Camera Movements for TV News Reporter

Video Transcript

"BILL ALBIN: Hello, I'm Bill Albin. And on behalf of Expert Village, I'm going to teach you what you need to know to be a local news reporter. In this clip, we're going to talk about some of the basic camera moves. There are seven basic camera moves. Some of them you can use in the field and some of them you can't. There are--there's--the seven basic camera moves are pan, tilt, zoom, truck, dolly, arc and pedestal. Now on your basic field tripod, you can't do all of those. Arc, for example, is moving at an angle or any of the movements that would require the tripod shifting around would need, basically, wheels and some kind of flat surface. But in the field, you'd rarely have those things. So we're going to focus primarily on pan, tilt and zoom. Pan is, basically, just moving the camera back and forth. You would do this if you want to follow something. Let's say you are shooting a sporting event or a car chase or something. You would follow the action with the camera. In much the same way, a tilt is a vertical movement. It's up and down. You would tilt down to follow something down. You would tilt up to follow something up. Or maybe you just want to reveal something in an interesting way. Maybe there's something interesting at the base of a street sign. So you would start on the street sign and then tilt it down to what's on the ground at the base of that street sign. The third basic camera movement that we will use in the field is a zoom. A zoom, basically, is exactly how it sounds. It zooms in onto the action or zooms out, and it expands the shot in some fashion. So with those three basic camera moves, you'll be able to add a lot of variety to the video that you are showing on your newscast."