Master Shots Vol. 3 is available from Michael Wiese Productions. Kenworthy's film, The Sculptor's Ritual, is available at iTunes.
Dave Watson: First of all, congratulations on the book and the third volume. Why a third volume of Master Shots?
Christopher Kenworthy: I didn’t want to do a third book unless there was a real need. I found that Master Shots 1 was really useful for people to dip into and get a shot they needed. Master Shots 2 was specifically about dialogue, because dialogue scenes are an opportunity that’s often wasted by directors. For Master Shots 3 I wanted to create a book for the advanced director, but the strange thing is, I also wanted it to be useful for beginners. So I created a book that isn’t just a collection of shots, but one that gets to the core of how a director makes a scene work. The way you set up and shoot the scene has a huge effect on the drama and meaning of the scene. This book shows the most basic choices, and how to combine them to create complex and stunning scenes. It gives directors more options than just shooting coverage and hoping they can fix it in the edit.
DW: How can Master Shots Vol. 3 be used as an ebook? What does this indicate for the future of filmmaking?
CK: We tried to do something inventive when it came to ebooks. All three Master Shots books are available as standard Kindle ebooks, but we also made interactive ebooks for the iPad. These contains video and audio to actually show you the shots in action. Many people wanted to see the shots, rather than just look at images, and the interactive ebooks gave them that. We didn’t convert every Masters Shots volume, but took the best shots from all three books, to make ebooks that cover Action, Suspense and Story. I think that filmmaking will be taught this way, over the following years. Classrooms are going to be transformed by books like these, because they’re the fastest way to make a point, visually.
View all three editions of view Master Shots
DW: Regarding master shots, filmmaking and visual narrative has gotten so diverse, do you see master shots used in different ways compared to, say thirty years ago? I choose that era as many point to the eighties as a time when movies became mass market.
CK: I use the term ‘master shot’ quite loosely. Once upon a time, the master shot really was the big wide master that you shot first. Then you shot mediums and close-ups. In editing, you still see this pattern – a wide shot to introduce the scene and then close-ups. When I talk about Master Shots, I’m trying to show the relationship between actors, camera and they space they are moving in. The way an actor moves in relation to the camera, or to the space they are in, dictates the mood and style of the scene.
In the eighties it was still quite difficult to move the camera, and so many movies from that era were quite stationary. Spielberg was the director who got the camera moving, so that there was a constant dance between actors and camera. Even if you don’t like his movies, you can’t deny that they get a reaction from the audience, and that is because he is the master of directing attention through camera moves. During the next two decades everybody else got to grips with this. There was a spell where everything was handheld, and people were flying camera on the biggest cranes and wires they could. Out of all this came a lot of learning. Directors now know that camera moves alone don’t create intensity. The skill is to choose the right move for the right moment. Some of the best shots are nothing more than three people standing still in front of the camera. The best directors have the discipline to know when to use dynamic shots, and when to settle on the actors’ performance.
DW: How are master shots used besides setting up or introducing a scene?
CK: There are so many shots across the three books that I’ve tried to cover just about every technique you could need, for any part of any scene. Ideally, when you’ve read all three books, you will have developed a new way of seeing. You will understand how these moves work, and you will be able to create your own. I know that a lot of people take the books to set, and just pick out the moves they need. But one of the most satisfying moments is when you shoot a scene, and you understand the meaning of movement and space so well that the required move is immediately obvious. I’ve followed the work of filmmakers who’ve used my books and seen this in action. It’s wonderful to see that an average director can develop real style.
DW: You discuss different types of master shots, from the “Pan Motion,” which seems increasingly common, to “Blended Moves” to “Tilt Reveal.” How long were you watching films before these different types revealed themselves?
CK: A story I often tell is that when I was very young I stumbled across an island that was used in a film called Swallows and Amazons. I’d seen the film just the week before, so I recognized the island, but couldn’t understand how it looked so different to what I’d seen in the film. Of course, it looked different because the way you frame, the lens you use, the way you angle the camera and position the actors – it all transforms an ordinary place into something magical. So I started analyzing shots when I was a kid and never stopped. If I liked a film I would go and see it seven times or more at the cinema to work out what was going on. When VHS and DVD came along, it became easier. So I’ve been interested in the way shots work for at least 35 years.
DW: Different lenses are used for these. Why? Is it all relative to the story or the look of a film?
CK: Lens choice is the key to getting the look you want. Even if you’re using one zoom lens on a DSLR, you can set it wide or long, and the difference between those two settings is enormous. When you use a short (or wide) lens, you don’t just see more space, but you affect the speed that things move in the scene, as well as the apparent distance between people and things. A long lens introduces more background blurring, and slows movement, as well as pulling things and people closer together.
Imagine shooting an argument with a short lens. The motions through the room will seem fast, the space between the actors will seem large, but they will feel distant. Shoot the exact same scene from the exact same angle with a long lens, and the characters will feel closer to each other, more intimately connected, but isolated from their surroundings. It takes some time to get your head around this, but lens choice gives you control over how the scene will play out emotionally.
DW: Chapter Seven, “Dynamic Action,” shows how action can be used in a master. Why would filmmakers choose this?
CK: Action doesn’t always mean a fight or a chase. It means extreme motion. When you combine an actor’s rapid motion, with a change in the camera’s position, it ramps up the drama. If you look at the shots in that chapter, and imagine shooting them without a camera move, the drama would be diminished to almost nothing.
Directing isn’t about documenting what happens on set. It’s about the camera being an essential part of the scene’s emotion. Dynamic Action works fantastically for fights and action scenes, but can be used just as well in a romance.
DW: What filmmakers use master shots the best these days?
CK: This is probably the most difficult question, because I think in the past couple of years, many film directors have gone over the top with movement. That last Superman movie, for example, just looked like a mass of things moving around, and I felt no connection. It was like a video game. But you can’t go past directors such as Cuarón, Spielberg, Tarantino, J.J. Abrams, Scorsese and sometimes Ridley Scott.
DW: Do you see master shots used differently in TV, where many consider cutting edge filmmaking to be happening now, than feature films?
CK: TV is doing a better job than film, in my opinion, because there’s time to watch an actor’s performance. With film, there’s so little time to hit all the beats and get the popcorn down before they usher in another audience, that films feel a bit thin. Not always, but often. With TV, directors are working fast, but their focus is on storytelling rather than crafting a blockbuster. An episode of Game of Thrones might use a lot of fairly-standard shots, but there will be some moves and masters in there that really hook onto the drama. Watch those great scenes, and you can see they didn’t just shoot coverage. They put in some great moves and setups.
Arrow does an even better job of this, because I think they encourage their directors to push the limits. The fight scenes in Arrow are better than anything else on TV. Some of the emotional scenes are also done well. What they excel at, though, are the tension-building scenes. I watched an episode recently where there was a constant build-up of tension, and every single shot seemed to be out of the Master Shots books. I’ve no idea whether the director uses my books, but it shows that the essential language of film is something that can be learned. And it works beautifully on TV.
DW: Have any master shots over the years stood out to you and are particularly memorable? Why?
CK: There are too many to list, and I prefer to think of powerful scenes that are comprised of many superb shots. The opening scene of Inglorious Basterds, in the cottage, is stunning. Lots of sequences in Hanna had me shaking my head in admiration. Children of Men and Gravity didn’t have a bad shot in them, and everything worked to tell the story. Most recently, I think The Grand Budapest Hotel got the moves just right (eve though it felt like they were all copied from a Jeunet film). And sometimes, relatively average directors can do some great work. Cameron Crowe is not great, in my view, but the work he did on Almost Famous was, at times, beyond belief. Perfect camera moves for every scene.
DW: Hitchcock once said, “The one thing that the student has got to do is to learn that there is a rectangle up there - a white rectangle in a theater - and it has to be filled.” Is this particularly important with master shots?
CK: It’s important to capture the audience on an emotional level. The danger is that people interpret that quote to mean you have to film the frame with strong visuals at any cost. The strong visuals must arise from the storytelling, otherwise you’re nothing more than a confectioner.
DW: What’s next for you?
CK: I might shoot a low-budget feature later in the year. And there may be more books on the way. I’m writing a couple of novels. It’s so much easier to describe a scene than to shoot one. It’s a bit of luxury for me to get back into novel writing after a fifteen-year break.
DW: What is the most memorable cinematic moment for you?
CK: Back in 1998 there was a Norwegian film called Only Clouds Move The Stars. There’s a moment in that where the little girl breaks down crying, just as her lost friend reappears. It’s perfect because the sound design, the music, the acting, the script and the camera were all doing their job as well as could be done. The emotion was high and it felt ever so slightly like a dream. Good filmmaking is the most potent when there’s a slight sensation of dream. When we remember or when we imagine, we give our images the feeling of a dream. The best filmmakers do the same. Thankfully, there are hundreds of moments that are close to this, in hundreds of films and TV shows. That’s why we keep watching and why we keep working.
Clip: Only Clouds Move the Stars
Dave Watson is an educator, writer, and editor of the web site, Movies Matter. He lives in Madison, WI.
Dave Watson: First of all, congratulations on the book and the third volume. Why a third volume of Master Shots?
Christopher Kenworthy: I didn’t want to do a third book unless there was a real need. I found that Master Shots 1 was really useful for people to dip into and get a shot they needed. Master Shots 2 was specifically about dialogue, because dialogue scenes are an opportunity that’s often wasted by directors. For Master Shots 3 I wanted to create a book for the advanced director, but the strange thing is, I also wanted it to be useful for beginners. So I created a book that isn’t just a collection of shots, but one that gets to the core of how a director makes a scene work. The way you set up and shoot the scene has a huge effect on the drama and meaning of the scene. This book shows the most basic choices, and how to combine them to create complex and stunning scenes. It gives directors more options than just shooting coverage and hoping they can fix it in the edit.
DW: How can Master Shots Vol. 3 be used as an ebook? What does this indicate for the future of filmmaking?
CK: We tried to do something inventive when it came to ebooks. All three Master Shots books are available as standard Kindle ebooks, but we also made interactive ebooks for the iPad. These contains video and audio to actually show you the shots in action. Many people wanted to see the shots, rather than just look at images, and the interactive ebooks gave them that. We didn’t convert every Masters Shots volume, but took the best shots from all three books, to make ebooks that cover Action, Suspense and Story. I think that filmmaking will be taught this way, over the following years. Classrooms are going to be transformed by books like these, because they’re the fastest way to make a point, visually.
View all three editions of view Master Shots
DW: Regarding master shots, filmmaking and visual narrative has gotten so diverse, do you see master shots used in different ways compared to, say thirty years ago? I choose that era as many point to the eighties as a time when movies became mass market.
CK: I use the term ‘master shot’ quite loosely. Once upon a time, the master shot really was the big wide master that you shot first. Then you shot mediums and close-ups. In editing, you still see this pattern – a wide shot to introduce the scene and then close-ups. When I talk about Master Shots, I’m trying to show the relationship between actors, camera and they space they are moving in. The way an actor moves in relation to the camera, or to the space they are in, dictates the mood and style of the scene.
In the eighties it was still quite difficult to move the camera, and so many movies from that era were quite stationary. Spielberg was the director who got the camera moving, so that there was a constant dance between actors and camera. Even if you don’t like his movies, you can’t deny that they get a reaction from the audience, and that is because he is the master of directing attention through camera moves. During the next two decades everybody else got to grips with this. There was a spell where everything was handheld, and people were flying camera on the biggest cranes and wires they could. Out of all this came a lot of learning. Directors now know that camera moves alone don’t create intensity. The skill is to choose the right move for the right moment. Some of the best shots are nothing more than three people standing still in front of the camera. The best directors have the discipline to know when to use dynamic shots, and when to settle on the actors’ performance.
DW: How are master shots used besides setting up or introducing a scene?
CK: There are so many shots across the three books that I’ve tried to cover just about every technique you could need, for any part of any scene. Ideally, when you’ve read all three books, you will have developed a new way of seeing. You will understand how these moves work, and you will be able to create your own. I know that a lot of people take the books to set, and just pick out the moves they need. But one of the most satisfying moments is when you shoot a scene, and you understand the meaning of movement and space so well that the required move is immediately obvious. I’ve followed the work of filmmakers who’ve used my books and seen this in action. It’s wonderful to see that an average director can develop real style.
DW: You discuss different types of master shots, from the “Pan Motion,” which seems increasingly common, to “Blended Moves” to “Tilt Reveal.” How long were you watching films before these different types revealed themselves?
CK: A story I often tell is that when I was very young I stumbled across an island that was used in a film called Swallows and Amazons. I’d seen the film just the week before, so I recognized the island, but couldn’t understand how it looked so different to what I’d seen in the film. Of course, it looked different because the way you frame, the lens you use, the way you angle the camera and position the actors – it all transforms an ordinary place into something magical. So I started analyzing shots when I was a kid and never stopped. If I liked a film I would go and see it seven times or more at the cinema to work out what was going on. When VHS and DVD came along, it became easier. So I’ve been interested in the way shots work for at least 35 years.
DW: Different lenses are used for these. Why? Is it all relative to the story or the look of a film?
CK: Lens choice is the key to getting the look you want. Even if you’re using one zoom lens on a DSLR, you can set it wide or long, and the difference between those two settings is enormous. When you use a short (or wide) lens, you don’t just see more space, but you affect the speed that things move in the scene, as well as the apparent distance between people and things. A long lens introduces more background blurring, and slows movement, as well as pulling things and people closer together.
Imagine shooting an argument with a short lens. The motions through the room will seem fast, the space between the actors will seem large, but they will feel distant. Shoot the exact same scene from the exact same angle with a long lens, and the characters will feel closer to each other, more intimately connected, but isolated from their surroundings. It takes some time to get your head around this, but lens choice gives you control over how the scene will play out emotionally.
DW: Chapter Seven, “Dynamic Action,” shows how action can be used in a master. Why would filmmakers choose this?
CK: Action doesn’t always mean a fight or a chase. It means extreme motion. When you combine an actor’s rapid motion, with a change in the camera’s position, it ramps up the drama. If you look at the shots in that chapter, and imagine shooting them without a camera move, the drama would be diminished to almost nothing.
Directing isn’t about documenting what happens on set. It’s about the camera being an essential part of the scene’s emotion. Dynamic Action works fantastically for fights and action scenes, but can be used just as well in a romance.
DW: What filmmakers use master shots the best these days?
CK: This is probably the most difficult question, because I think in the past couple of years, many film directors have gone over the top with movement. That last Superman movie, for example, just looked like a mass of things moving around, and I felt no connection. It was like a video game. But you can’t go past directors such as Cuarón, Spielberg, Tarantino, J.J. Abrams, Scorsese and sometimes Ridley Scott.
DW: Do you see master shots used differently in TV, where many consider cutting edge filmmaking to be happening now, than feature films?
CK: TV is doing a better job than film, in my opinion, because there’s time to watch an actor’s performance. With film, there’s so little time to hit all the beats and get the popcorn down before they usher in another audience, that films feel a bit thin. Not always, but often. With TV, directors are working fast, but their focus is on storytelling rather than crafting a blockbuster. An episode of Game of Thrones might use a lot of fairly-standard shots, but there will be some moves and masters in there that really hook onto the drama. Watch those great scenes, and you can see they didn’t just shoot coverage. They put in some great moves and setups.
Arrow does an even better job of this, because I think they encourage their directors to push the limits. The fight scenes in Arrow are better than anything else on TV. Some of the emotional scenes are also done well. What they excel at, though, are the tension-building scenes. I watched an episode recently where there was a constant build-up of tension, and every single shot seemed to be out of the Master Shots books. I’ve no idea whether the director uses my books, but it shows that the essential language of film is something that can be learned. And it works beautifully on TV.
DW: Have any master shots over the years stood out to you and are particularly memorable? Why?
CK: There are too many to list, and I prefer to think of powerful scenes that are comprised of many superb shots. The opening scene of Inglorious Basterds, in the cottage, is stunning. Lots of sequences in Hanna had me shaking my head in admiration. Children of Men and Gravity didn’t have a bad shot in them, and everything worked to tell the story. Most recently, I think The Grand Budapest Hotel got the moves just right (eve though it felt like they were all copied from a Jeunet film). And sometimes, relatively average directors can do some great work. Cameron Crowe is not great, in my view, but the work he did on Almost Famous was, at times, beyond belief. Perfect camera moves for every scene.
DW: Hitchcock once said, “The one thing that the student has got to do is to learn that there is a rectangle up there - a white rectangle in a theater - and it has to be filled.” Is this particularly important with master shots?
CK: It’s important to capture the audience on an emotional level. The danger is that people interpret that quote to mean you have to film the frame with strong visuals at any cost. The strong visuals must arise from the storytelling, otherwise you’re nothing more than a confectioner.
DW: What’s next for you?
CK: I might shoot a low-budget feature later in the year. And there may be more books on the way. I’m writing a couple of novels. It’s so much easier to describe a scene than to shoot one. It’s a bit of luxury for me to get back into novel writing after a fifteen-year break.
DW: What is the most memorable cinematic moment for you?
CK: Back in 1998 there was a Norwegian film called Only Clouds Move The Stars. There’s a moment in that where the little girl breaks down crying, just as her lost friend reappears. It’s perfect because the sound design, the music, the acting, the script and the camera were all doing their job as well as could be done. The emotion was high and it felt ever so slightly like a dream. Good filmmaking is the most potent when there’s a slight sensation of dream. When we remember or when we imagine, we give our images the feeling of a dream. The best filmmakers do the same. Thankfully, there are hundreds of moments that are close to this, in hundreds of films and TV shows. That’s why we keep watching and why we keep working.
Clip: Only Clouds Move the Stars
Dave Watson is an educator, writer, and editor of the web site, Movies Matter. He lives in Madison, WI.
