Hey, let's learn a little lesson about motivated camera movement.
Whenever you move your camera in a shot,
the camera should move for a certain reason.
If there's something in the shot that triggers the camera to move
tracking along with a subject that's considered to be motivated movement.
whereas if the camera moves on its own,
when nothing in the shot is being followed,
that's called unmotivated movement.
Either way, can be just fine, but it's a creative decision
that's important to take into account before you shoot.
Today, I'm just going to do a few demonstrations
of motivated versus unmotivated movement
and then a little bit of mixing up of the two
and we'll see how they come out.
Quick gear breakdown here we've got the Sony A7S3 camera,
35mm Sony FE F1.8 lens on it,
I have a Hoya variable ND filter
with a UURig 77mm swing attachment thingy
that lets me flip the ND up when I don't need it
and flip it back down when I do so that's really handy.
DJI RS 2 gimbal
and this is the Sony vloggers handle.
I'm not sure exactly what it's called.
Alright, let's go ahead and get started.
Let's start it off with a shot
where the camera's movement is purely motivated.
The camera only moves when Kobe moves.
The goal of this movement is to be invisible to the audience.
It just keeps us focused on the character in the scene.
Here's my POV, the gimbal's in all lock mode,
and I'm just tracking laterally with her as she walks.
Then when she sits I squat down to stay at her eye level.
No unnecessary panning or tilting.
In this next shot,
I'm going to use a few different tricks to motivate the movement.
So let's just watch it through and then I'll do a breakdown.
So at the beginning of the shot,
Kobe's going to be sitting here reading this book,
and the camera will slowly be pulling back.
And the camera's pullback will eventually be motivated by Kobe
looking over here and seeing this hat that she wants to try on.
So in other words, the reason the camera's moving is
because it's anticipating Kobe noticing this hat,
and it's creating room in the frame, it's bringing the hat into the frame,
so that when she reaches for it,
the hat's already there in the shot.
So the value of using the motivated movement here is that
I can capture Kobe picking up the hat,
and then walking to the next room,
all within one shot, because by the time she notices the hat,
it's already in the frame.
So when she picks it up,
I don't have to cut to separate out of the hat,
just to show her picking it up.
The second motivation for the camera movement here
is going to be Kobe walking,
so she's going to get up from her chair,
she's going to walk up toward the store walk out of the room
and into the next room and she'll continue walking to that mirror there.
The final piece of motivation for this shot
is going to be Kobe looking in the mirror.
And again, we're going to be following her eye line
and also her physical movement.
So Kobe is going to turn toward the mirror and lean in.
And when she leans in,
the camera is going to pan over to show her reflection in the mirror.
The reason why this movement will feel natural in the shot is
because Kobe is giving us a reason to do it
by leaning in toward the mirror and by looking at her reflection.
If Kobe was just standing back and not really looking in the mirror,
that would be an unmotivated movement.
In other words, there would be no reason
within the frame for the camera to do what it did.
That's not necessarily a bad thing.
There might be certain narrative reasons why you would want to do that.
But usually, it looks more natural if the movement is motivated.
Now I'm going to show you some examples of unmotivated camera movement.
In other words, these are shots
where the movement of the camera is not dictated
by what's happening in the shot itself.
The camera is moving on its own volition.
Unmotivated camera movement is not necessarily a bad thing.
They do it all the time in movies and TV shows,
and I do it in my own videos a lot.
It can add a dynamic energy to otherwise static shots.
So you don't need to avoid unmotivated camera movement
because remember, if nothing's moving in your shot,
you're not making a movie, you're shooting a photograph.
So something should move.
The danger with unmotivated camera movement is that
it's much more likely to be distracting to your audience,
and maybe even a bit annoying,
because the movement doesn't necessarily have to be happening.
So if the audience doesn't feel like
the movement has a good reason to be there,
they start subconsciously picking up on it
and it detracts from their enjoyment of the scene,
because they're thinking about the camera's movement
instead of what's going on in the shot itself.
So make sure that when you do unmotivated camera movement,
you do it in a way that doesn't detract from the power of the show itself.
You can mix and match motivated and unmotivated movement
within the shot for creative effect.
The lateral movement at the beginning of this shot is unmotivated,
but it helps to establish the location for the audience.
Then once Kobe starts walking, the movement becomes motivated
because we're following her as she walks.
But while she's drinking the camera is pushed toward her,
is again unmotivated purely for dramatic effect.
The shot starts off with an unmotivated pullback from a coffee shop,
then becomes motivated when my actor steps into frame
and continues to track his movement.
I designed this shot so that I wouldn't need to pan or tilt
which makes the camera move look cleaner.
Here's the camera movement that's not motivated in the typical way.
In this shot, the camera notices something that the character left behind.
So the movement is motivated purely by the story.
So that tilt down and rack focus are technically unmotivated
because there's nothing in the shot that's motivating that to happen.
But this camera is giving us a bit of dramatic irony here,
which is where the audience knows more than the character does.
So in this case, we the audience are finding out
that Kobe left her purse behind and Kobe hasn't realized it yet.
In order to rack focus for this shot, I connected this cable to the gimbal.
This is a USB cable that allows me to use
the PC remote function of my A7S3
to let the focus be controlled from the gimbal here with this wheel.
So to wrap things up, you basically have four types of camera movement,
motivated movement, unmotivated movement,
partially motivated movement, and no movement at all.
There's no right or wrong way to do things.
But as a general rule,
the less motivated your camera movement is
the more noticeable and potentially distracting it will be to your audience.
So you have to ask yourself,
how much do I want my audience to notice the camera move?
Does this movement actually help me tell the story?
And from there, you can fine tune your camera move
so it has exactly the effect that you want.
So thanks so much for watching.
Please click like, subscribe, and I will see you next time.