The Down-shot

In cinematography--the art of filming and framing for film--one of the most effective ways to create isolation, or just to establish a whole lot of an environment, is to view the scene from high in the air. Perhaps one of the most famous examples of this is from the classic western film High Noon. I recently saw this movie for the first time (finally) and noted that the famous shot had so much weight because the film built suspense incredibly well.

Joseph Mascelli talks about how to use this idea to its fullest extent in his book The 5 C's of Cinematography: "Very high and very low angles will present the most drastic effects, and should be utilized only when highly dramatic results are required. More subtle angling should be employed as a matter of course on every possible type of shot...Players should be positioned so that they present a three-quarter view to the camera, and travel in diagonal lines, whenever feasible. Furniture and other props should be cheated, if necessary, so that they are turned at an angle to the lens. The background should be filmed at an angle, rather than flat on, to produce diminishing compositional lines." (Mascelli, 45)

A slightly more contemporary example might be from Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. I think my favorite aspect of this is that Bruce (center) is still painfully lonely, even though his friend and butler Alfred is there with him. Alfred, though, fades to the background because of his position in the scene (amidst the rocks and trees), and the giant crack in the rock directs the eye straight to Bruce.

My mimicry of this principle is for a design sketch for a panel in a project I'm working on. My focus was using the contrast created by shadows to keep the attention on the character in the center.