Storytelling and the Camera
Locked-off shots are essential to signature shots by Welles,Hitchcock, Kubrick, and Lucas, among others, but they’re
the exception, not the norm. In contemporary fi lms in
particular, the camera point of view often implies a human
point of view, hence the popularity of the hand-held shot
since the 1970s.
In the bad old days of optical compositing, it was scarcely
possible to composite anything but a static camera point
of view. Nowadays, most directors aren’t satisfi ed being
limited to locked-off shots, yet the decision to move the
camera might not happen on set, or it might have to be
altered in post-production.
It’s helpful to create a rough assemble with camera animation
as early in the process of creating your shot as possible,
because it will tell you a lot about what you can get
away with and what needs dedicated attention. The “Sky
Replacement” section in Chapter 13 contains an example
in which a fl at card stands in for a fully dimensional skyline.
