Nice Shot: A Guide to Common Video Shot Types

Bill Davis
April 2000

Good shot selection for video, like golf, is fundamental for success. You may not be a video Tiger Woods, yet, but the more shots you add to your repertoire, the more interesting and effective your videos will be.
At the top of its arc, the silver head of the golf club sparkled in the morning sun. It swooped down, snapped the manicured grass and sent the white ball blasting off into the blue. The ball hung in the sky for what seemed an eternity until gravity finally took over. The white dot hit the green turf of the distant fairway and bounced along the clipped grass, past the hole, down the bank and into the hazard. Splash! Too much club.

When I learned to play golf, the really good players seemed to be obsessed with careful club selection. The key, as I soon learned, is to select just the right club to put just the right amount of loft on the ball to deliver it just where it should go. Each club in the golfer's bag has a purpose. The driver gives the golfer great distance off the tee. The sand wedge provides a great deal of loft, to get the golfer out of a hazard, but does not provide much distance. The putter is used when the ball is on the green, providing a great deal of control over direction without any loft at all. I don't get much time on the golf course these days, but the phrase "good shot selection" has stuck with me. And I've learned that the same simple phrase is even more applicable for creating good video. Selecting the right framing for a video shot is like selecting the right club for a golf shot. While this article won't help your golf game, it will help you understand and apply the various types of shots commonly used in making video.

A shot is the basic building block of every video. Point your camcorder at something, press record, then press stop and you have a shot. It seems simple enough on the surface, but there's more to it than that. Every time you choose one type of shot over another, you're communicating with your audience. Shot selection is extremely important for telling stories well with video. And like selecting the right golf club, video shot selection is a craft that requires planning and practice.
As we look at the variety of clubs in your video bag, we'll use the simple static shot as our reference. In a static shot, the size, the framing and the angle of the shot remain constant throughout. Of course, your camcorder doesn't limit you to static shots. It allows you to zoom, essentially combining several clubs at a time. The static shot, however, will allow us to demonstrate the impact of each "club" on it's own.
Even though they're referred to as static, static shots can be anything but boring. A well-composed static shot is the clearest communicator in your shot inventory. It allows the audience to absorb a scene without distraction. And it can speak volumes to the viewer if you know how to use it well.

Video shots are traditionally divided into five categories: extreme wide shots (XWS), wide shots (WS), medium shots (MS), closeups (CU) and extreme closeups (XCU). One of the fundamental skills of good video storytelling involves knowing what each shot type communicates to the viewer, and choosing the right shots in the right order to communicate your message effectively.

The extreme wide shot, or establishing shot, sets the context for the shots that will follow. The extreme wide shot is usually just a few seconds long, shown at the beginning of a scene and is not used again until the story moves to a new location. While extreme wide shots reveal little detail, they are essential to let the viewer know where a scene takes place. Assume that a scene shows a couple enjoying a candle-lit dinner in a dimly-lit dining room. A series of shots reveals their conversation and tells their story. But where are they? In actuality, the scene was shot on a set in a studio, but add an establishing shot and the pair could be dining in a cabin in the mountains, a suburban home or a big city high rise. Without the establishing shot the viewer doesn't know. The magic of the extreme wide shot is that it allows the producer to create a false reality with a single shot.

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