Techniques of Filming

Recently I've been interested in simple techniques that increase the quality of the shots when filming. I found a decent article posted by lavideofilmmaker.com called "11 Essential Film Techniques". There's definitely an emphasis on the world essential, because the first 8 or so are some very standard techniques such as zoom, pan, tilt, and over-the-shoulder. Assuming you guys already know about most of these techniques, I'm going to focus on the last two. However, if you want to read the full list you can check it out here:

http://www.lavideofilmmaker.com/filmmaking/film-techniques.html

Number 10 is called the Dutch Angle shot. You may know it as the sideways/crooked shot.

This shot is rarely justified, but when it is, it works beautifully. Dutch angles are used to create a sense of unease with the viewer or suggest that something is out of balance. This makes sense because the shot is quite literally out of balance. Wikipedia claims the first film to use this kind of shot was a 1919 silent German horror film called "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari". Today, Dutch angles are quite popular and we can point them out in several films and TV shows. They were also extensively used in the 1960's Batman TV series (I mention this only because I talked about this show last time).

Number 11 I also found very interesting. They labeled it as Mixing focal lengths in a scene to make one character dominant over the other. Normally, you want to use the same lens in a back and forth conversation to keep the shots similar. However, there is one exception to this. I could reword it in some way but they really say it best:

"If two characters are talking and you cover the scene with complementary over-the-shoulder shots and you want to make one character look a lot more dominant than the other, you can use a wide lens (short focal length) when shooting over the shoulder of the dominant character, and a significantly longer lens when shooting over the shoulder of the other character. As a result of the short focal length, when you film over the shoulder of the dominant character, he will dominate the frame because he will look much larger than the other character."

I found this to be a very artistic use of the lens. It's also a good example of learning the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist (hats off to Picasso for that line). Anyways, I hope you find these techniques interesting and I invite anyone to comment with interesting techniques they've have found!