I'm going to do a five minute short film for my screen writing class in my high school. I want to film most of the film in a POV sjot through the main characters eyes. I just want to know if if the POV would get annorying after awhile?
POV shot
- Thread starter newcitypictures
- Start date
It sure does.
But learning is experimenting. This will not be the only time you
make a movie, right? So try it. Maybe you can make it so the POV
doesn't get annoying. If you don't try you will never know.
There you go...
Two against, one for. Now you need to make your movie YOUR way.
If you like it then you will know that you can do it well. If you don't
like you will learn a valuable lesson AND the experience of shooting
a movie with much if it POV. Win-win.
Two against, one for. Now you need to make your movie YOUR way.
If you like it then you will know that you can do it well. If you don't
like you will learn a valuable lesson AND the experience of shooting
a movie with much if it POV. Win-win.
Thank all of you guys I'm going to try it and I'm also going to try and watch those movies thanks for the help
The biggest problem with POV shots is that the audience is removed from their suspension of disbelief, and are now thinking more about the camera, than the story.
Try to distract them from that.
The best example I can give you of this being done well is CollegeHumor's POV sketches. There's internal dialogue and constant action throughout, which keeps people's attention on what the character is saying (Cuz he doesnt shut up)
Try to distract them from that.
The best example I can give you of this being done well is CollegeHumor's POV sketches. There's internal dialogue and constant action throughout, which keeps people's attention on what the character is saying (Cuz he doesnt shut up)
I actually have a POV shot written into my current project, though it is not for action but rather for dialogue. I wanted to the audience to feel the intensity of the actor's dialogue and I felt putting them in to the other characters shoes for a moment would do the trick, that way the speaking character can direct his dialogue straight to the camera. The POV shot is very brief though.
What I'm really trying to do is put the audience inside this characters head. I want them tio see what he sees and I want them to hear what he is thinking. There is going to be a voiceover throughout almost all of the film.
The eyes are the windows the soul. You not letting us see any eyes..
Using POV and VO is REMOVING the actor from the equation.
A good actor can reveal whats going on in the characters head better than any camera trickery.
Using POV and VO is REMOVING the actor from the equation.
A good actor can reveal whats going on in the characters head better than any camera trickery.
POV is not necessarily just through your protagonists eyes only; it's keeping everything within his/her limited immediate area of knowledge. The D-Day scene in "Saving Private Ryan" is almost exclusively from Captain Miller's POV; you see what he sees, but you also see how he reacts to what is occurring around him.
On the flip side, the TV series M*A*S*H did an episode seen entirely through the eyes of a casualty, we see only his hands. To top it all off, he has a throat wound so he cannot speak.
On the flip side, the TV series M*A*S*H did an episode seen entirely through the eyes of a casualty, we see only his hands. To top it all off, he has a throat wound so he cannot speak.
I like that.. cutting between POV and reaction shots could be cool...
So, it's not an actually limiting requirement.
Just something you wanna try.
And you did clarify that you want "most", not all, of the film to be POV.
A nice break-up of the shots would be of the POV of the character watching someone doing something with intercuts of close-ups from the fourth wall of the character watching.
Essentially: the character POV watching, then watching the character watch, then back to the POV watching.
Think of a parent watching a small child manipulating something in their hands, like crayons/legos/playdough.
Or a gunsmith disassembling, cleaning, then reassembling a pistol.
The family dog watching breakfast being made.
For God's sake please don't do a bad guy in the woods POV spying on a victim. Ugh. Kill me to death.
Sorry, I don't agree with this at all! As with any film technique, if executed badly it will destroy the suspension of disbelief. If executed well it can aid the suspension of disbelief and enhance the audience's understanding and emotional engagement with a character.
I think that the vast majority of no/micro/low filmmakers think of POV in very narrow terms, purely in terms of the camera's position or implied position. They only rarely consider that in addition to the visual POV there is also the aural POV. The Omaha beach scene in Saving Private Ryan is a classic example, the sequence where the camera is looking at Captain Miller, so is not therefore Captain Miller's POV visually but what we are hearing is very specifically from Captain Miller's momentarily shell shocked POV. In other words, the sound and the visuals have very different POVs, a filmmaking tool which is used most effectively in this scene. This is a rather extreme example, less extreme examples are (or should be) an almost constant consideration in filmmaking. For example, if we cut to a CU we need to consider if the sound POV should follow suit. We could emphasise the emotional importance of the CU by changing the POV of the sound to reflect the new POV or we can minimise it's importance by leaving the POV of the sound as it was on the wider shot.
G
See, only three of the five mins of the film is going to be POV. My lead character has social anxiety, so I want the audience to see what he sees and hear what he thinks, so that is going to be shot through his POV but the other half of the film will not be in POV, it'll be his daydreams and flashbacks so you get to see what he thinks other people think of him.