Film Techniques

Movie Magic in Action!

Trailers are meant to capture the audience’s attention and are created to make the audience want to see that movie. Bernard Dick explains the different techniques used by films in order to better interact the audience with certain techniques of the camera, including subjective camera, American montage, and contrast cuts.

Subjective Camera

Dick describes subjective camera as a “shot [that] represents what the character sees” (Dick 56). Subjective camera shots are basically the characters point of view, as if the camera lens was the characters eyes. It places the audience in the position of the character, allowing them to experience what the character is experiencing. Subjective camera shots are used throughout the entire film, The Blair Witch Project. The entire film is shown through the eyes of the characters within the film, mainly the three college students who hunt for the blair witch. They are the cameramen, what they see is what the audience sees. It adds suspense and fear because the subjective camera view allows the audience to believe that they are there with the characters and experiencing what the actors are. It makes the audience feel like they are part of the movie.

American Montage 

An American montage is a shot where “time is collapsed as shots blend together, wipe each other away, or are superimposed on each other” (Dick 68). American montages are used when the filmmakers want to show a period of time has passed. They are able to do this by adding a series of shots that go together and show a transition of time. One of the main uses for American montage shots is to show a transition of time where a character is training or preparing for a certain event. As seen in the new Karate Kid, Jaden Smith’s character is training for a Kung Fu competition and in order to cut back on time, the filmmakers created a montage to show his training and how it is improving over time. This allows the audience to get a sense that time is passing and the character is improving over this amount of time. The Karate Kid uses a montage to show the main character improving over time through a series of shots of his training.

Contrast Cut

Dick describes a contrast cut as “images replacing each other [that] are dissimilar in nature” (Dick 69). This is a cut to from one scene to another that is usually different from the original scene, but seems to be happening at the same time. Contrast cuts make the scene more dramatic and adds suspense, which helps thicken the plot. This technique allows the filmmakers to let the audience know things that the actors do not. As seen in A Nightmare on Elm Street, the scene continually changes from reality to the characters dreams in which Freddy Krueger is attempting to murder them. It is a dramatic transition and creates tension because the audience does not know if the character will wake up in time to escape. In this scene, contrast cuts are used to show the character in the warehouse while she is asleep, but the filmaker decides to also cut back to reality every once in awhile to show that the girl is still in reality, even though it seems as if the warehouse is the true reality.