5 Unusual & Creative Filmmaking Shots

INTRODUCTION

Over many decades, filmmaking has created its own standardised way of presenting images on screen. However, some stories warrant breaking these visual conventions and replacing them with unusual, creative shots.

Let’s take a look at five of these out of the ordinary frames and unpack how exactly each technique is pulled off and what gear is used to do so.   

1 - SPLIT DIOPTER

One of the trademark techniques in cinematography is to shoot with a shallow depth of field - where only one part of the frame, such as the subject, remains in sharp focus, while the rest of the frame in the background is rendered soft and out of focus. 

This is achieved by shooting with a wide open aperture on the lens, such as T/2, focusing on objects placed closer to the camera, using longer focal lengths and by placing different objects different distances away from each other.

The focus of a lens can only be set to one distance. So if an actor is six feet from the camera and the background objects are 60 feet from the camera, and the focus distance on the lens is set to six feet, then the actor will be sharp, while the background will be soft and out of focus.

But, what if filmmakers wanted to distort what optics can naturally do by rendering two objects which are far apart from each other sharply in focus? They can do so with this first creative technique - using a split field diopter.

This is a filter that can be placed in front of the lens. Half the filter is open and allows the camera to see through it and focus at the deeper focus point that is set on the lens while the other half contains a diopter glass which allows the lens to focus on a subject much closer to the camera, even though the focus distance on the lens is set much deeper.

These come either as circular filters or as rota filters that can fit in a standard 4x5.6” mattebox and be rotated with the gear wheel to find the right position before locking it in place.

These filters mean filmmakers can split the focus and get both subjects close to the camera in focus with the diopter, as well as subjects further away in focus with the lens.

Although it's quite a sparsely used tool, some directors such as Brian De Palma are known for using it as a way to layer information and characters across different distance planes within a single frame. 

For example, allowing us to view both a TV broadcast in the foreground and observe the actions of a character in the background at the same time. Or, showing us a far off character recording sound voyeuristically, and a close up of the couple that he’s recording in the foreground. 

Split diopters make it possible to incorporate different characters or subjects at different distances within a single shot, without needing to cut between two different shots, or do a focus pull between those two subjects.

Rotating and positioning these filters correctly is very important if you want the deep focus effect to be seamless. If these filters aren’t correctly positioned right on the edge of the closer object that they want in focus, such as this frame from Reservoir Dogs, then they become easily identifiable through a clear division between an area with out of focus bokeh created by the close focus diopter and an area without bokeh which is in focus.

A great way of hiding this effect is by placing the split line of the diopter against a solid area of colour like a white wall, in an area of dark shadow - which will hide bokeh when blacks have less detail and are more crushed - or by using a lower strength diopter filter with less magnification and bringing the two objects on different focal planes closer together.  

2 - DUTCH ANGLE

Almost all shots in movies are framed with a straight horizon, with the camera correctly levelled and not rolled over onto its side. This makes sense. It’s the same perspective of the world which our eyes see everyday when we’re standing, sitting, or walking with our head in a level position.

However, some filmmakers deliberately subvert this convention, by framing images with the camera unevenly rolled over onto its side so that the horizon line is not parallel with the top and bottom of the frame. This is called a dutch angle.

Because it goes against how our eyes naturally orientate the world, framing in this oddly tilted way has quite a stylised, jarring and unnerving effect. For this reason filmmakers often pull out this technique for a specific moment in the story where they want to make the viewer feel uncomfortable, or get the frame itself to mimic the disorientated, uneasy, or tense feeling that the characters on screen are themselves feeling.

It can also be used in conjunction with high or low angles to emphasise a power imbalance - which is a trick Guy Ritchie has used on a number of occasions. 

How dutch angles are shot depends on what movement and rigs are used to hold the camera. This tilt can be done manually by an operator rolling over a handheld camera into a weird position, by using a remote head, a gimbal or a Trinity to roll the camera on its axis, or by unbalancing the horizon of the camera on a tripod.

Because cinema cameras are heavy it’s usually not advised for tripod legs or a head to be extremely tilted or unbalanced - for danger of it falling over. Instead, filmmakers will usually use a dutch tripod head such as a Tango to get this oblique angle.

A Tango head is mounted between a fluid head and the camera and is capable of tilting the camera from side to side, to either level the horizon, or in this case, to make the horizon deliberately uneven and slanted.

Because it’s a heavily stylised technique that’s a bit disorientating to audiences it’s usually used quite sparingly. Having said that, there have been some movies, such as The Third Man, which ‘lean’ on this technique quite heavily to give the entire film a muddled, expressionist feel.            

3 - DOLLY ZOOM

Since we’re on the topic of shots designed to disorientate the viewer, one of the most famous of these is the dolly zoom, sometimes called ‘the Vertigo Effect’. This shot applies two contradictory techniques at the same time to create a strange, unsettling visual experience for the viewer.

The first technique it uses is moving the camera along a straight axis. More often than not this is done by attaching the camera to a dolly and pushing it along a straight track. Moving the camera from the close position to the furthest position on the track makes the shot go from wide to tight, while inversely moving from back to front makes a shot go from a wider frame to a tighter frame.

The second part of this technique is to zoom the lens. Zooming changes the focal length of the lens, which changes the field of view to be either wider or tighter. 

Because the speed of the zoom needs to be smooth and consistent for this technique, cinematographers will often use a zoom motor attached to the zoom gear on a cinema lens which can be controlled by a device like a Microforce, rather than zooming the lens by hand.  

When you combine these two techniques and time them correctly, by moving the camera from a tight shot to a wide shot, while simultaneously zooming the lens from a wide to a tight focal length - the width of the frame will remain the same, while the perspective of the lens’ compression shifts as the lens zooms and the focal length shifts.

This creates an effect that distorts the perspective, either expanding, or compressing the background in an expressionist way. 

It’s often used to intensify the feelings of a character on screen, such as their moment of realisation, revelation, fear, shock, or convey their feeling of vertigo.

4 - SNORRICAM

It’s common practice to hard mount the camera onto cars with a variety of rigs, so that they can be focused onto a character in a seat, who remains still while the background flies past.

However, a shot which uses this same concept, but which is a lot more unconventional and rare is the Snorricam - a rig that straps the camera directly onto the body of an actor. 

After Darren Aronofsky famously used an early iteration of this rig on his indie movie Pi, the Snorricam gained popularity as a niche rig for mounting the camera onto actors. 

It provides quite a stylised perspective with a few different effects, depending on how it is rigged. The most common method is for it to be latched onto the face of the actor, conveying a sense of disorientation, drunkenness or psychological unease.

It can also be flipped around to shoot more of an over the shoulder shot from behind the actor which provides a subjective point of view from the character’s perspective, or even flipping the camera around in its front mounted position to shoot a direct, forward facing POV angle.

The Snorricam is made up of low weight, carbon fibre hip plates that attach to a vest which the actor can wear. It has a cheeseplate on the back and front which can be used to mount an arm with a ballhead and support rods which hold the camera on one side and a weight to counterbalance the front heavy camera on the other side.

There’s also a new sliding track system available with a fluid head, called the Sputnik arm, which can even be operated by an actor during a take to change the point of view of the camera, from front facing to forward facing.    

5 - PERISCOPE & PROBE LENSES

Macro shots that focus on an object incredibly close are not too unusual, however, what happens when filmmakers need macro capabilities from an unusual position, or with interesting movement without a bulky macro lens and big camera getting in the way.

One tool that can be used is a snorkel lens system. These lenses come in different forms and with different uses, but are mainly divided into two categories: probe lenses and periscope lenses.

Probe lenses are long, straight and can focus incredibly close to objects. This makes them great for shooting macro shots where the camera moves in a straight line incredibly close to an object, or for shooting macro details underwater in a tank where the camera can be placed outside the water and the lens inside the water. 

Periscope lenses come with the added advantage of being able to tilt, swivel and pan the little macro lens at the end of the barrel to get the perspective into positions which conventional lenses are unable to go.

Regular, non-macro lenses can also be used with some of these systems, for example for shots where the camera needs to be incredibly low to the ground to shoot a low angle shot - so low that placing a regular camera in that position on a hi-hat or slider would not be low enough.

One disadvantage of using these extended optics is that due to their designs they usually come with quite high aperture values - such as T/5.6 or higher. Meaning that they will have a much deeper depth of field and much more light will be required to expose with them. However, since macro shots have an incredibly shallow depth of field anyway, it’s usually desirable to shoot with the lens stopped down a bit.