Percepción de los Maestros Guía por el servicio producido

Since cameras are usually located on the floor in numerical order, we can assume they’ll be lined up with camera 1 on the left, camera 2 in the middle, and camera 3 on the right (when looking from the perspective of the audience, not of the actors). Because the boy will be facing camera 3 as he enters from the upstage door, camera 3 is probably the best choice for our first shot. Once the girl comes into view, the shot will have to widen and become a “cross-two” (or over-the-shoulder) shot so she will be included in the frame (Figures 6.6 and 6.7).

In the early days of television, camera 2 might have been used to give us a wide establishing shot. It would have to be very wide as the scene started, and our cast would appear very small on the screen. There are three ways our boy can enter and speak: (1) he can speak and then cross (x) to the girl, (2) he can x while speaking, or (3) he can x and then speak. Deciding which way is best involves a funda- mental premise about handling blocking for the camera. By a process of elimination, the third choice will probably be the best choice. Here’s why. If we choose the first option, in which he speaks and then crosses, the cross becomes a “stage wait.” The audi- ence wants to know who he’s talking to and what’s going on. If you don’t supply the answers immedi- ately, the audience loses interest, unless there’s a very provocative first line. Furthermore, if the audi- ence waits, they’ll get to see the room as he crosses, and then they’ll come upon the back or profile of

the girl, who will now be in the foreground of cam- era 3’s shot. At this point, the audience will need a moment to register the fact that there is someone else in the room. They see it’s a girl, but now they want to know who she is. What is her relationship to the boy? Did he act threatening or loving? Is she an older woman? Is she his mother or his girlfriend? One picture does tell a lot, so these questions would be answered in a lot less time than it takes to read this. Since the boy has spoken already, we leave the audience no time to digest the information about the room or the girl because we need to cut to the front of the girl for her response. At best, everything will feel rushed.

Similar problems can arise in the second option, in which the boy crosses and speaks at the same time. In the third option, which is the best, the boy crosses, and the audience sees the room without a stage wait and without any other action happening. Meanwhile, they can wonder about the boy. Who is he? Where is he going? What will happen? Then the audience sees the girl and finally hears the question. By this time, we are ready for the next shot, and there is no sense of being rushed.

Now let us say we want to see the girl as she takes her line (Figure 6.8). Our cue to take the shot will be the end of the boy’s line. If we “take one,” which is shot #2, then we will be showing the girl when she speaks (see Pencil Exercise III). At the end of the boy’s speech (camera 3 was online), we can assume that the girl will react to the boy’s entrance. She would now be looking at the boy. Camera 3

Figure 6.7 The final framing for shot #1. The boy has arrived at the girl’s desk.

Figure 6.6 A part of shot #1. The boy is crossing to the girl; it’s evolving into a two shot.

has a shot that features the boy and therefore is the poorest choice if we want to see the girl. That leaves us a choice of either camera 2 or 1. The camera that sees her best and represents the boy’s point of view is camera 1, so we’ll use that. We would say, “Take one,” where “one” refers to camera 1.

The framing for the shot will be determined in part by the position of the boy next to the girl. We are obliged to use a cross two-shot, because the boy’s body would get in the way of all but a very tight close-up of the girl. Tight close-ups (shoulder or chin shots) are usually considered inappropriate so early in the scene, since nothing of great impor- tance has happened yet. The convention is that this kind of shot is saved until later in a scene, at a moment of high drama. Furthermore, the preceding

shot ended in a cross two-shot. To match that, and to maintain a neutral look at this early stage of the play, we would want to see the girl in the same cross two-shot. Therefore, shot #2 will happen immedi- ately after the boy’s line is finished. It will be on camera 1 and will be a cross two-shot.

The convention regarding framing for two-shots is that they are always assumed to be as tight as they can be without looking uncomfortable. Otherwise, the director will specify either a “one and a half,” which crops the downstage person in half, or a loose two-shot. If the scene calls for a very wide two-shot, the director would try to find some elements of the picture to use as a reference for the framing—for example, “Frame from the edge of the desk to the doorway.”

Figure 6.8 Shot #2. A cross two shot in which we see the girl across from the boy.

At this point there are a lot of options for the scene. Since this is just an exercise, we can play out a few of them. One of the “givens” is that we should probably feature the boy right after the girl says her first “Yes” on camera 1. Initially, one might think that it would be best to show a close-up of the boy at this time, but the camera that would do that is cam- era 3. The only thing that has happened since camera 3’s last shot is that the girl said “Yes.” Prior to that, camera 3 was left with a cross two-shot. It was origi- nally focused on the boy when he was across the room at the doorway. It held focus on the boy’s cross by widening. Widening made use of the greater depth of field inherent in a wide shot. If we now tried to use camera 3 to get a close-up of the boy, we’d prob- ably find that the camera operator didn’t have

sufficient time to refocus for that close-up. (See Pencil Exercise V for the notation to implement these decisions.) We could go to camera 3 for the same cross two-shot that it had, or we could go to camera 2. Camera 2 has a profile of the boy. I decided to use camera 2 in a flat (rather than a cross) two-shot, have the boy make a cross to the down left (camera left) bar, and then speak.

The shot starts as a two-shot (Figure 6.9), holds the framing on the boy at the knees, and loses the girl on the boy’s cross. I would be careful to make this two-shot a loose two-shot so it looked different from the cross two-shots from cameras 1 and 3 (see Pencil Exercise IV and Figures 6.7 6.10). This would also make holding the boy’s cross easier for camera 2’s operator.

Figure 6.10 The way shot #3 develops. Camera 2 is holding the boy, so this is a continuation of the same two shot. We are seeing it as it evolves into a single shot of the boy.

Figure 6.9 The initial framing for shot #3: a shot of the girl and the boy in a flat two shot, as seen from camera 2’s position.

Now that the boy is at the bar, we have to reac- quaint the audience with the geography of the room. The audience needs to know how far apart these two people are. Is he so far away that he cannot touch the girl? Is the girl close enough to the bar and the boy that one withering glance would stop him from getting

closer? What is their relationship to other objects in the room? Therefore, a two-shot is needed. She’s going to speak. She’s on the right of the set, relating to him on the left of the set. Camera 1 sees her best. It’s her camera in this instance, and it has a nice angled cross two-shot (Figure 6.11and Pencil Exercise V).

Figure 6.11 Shot #4. This cross shot to the girl comes from camera 1, which also shows the boy searching for his pencil at the bar.

It’s now time to bring the boy back to the girl. Essentially, we use the same convention that we used to bring him through the door in shot #1

(Figures 6.12 and 6.13). First mark his cross in pen- cil where it happens, and then mark the shot (see Pencil Exercise VI).

Figure 6.13 Shot #5 as it developed. The shot continues, and the boy arrives near the girl. It resembles the end of shot #1.

Figure 6.12 The initial framing for shot #5: the boy at the bar, as seen from camera 3.

Shot #6 could be a cross two-shot of the girl, a single of her, or a two-shot (see Pencil Exercise VII).

In reality, we probably have too many shots for this little scene, so to keep it simple, we’ll hold the flat two-shot until the end (Figure 6.14).

Figure 6.14 Shot #6, a flat two shot from camera 2. It’s wide enough for the audience to see the action at the end of the scene.

In my scenario the girl notices the pencil behind the boy’s ear right after she says her last “No” (see Pencil Exercise VIII). She reaches up and holds the pencil in front of his face. He, of course, looks and feels foolish (Figure 6.15).

Our shooting script must reflect that. The stron- gest elements that prompt a change of camera angle are the end of a sentence or a change in idea or action. Sometimes the director’s whim or emotional state may be the reason for a change in camera, but cutting to the word or deed that is happening on camera seems more helpful and appropriate. There- fore, we mark the girl’s action in our shooting script, which shows the audience a wide enough shot to indicate that some special action has taken place. The special action is her getting the pencil from behind the boy’s ear. We may not see the pencil yet, because it is so small in comparison to the rest of the screen. We also want to see the boy’s reaction to this turn of events, so we will use her action as a cue to cut to the last shot in the episode, which is a shoulder shot of the boy’s face with the pencil in the girl’s hand in the foreground.

The last mark on the script stands for “dis- solve.” The shorthand “dissolve blk” means dissolve to black.