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The Master Guide / 08 Cinematography · Camera and lens

The camera law in every prompt

The film's camera personality, condensed into one clause and copied unchanged into every CAMERA block.

The film's camera personality, condensed into one clause and copied unchanged into every CAMERA block.

The camera law [proven] is written in the treatment. It names:

  • observer or participant;

  • what triggers a move;

  • the support and its feel;

  • the speed register;

  • the lens range by distance, in fields of view;

  • what this camera doesn't do.

The lens family (anamorphic or spherical) is not part of it: that goes in the look line (see Light and look → The capture in the look line). How to write the law: Writing the treatment → The camera sheet.

Condense it into one clause and copy it unchanged into every CAMERA block of that world. A film with two worlds has two laws, one per world. The law never makes a lock or a breathing frame the film's habit: a still camera stays an exception the plan names for one shot (see Camera and lens → Named locks and breathing frames). For example, written for this guide:

Camera law: it watches the family from outside and never joins them; a decision in the room sets off each main move; it rides a heavy dolly that takes a beat to start and to stop; its moves are unhurried but clearly travelling while the house is calm, and quicker as tempers rise; close on 47–63° inside the house, far on 18–29° on the street; it never looks down on anyone.

Build it from what the treatment decided. A generic law ("cinematic, dynamic") adds nothing. No camera, lens or director names: describe what the camera does.

Why: the cinematographers behind the reference films keep one camera personality per film, two independent festival films on Seedance 2.5 set a film-wide camera rule the same way, and Higgsfield's The Trigger gives each of its two worlds its own.

The capture (who or what is filming each scene) goes in STYLE, not CAMERA: see Light and look → The capture in the look line.

Linus Sandgren, on La La Land: the camera "needed a consistent personality".

Sources

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