Hey guys,
I love the video below. Longtime friend of this blogger and former film critic for The New York Times, Matt Zoller Seitz, put together a montage called “Following” for The L Magazine that celebrates the Follow Shot, which I also love dearly. He wrote:
"Following" is a montage of clips illustrating one of my favorite types of shots: one where the camera physically follows a character through his or her environment. I love this shot because it's neither first-person nor third; it makes you aware of a character's presence within the movie's physical world while also forcing identification with the character. I also love the sensation of momentum that following shots invariably summon. Because the camera is so close to the character(s) being followed, we feel that we're physically attached to those characters, as if by an invisible guide wire, being towed through their world, sometimes keeping pace, other times losing them as they weave through hallways, down staircases or through smoke or fog...
You can read the rest here in which he describes briefly the history and influences of the Follow Shot. In fact, I’d say that’s one of my favorite aspects of Kubrick and Scorsese films. It’s a way of marrying the characters to their environment and saying, “Hey, look, these characters are products of their environment” or “They are being horribly affected by their environment.” So how does one describe a Follow Shot in a script? You write about the character walking from room to room with the use of Secondary Headings.
So here’s the vid. Hope you enjoy it.
-MM
