Camera Movement

As early as the 1890’s, right after the Lumiére Brothers invented the Cinématographe, directors started finding different ways to move the camera which was essential to create a realistic and pleasant viewing experience. Movement is needed to establish a point of view for the audience, allowing them to virtually take part in the movie or as Lisa Dombrowski puts it, creating the feeling of “journeying through the narrative” (Dombrowski, 2007). Arguably, it is one of the most important techniques used in cinema, as it can be used to create and control a viewer’s perception.

There are two main types of camera movement which may also be grouped into different subheadings. The first group consists of movements in which the body of the camera remains static while the head turns in the desired direction. Belonging to this group, “Panning” (deriving from Panorama) is probably one of the most recognizable movements and is usually used to define a horizontal turn of the camera so it “sweeps around the scene” (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2007). Panning is most regularly used to establish a connection between two people (i.e. a conversation) or taking a wide look at a certain setting. In Oldboy, we see the camera panning right and left in a small corridor as we follow the main character fighting a pack of thugs. As the action moves in a horizontal direction, panning helps to keep it focused in the camera frame. Takeshi Kitano uses a 180 degrees pan in Zatoichi when the camera circles around in the brothel, slowly revealing a small room. It can be argued that this almost circular pan is most useful when the director wants to completely show a closed setting. However there is another significant factor in this scene. The camera is focused at first to an entertainer facing his audience and while the camera moves left, it reveals the owner of the brothel followed by an obvious bad guy surrounded by two women. So the purpose of the pan might as well be to establish the scene...