How I Used Camera Angles To Create Meaning

 At times I feel not even I appreciate camera angles as much as I should. Camera angles not only influence the emotions of the audience but also their understanding of characters. My movie The Bird Watcher uses this with multiple different shots to create meaning. Today I plan to explain some of the shots taken in The Bird Watcher and go further into depth about them.

My first personal favorite is close ups. Close ups allow the audience to really feel intimate with the actor in the movie but also see their emotions. For a thriller movie I wanted to convey a common convention through a close up that showed the character's, Eric the bird watcher's, fear. With the close up, the subtle facial expressions can show fear in Eric's eyes, but also help establish a strong emotional connection between Eric and the audience.

The movie often had many medium shots, especially as Eric is walking through the forest. The idea behind these is medium shots is the audience is not only able to see both characters body language, but also the surroundings of the characters. This overall creates a much more realistic effect for the movie.

A high angle shot can suggest multiple different meanings. For my film I used high angled shots near the end of the movie opening, or the climax, to suggest vulnerability in the moment as well as fear. In the moment I wanted Eric to seem extremely isolated from his surrounds, almost in a way for him to seem frozen in time.

Lastly, I wanted to discuss a shot which arguably could be the most important part to The Bird Watcher: The POV shot. POV shots give the audience the ability to see through the character's eyes and almost feel the same emotion as they are. There is use of a POV shot when Eric walks up to the missing person poster and through Eric's binoculars.  For both I felt that they were needed so the audience can almost seem like they are in the movie. To be specific about a POV shot in The Bird Watcher, the binocular shot near the end is to provoke fear in both the audience and Eric as he sees the missing person.