties in with the message, that is about being young and free and doing a lot of different things.

Most of the scenes in our music video will be steady shots that are filmed from a mid shot view point. Some parts of the video will be closer up and some will be filmed from a wider angle to enable more to be in the video at one time. 

Close up:

Medium close up:

 Mid shot:

As you can see in this first page of our story board there is a mixture of mid shots, close up shots, and medium close up's. This allows our video to have depth and not be at the same angle and distance throughout, which makes it more appealing to an audience.