Where Do You Put the Camera? Every Frame a Painting Presents Insights from Famous Directors

Whether or not we believe in auteur­hood, we each have our own men­tal image of what a film direc­tor does. But if we’ve nev­er actu­al­ly seen one at work, we’re liable not to under­stand what the actu­al expe­ri­ence of direct­ing feels like: mak­ing deci­sion after deci­sion after deci­sion, dur­ing the shoot and at all oth­er times besides. (Wes Ander­son made light of that gaunt­let in an Amer­i­can Express com­mer­cial years ago.) Not all of these deci­sions are eas­i­ly made, and it can actu­al­ly be the sim­plest-sound­ing ones that cause the worst headaches. Where, for exam­ple, do you put the cam­era?

That’s the sub­ject of the new video essay above from Tay­lor Ramos and Tony Zhou’s YouTube chan­nel Every Frame a Paint­ing, which con­sid­ers how the deci­sion of cam­era place­ment has been approached by such famous direc­tors like Steven Soder­bergh, Gre­ta Ger­wig, Guiller­mo del Toro, and Mar­tin Scors­ese, as well as mas­ter cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Roger Deakins.

Tech­nol­o­gy may have mul­ti­plied the choic­es avail­able for any giv­en shot, but that cer­tain­ly has­n’t made the task any eas­i­er. Some film­mak­ers find their way by ask­ing one espe­cial­ly clar­i­fy­ing ques­tion: what is this scene about? The answer can sug­gest what the cam­era should be look­ing at, and even how it should be look­ing at it.

Hav­ing become film­mak­ers them­selves dur­ing Every Frame a Paint­ing’s hia­tus, Ramos and Zhou now under­stand all this as more than an intel­lec­tu­al inquiry. “Some­times, the thing in our way is equip­ment,” says Zhou. “Some­times it’s the weath­er. Some­times it’s a lack of resources. And some­times, the thing in our way is us.” Any direc­tor would do well to bear in mind the brac­ing advice once giv­en by John Ford to a young Steven Spiel­berg, as dra­ma­tized (with a tru­ly aston­ish­ing cast­ing choice) in the lat­ter’s auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal pic­ture The Fabel­mans: “When the hori­zon’s at the bot­tom, it’s inter­est­ing. When the hori­zon’s at the top, it’s inter­est­ing.” As for what it is when the hori­zon is in the mid­dle, well, you’ll have to watch the movie.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The His­to­ry of the Movie Cam­era in Four Min­utes: From the Lumiere Broth­ers to Google Glass

The Cin­e­matog­ra­phy That Changed Cin­e­ma: Explor­ing Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, Stan­ley Kubrick, Peter Green­away & Oth­er Auteurs

How Ger­man Expres­sion­ism Gave Rise to the “Dutch” Angle, the Cam­era Shot That Defined Clas­sic Films by Welles, Hitch­cock, Taran­ti­no & More

Every Acad­e­my Award Win­ner for Best Cin­e­matog­ra­phy in One Super­cut: From 1927’s Sun­rise to 2016’s La La Land

Sig­na­ture Shots from the Films of Stan­ley Kubrick: One-Point Per­spec­tive

Every Frame a Paint­ing Returns to YouTube & Explores Why the Sus­tained Two-Shot Van­ished from Movies

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.