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The Master Guide / 08 Cinematography · Light and look

The capture in the look line

Who or what is filming each scene, written as what that camera does to the picture; and the film's lens family, only when the whole film has one.

Who or what is filming each scene, written as what that camera does to the picture; and the film's lens family, only when the whole film has one.

Each scene's capture goes in STYLE as visible results [proven]. The capture is who or what is filming:

  • a cinema camera with a crew;

  • a documentary operator on foot;

  • the character's own phone;

  • a fixed device such as a dashcam;

  • a device from another era.

Write what it does to the picture:

  • blur and cadence (see Video with Seedance → Physics);

  • how exposure and white balance behave;

  • how focus behaves;

  • the framing habit;

  • grain or noise (the finishing grain's strength is set per capture; the prompt carries none);

  • the room sound the AUDIO block asks for.

A capture never leaks into another. A change of capture is a hard cut. A documentary capture is written as behaviour (observing from outside the circle, following the actor) more than as shake. A phone capture follows the platforms' guidance, native rather than over-polished, and the phone is never visible.

Build it from what the treatment decided; a generic line adds nothing. The camera law goes in CAMERA, not here (see Camera and lens → The camera law in every prompt).

The lens family only (decided). Where the treatment sets one lens family for the whole film, anamorphic or spherical (the lens's optical family; not the lens range by distance that the camera law gives), the look line names it by its visible result:

  • anamorphic: oval highlights, a horizontal streak of flare;

  • spherical: round highlights, clean edges.

The same family is baked into that film's location plates, with no heavy blur (see Photoreal anchors (Nano Banana Pro) → Location plates). Otherwise lens character stays a visible result in OPTICS, and the plates stay neutral.

Sources

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