Tuesday, 11 February 2014

The art of close-ups

David Chen works in Communications at Microsoft, Seattle. He also hosts and produces The /Filmcast (the official podcast of /Film) and The Tobolowsky Files, in addition to television podcasts such as, A Cast of Kings, and The Ones Who Knock. His video work has been featured/mentioned in online publications such as Slate, Vulture, Indiewire, Laughing Squid, Devour, Bustle, Vimeo Staff Picks, and Digg.

In the following video, Edgar Wright joins David to chat about the art of filming close-ups.


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Posted by Henry Sheppard at 06:00
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1 comment:

Unknown said...

Now THIS is the way to do film school. We never see the interviewee and we never even hear the interviewer. We just see really strong examples as top rate film maker Edgar Wright describes his process. He even shows shots from an older movie and explains why they didn't work.

So the take-aways are: close-ups help you get into the scene late and leave early. They keep you in control of the rhythm and give you something to cut away to to speed the pace. They can force the timing. For example, instead of having a bus arrive and pull up, you can just have a close up of the main actor's feet coming out of the bus.

Juicy extras: you can use someone passing in front of the camera or the lights actually going out, to close a scene theatrically.

Use long shots of action if the actors can manage it.

Thank you, David Chen!

February 11, 2014 8:05 am

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