Point of view shots, also called subjective camera or first-person camera,
let the director show us what a character or object is looking at.
Most often we get a shot of a character looking at something followed by a shot
showing the character's reaction. The technique is widely used much more than
we even register. In fact Jean-Luc Godard called it the most natural cut in cinema
So what makes a POV shot powerful rather than simply informative? And which
characters and genres can benefit from the use of subjective camera? To answer
these questions let's look at some iconic scenes that include POV shots.
Four types of point of view shots are especially useful and powerful -- not your
average POVs like in science fiction in action movies, POVs distorted by
drugs or illness, POVs of monsters pursuing victims and POVs of inanimate
objects which see everything but are helpless to change the narrative.
So let's see how point of view shots get all of this done. One of the most
noteworthy early uses of POV shots in cinema was in an action scene: a snowball
fight in Able Gance's 1927 film Napoleon.
Moving forward point of view shots have
continued to be a highly useful tool in action scenes
thanks to their obvious power for immersing the viewer in the action.
In the Amazing Spiderman we see Peter Parker learning to be spider-man both
from the third-person and first-person perspective.
The latter is giving us the exhilarating thrill of living in a super human skin
But point of view shots are useful for less aspirational characters as well.
In The Terminator, many of Arnold Schwarzenegger scenes are filmed from
the optical point of view of his t800 cyborg vision. This perspective reminds
us of the mechanical nature of the central character and reinforces his
lack of humanity and inability to feel empathy for his victims. Similarly in the
1987 movie Predator, optical POV was used again to show the heat vision the alien
predator uses to locate its victims. The POV shots allow the director to show
rather than tell us about their technologically enhanced vision. However
a little first-person camera goes a long way. 2015's Hardcore Henry was shot
exclusively from Henry's point of view making it feel more like a first-person
shooter game than a movie. The non-stop first-person action feels like a
90-minute roller coaster ride - fun at first, but after a while tiring and
nauseating.
[Well at least we know you're not death.]
Spiderman, Hardcore Henry, The
Terminator and Predator have perspectives that are dramatically far
removed from an average human point of view. In fact especially in the case of
the latter two we have so little in common with these characters that we
can't get an intuitive grasp of their nature from external observation alone.
Any character in an altered state of consciousness can be an interesting
candidate for POV shots as well. In Danny Boyle's cult movie Trainspotting the
protagonist Mark Renton escapes a treatment facility and immediately
overdoses on heroin at his dealer's house. As we experience the high through Mark's
eyes we see ourselves falling away into the carpet he's lying on.
Lou Reed's lyrics and the soundtrack seemed to speak to Mark's feeling
protected and comforted by heroine. By juxtaposing Mark's view with external
shots of his limp body being dragged to a taxi for the hospital
the director shows us the chasm separating Mark's own perception of his
drug use from our objective observation of his addiction. In Enter the Void
director Gaspar Noe also uses first person camera to show the protagonist
Oscar's drug use and hallucinations. But Oscars altered consciousness goes beyond
drugs to death itself. After Oscar's shot we follow his soul on an out-of-body
experience as it flies above the Tokyo streets and beyond. An example of
first-person perspective affected by physical illness can be found in the
Diving Bell and The Butterfly, an autobiographical film about locked-in
syndrome. The protagonist Jean Dominique is a man with full mental capacity
trapped inside a completely paralysed body.
Through the extreme close-ups of his doctor's face, the
muffled voices, and the sounds of his own breathing, we gain a glimpse into the
extreme claustrophobia the hero is experiencing. Here we also see how
subjective sound can strengthen the effect of a visual POV shot. As Jean
Dominique begins to realize that he can't even tell his doctor his
consciousness is intact, shots from his perspective seem to trap us with him in
a Kafka-esque waking nightmare.
While they can provide unique perspectives and
insights about characters, POV shots can also hide things from the audience. Most
importantly they can hide through whose eyes we're observing the scene. This is
the origin of Steven Spielberg's iconic POV shots in Jaws. The mechanical prop shark
Spielberg had to work with were so unconvincing that he couldn't afford to
show them up close, he conceived a clever series of underwater shots that
represented the shark's eye view as it circles to attack, which allowed him to
keep the scene suspenseful without actually showing the shark.
Counter-intuitively, watching the attack through the shark's eyes proved to be
more horrifying than actually seeing the shark itself. So necessity brought about
some of the most chilling shots in history. Similarly in the opening shot of
Halloween we observe the scene through the eyes of an anonymous intruder. Adding
an element of the unknown to a scene a pursuit by filming from the point of
view of the attacker magnifies the horror we feel while allowing the scene
to stay dynamic.
At the end of the scene, we realize that the intruder is Michael
Myers, but as a child this revelation adds a final jarring shock to the scene. And this
technique of giving the point of view of the attacker has become a staple of the
horror genre, confusing our loyalties as we're welcome to identify with the
hostile gaze, while also scaring us because we can't see who this villain is.
Another example of hiding information from the audience, though not in a horror or
pursuit genre, is the noir Dark Passage starring Humphrey Bogart.
Despite having Bogart's superbly marketable face to work with, the director Delmar Dave
shoots the first 37 minutes from Bogart's character's point of view,
frustrating the audience's desire to see the familiar and beloved actor. In that
time we see a picture of our character, but played by a different actor, pre-
plastic surgery. And the first time Dave's cuts out of POV we see Bogart
covered in bandages. Making us wait for the pleasure of seeing Bogart is a touch
of humor as well as daring. Meanwhile the point of view shots put us in an
immersive mystery. Right away we hear the escaped convict's clothes described
[Where'd you get them pants?]
[Flash. We interrupt this program to warn all listeners in the North
Bay Area be on lookout for a convict who escaped from San Quentin 15 minutes ago
last seen wearing gray prison trousers black shoes.]
And we look down at our own
clothing unable to really see ourselves. That is him. So we're placed in a
confusing and disorienting situation wondering who we are -- if we're a good or
a bad guy. And piecing together this puzzle of identity.
Finally the fourth
type of standout POV shot that we'll discuss is the inanimate POV meaning any
scene shot from the perspective of an object or immobilized person. Tarantino's
trademark trunk shots are a perfect example of this category.
The sudden blast of light and the unnaturally large figures of the captors
looming above, convey a feeling of complete unnatural powerlessness.
The same feeling is conveyed in The Diving Bell and The Butterfly through shots
from the paralyzed hero's perspective showing that POV shots can operate on
multiple levels. Breaking Bad and its successor, Better Call Saul, also feature
numerous inanimate POV shots, with cameras affixed to what feels like every single
object on set including a frying pan, dryer, shovel, and a Roomba vacuum.
One function of these shots is to spy on heroes when they're doing something
illicit, with mute objects their only witnesses. So we see multiple shots
of Walt hiding money in the air vent. But these inanimate POV shots are also
connected to the show's driving principle. As film critic Todd
Vanderwerff points out, Walter's choice to cook meth in the first episode is the
catalyst of an unbreakable chain of events, which will unfold no matter what
like a chemical reaction. The narrative arc in prequel, Better Call Saul, feels
even more inevitable since we already know how Saul and Mike end up in
Breaking Bad. As we see the characters struggle to become masters of their own
fates, we the viewers are painfully aware of how futile their efforts are.
This feeling of petrified powerlessness is echoed in the numerous inanimate POV
shots, which make the viewer feel like a mute witness, a fly on the wall, watching
something akin to a Greek tragedy play out. POV on its own can become gimmicky.
Working with only one perspective can limit the visual and narrative richness
of a story. So, often it's most powerful in conjunction with other techniques.
Say, with cuts away from first person, in dialogue scenes,
or reserved only for key moments. The shot tends to be most effective when it feels natural or
we barely notice we're shifting into the characters inner mind. But visualizing
perspective in unusual ways can be a riveting innovative use of film form and
the more removed the point of view is from our own the more fascinating it is.
Movies allow us windows into different perspectives and experiences so there's
no more fundamental cinematic pleasure than seeing through someone else's eyes