A low angle shot. A shot taken from the ground looking upwards at a subject basically. There are a few great uses of low angle shots but they can be used to simply add that something extra to your movie. But if you’re really into the giving a reason for everything you do, then read on, and hopefully our examples will help you understand when and why you’d use them.
This is one of those low angle shots that you see time and time again. Like many low angle shots, this has been used to show the scale of the car. Whenever anything is looked at from below it looks bigger, so by placing the camera looking up at the car, it looks large.
Framing has really been thought about here, we haven’t just got a low angle shot at the car at the back (or closest to the lens) but we also can see the car in the distance that it is chasing. In this shot, it is as if a lion is chasing a mouse. Because of the way the camera is positioned, the front car looks tiny compared to the back car, but in reality, these cars are probably similar in size.
This shot is another classic low angle shot: The ‘looking up at a bloody tall building and making it look even taller than it is shot’. Like the name? I think I’m going to stick to low angle shot. Anyways, by using a low angle shot here (as with the car shot above) this shot shows the shear scale of the building. It is as if it is never ending… Not only this, but because the building has straight lines (yes, bloody lines again I hear you say) the audience are naturally drawn towards the top of the building, where the lines end.
This doesn’t simply have to be a boring low angle shot of a pretty plain building. It could be used as an establishing shot. As I was saying about lines, the audience are drawn to the top of the building. Therefore, this could introduce a scene on the top floor or even on the roof of the building.
Yet again, well ‘and finally’, we have another classic shot ‘the giant man and his little… airplane shot’. By placing the camera looking up at the man, it makes him look like he is about the same size as the plane. This could suggest power, control or success, but this is obviously down to your story. The fact that we, as an audience, are forced to look up at the character suggests those three. It could also suggest how it has experience with this plane, the fact that to him, the plane is not some huge machine shows this too.
Hopefully, by looking at the images and reading about them you’ve been a little bit of help when it comes to using low angle shots. If not, stick a comment down below or ask in the forum.
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