Moving Performances (page 2)

It's All in the Eyes

Eye movement is very important for a realistic appearance. For interviews, arrange camera and participants so that the subject looks about 15 degrees off-camera when relating to the interviewer. Watch out for subjects who want to turn sometimes to address the camera. The only people who naturally look right into the camera are politicians! Keep the eye look (i.e., the direction the eyes are looking, or eye line) firmly on the interviewer.

Eye looks are different when two or more on-screen subjects relate to each other. In moving from wide shots to closeups, make sure that the subject's eye direction matches. It's all too easy to end up with shots that won't cut together smoothly because the eye looks are inconsistent.

Instead of talking to another performer, the subject may be reading cue cards, so place them where the second person would be. When using a laptop or a PDA as a prompter, try to place it just over or under the lens instead of to one side. For some reason, slightly too-high or too-low looks are harder for viewers to spot.

To keep speaking to a dead camera looks amateurish. On multi-camera shoots, the pros use peripheral vision to spot the glowing tally light that shows a different camera is now live. If you don't have that tally light option, a floor director can make a sweeping arc to the next camera, as directed by the director. The talent's eyes will follow the arc. To make a smooth shift to looking at the new camera, subjects should turn their eyes just ahead of their heads and bodies. If they turn the head and eyes at the same movement, it looks wooden and staged. The eye shift also alerts the camera operator about the intended movement.

When all's said and done, the key to natural looking screen movement is subject relaxation. Useful as these tips and techniques may be, they won't work well with performers too uptight to employ them. But getting your subject to relax is a completely different article!

Jim Stinson is the author of the book Video Communication and Production…