- Banned
- #61
Really, do what you like. No one can say "no" except your collaborators.
This is just something to consider: the point of view shot isn't literally "what someone sees" but rather a storytelling device that provides the information of what a character sees and how they perceive it.
This is a major distinction for a few reasons. The camera and the eye are not entirely alike. The camera shoots at 24fps, reveals differences in color temperatures unnoticed by the untrained human eye, records a rectangular frame, and has a large sensor. The eye perceives faster motion, has auto-iris and auto-color temperature abilities, and sees a very wide frame that gets extremely blurry past the center. So you're dealing with two different things.
And there's the fact that what you see onscreen feels different relative to your position in the audience and the size of the screen. This is why debates about the eyes' focal length never end: the eye doesn't HAVE a focal length you can compare to a film lens. Maybe you have a field of view similar to a 17mm lens. But then you'd have to sit in the front row to get that experience. (A lot of great filmmakers sit in the front row, by the way.) Maybe you have a non-blurry area similar to a 35mm lens. Maybe 50mm provides perspective distortion closest to what the eye sees. But none of these is "correct" and all of them can look like each other based on the size of the screen and your distance from it.
And you can have point of view shots from basically any focal length. Furthermore, in modern cinema, the zoom is used more in point of view shots than any other kind of coverage. But the eye can't zoom; the zoom is merely a functional equivalent to looking at something and focusing exclusively on it. Again, the POV shot isn't literally "what the person sees;" it's a functional equivalent to their experience of seeing it and a well-established syntactical cue thereof. Many POV shots are on tripods. No one I know is on a tripod. And most shaky-cam point of view shots feel nauseating, however phenomenologically more accurate they are, because the film goer's inner ear doesn't provide balance cues to counteract the shakiness. That's why we use steadicams: not because we have steadicams on our physical being, but because they create a functional equivalent to the perceived steadiness our inner ear's connection to our brain provides.
There are also logistics. You want to set the depth of focus different for point of view shots? Never mind that this isn't something that's normally done and it would look weird for the audience, the eye has a smaller sensor than film, so even if it can vary between f2 to f8 or something, that might be f8 to f32 on super35. So you might need a lot of light. If you're shooting night exteriors, this could make your budget enormous.
You can try it. It could be what you want. But it's a lot of effort for something that will look unusual and won't fit into Classical decoupage. If the whole movie is very experimental, go for it. But if you're trying to "improve" upon classical syntax or reinvent it for a very unique story, be careful. There are films that do this brilliantly (Speed Racer and Natural Born Killers massively alter Classical conventions; Vertigo introduced a new and unique visual cue), but these also do it consistently, and they develop their own set of rules across the board.
This is just something to consider: the point of view shot isn't literally "what someone sees" but rather a storytelling device that provides the information of what a character sees and how they perceive it.
This is a major distinction for a few reasons. The camera and the eye are not entirely alike. The camera shoots at 24fps, reveals differences in color temperatures unnoticed by the untrained human eye, records a rectangular frame, and has a large sensor. The eye perceives faster motion, has auto-iris and auto-color temperature abilities, and sees a very wide frame that gets extremely blurry past the center. So you're dealing with two different things.
And there's the fact that what you see onscreen feels different relative to your position in the audience and the size of the screen. This is why debates about the eyes' focal length never end: the eye doesn't HAVE a focal length you can compare to a film lens. Maybe you have a field of view similar to a 17mm lens. But then you'd have to sit in the front row to get that experience. (A lot of great filmmakers sit in the front row, by the way.) Maybe you have a non-blurry area similar to a 35mm lens. Maybe 50mm provides perspective distortion closest to what the eye sees. But none of these is "correct" and all of them can look like each other based on the size of the screen and your distance from it.
And you can have point of view shots from basically any focal length. Furthermore, in modern cinema, the zoom is used more in point of view shots than any other kind of coverage. But the eye can't zoom; the zoom is merely a functional equivalent to looking at something and focusing exclusively on it. Again, the POV shot isn't literally "what the person sees;" it's a functional equivalent to their experience of seeing it and a well-established syntactical cue thereof. Many POV shots are on tripods. No one I know is on a tripod. And most shaky-cam point of view shots feel nauseating, however phenomenologically more accurate they are, because the film goer's inner ear doesn't provide balance cues to counteract the shakiness. That's why we use steadicams: not because we have steadicams on our physical being, but because they create a functional equivalent to the perceived steadiness our inner ear's connection to our brain provides.
There are also logistics. You want to set the depth of focus different for point of view shots? Never mind that this isn't something that's normally done and it would look weird for the audience, the eye has a smaller sensor than film, so even if it can vary between f2 to f8 or something, that might be f8 to f32 on super35. So you might need a lot of light. If you're shooting night exteriors, this could make your budget enormous.
You can try it. It could be what you want. But it's a lot of effort for something that will look unusual and won't fit into Classical decoupage. If the whole movie is very experimental, go for it. But if you're trying to "improve" upon classical syntax or reinvent it for a very unique story, be careful. There are films that do this brilliantly (Speed Racer and Natural Born Killers massively alter Classical conventions; Vertigo introduced a new and unique visual cue), but these also do it consistently, and they develop their own set of rules across the board.
Thanks, I don't know enough about aperture settings. We hope to shoot 5k on Mysterium-X which would make things worse, so perhaps we'll go as small as possible. There is also the option of shooting on an overcast day. Some things to consider carefully.
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