Uses of Low Angle Shots: Camera Angles

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Kevin Lindenmuth, in for Expert Village. I will be talking about camera angles and camera moves. Of course, the low angle shot is the complete opposite of the high angle shot. The low angle shot, you have the camera positioned like this, shooting up at your subject. This can make short actors look taller. For example, when I was shooting one of my features, I think it was one of the alien Agenda movies I did. In this one particular segments I was doing, there were like three actors. And all these actors were like; I think the tallest one was like 5'2" or something. They were all very short. It was two guys and one woman. And they were all very short, so, I didn't want to use a high angle shot on them, which was my height looking down at them. I didn't want them to seem very small. It just wasn't the effect I wanted. So, it was better to go the opposite way. And also because I was hand held and holding the camera, it was kind of lower, like about here on me. So, the entire movie, I shot slightly looking up at them. It wasn't an extreme low shot, low angle, but it was a little bit of a low angle, so, when the movie was done and everything, and I showed it to people, they thought these actors were a lot taller than what they were. And in fact, when somebody had met one of these actors, they were just totally shocked. They were like, "He's so short! I thought he was so big!" Because I had the low angle, they thought he was like six, six and a half feet tall, and in reality he was like 5'2". And it just totally freaked them out. This is a trick Hollywood uses all the time with their short actors. As with the extreme close-up or just the close-up, you can't really see the background so much, so, if you have a low angle pointing up a somebody, it kind of blocks out what's around them. It's also more disorienting. So the low angle makes things look more powerful. It makes things look fast, or if your videotaping cars coming toward you or away, usually you are at a lower angle than the car is and when you see it go by, it makes it look a lot faster than what it is. It is definitely a perception thing. So, as with any of the other angles, it is something that is used for a very specific reason."