Wide shots, are very similar to establishing shots, but these will generally be showing an action or an event as opposed to showing a location or setting a scene.
Also, you don’t have to stick to using wide shots at the beginning of your scenes. You can use them when and where you bloody well feel like it. They are great for reminding the audience what is going in the scene without being all too obvious.
The above shot is pretty simple really, it is a couple, on a camping trip, having a picnic. From this shot, the audience can also see that they are in the forest/woods and in a pretty secretive location. This could hint at something that may happen later on.
Not only this, but in this scene, we can see that the shot uses the rules of thirds. The subjects of the scene are in the bottom right third of the frame to show that they are close. This is to also draw the focus of the audience on to these subjects.
The tree in this shot has also be used to frame the camper van. Always considering ways to frame objects using… Objects.
It’s an explosion yes, and at first look, you probably think this is a pretty open and simple shot, but in fact you can look at this shot far more closely. Using a wide shot here shows the sheer scale and the sheer size of the explosion: In the bottom right of the frame, there is a vehicle, therefore the audience can make a comparison between the sizes of the object. From this, it becomes clear that wide shots are great for showing the size of objects in a scene.
This has got to be one of the most effective and most loved wide shots used as part of a film: The sunset silhouette shot you could call it. There is a number of things we can look at in this shot. If the scene was not opened with an establishing shot, it will become clear that the scene is set on a remote beach at sun down.
The shot is very useful in order to show the action that is going on but not any emotions of the subjects in the scene because the shot effectively uses the sun to shadow the emotions.
From these examples, you can clearly see three different ways in which you could use wide shots effectively.
Hopefully, after reading this, you will understand a number of ways in which wide shots could be used and hopefully you understand that the primary use of wide shots is to introduce the audience to an action or event in a scene.
You may also enjoy reading these articles:
