Motion is at the core of capturing the attention of and connecting with an audience. This has been a popular technique throughout a lot of cinema’s history.
“We know when we go to the cinema now, the camera is never static. It’s always on the move. It’s always on a steadicam; it’s always on tracks; it’s always flying.”
Mike Gunton, Executive Producer, Planet Earth II
In early cinema, cameras weighed several hundred pounds which could barely be moved. Several decades ago, lightweight film cameras enabled this movement. When the cameras became digital, motion became very easy for a few reasons.
- Memory: When film moves too much, it can easily be destroyed. Hard drives — especially solid state memory — can move as much as needed without any consequences.
- Stabilization: Traditional film cameras were attached to steadicams, which are contraptions with weights to counteract movements that videographers wear to stabilize video. In the last decade, have become popular, smaller, and more affordable. (Similar technology is even embedded in smartphone cameras!) Gimbals include gyroscopes, which are sensors that measure motion on three axis: x, y, and z. In real time, motors move the lens to counteract this motion.
We can see this technological change exemplified in the Planet Earth films from 2006 and 2016. In 2006, cameras were on tripods, steadicams, and helicopters. Tripods limit any movement, steadicams limit agility, and helicopters limit intimacy. With gimbals and drones, the videographers of Planet Earth II were able to get a huge range of motion.
Like we learned in class, we can see that drones can to create long distance shots to establish context, while gimbals can create closeups and point of view shots to establish intimacy.
Even though we don’t have the same technology from Planet Earth available to us for this project, we can still take away many of the lessons. For example, we can quickly move the camera to show intense action, slowly move the camera to create suspense, and keep the camera steady to help the audience fixate on one subject.
Good points here, Jacob. I appreciate that you picked something that directly ties into your project. It sounds like you’ve learned a lot from Planet Earth.