Chapter 3: Television
Television arrived in India quietly. In 1959, an experimental service began from a small studio in Delhi, transmitting to a handful of receivers for a few hours each week. Much of the early audience did not own a set at all; people gathered around community receivers placed in schools and neighbourhood clubs and watched together. The equipment was modest, the studio was cramped, and the programmes were mostly instructional.
Even then, somebody had to make a decision that nobody in the audience could see. Where does the camera stand? How high? Does it look at the speaker straight on, or from slightly above? Does it hold still, or turn slowly across the room? Every one of those choices reached the viewer as a feeling rather than as a fact — that the speaker was trustworthy, that the room was large, that something was about to happen.
Regular daily broadcasting followed in the mid-1960s. Colour came around the time of the Asian Games held in Delhi in 1982, and with it came outside broadcast vans, cranes, long lenses and many cameras cutting between one another. The scale changed enormously. The basic decision did not. Where you put the camera is still where the meaning begins.
Diagram
Fig. 3.0-1 – a generic 1960s-style television receiver on a wooden stand with a small crowd of non-identifiable figures seated around it in a courtyard; beside it, a studio camera on a heavy tripod facing a seated announcer; label the receiver, the community audience, the camera position and the announcer’s eye line
This chapter will answer each of these questions.
3.1 Advertising for Television
3.1.1 What Television Advertising Is
You have seen a thousand of them. A break in a serial, a break between overs, a break before the news headlines — and in that gap, thirty seconds of something made with enormous care to persuade you of one small thing.
An advertisement is a paid, publicly identifiable message placed by a sponsor to inform an audience about a product, service or idea, and usually to persuade them to act on it. Three parts of that sentence matter. It is paid for. Its sponsor can be identified. And it wants something from you.
Television advertising is that message built for a screen that carries picture, sound and motion at once, broadcast to an audience that is watching something else and has agreed to sit through the break. That last condition shapes everything. The advertisement is an interruption, and it has to earn the seconds it takes.
Because television reaches many people at the same moment, it works differently from a poster or a newspaper column. A poster waits to be noticed. A television advertisement arrives whether or not the viewer wanted it, in a fixed slot, at a fixed length, in the middle of something the viewer chose.
That combination — sight, sound and motion delivered to a large simultaneous audience — is what advertisers are buying. It is also why the work behind a half-minute of screen time is far larger than the half-minute suggests.
3.1.2 The Process of Making a Television Advertisement
A television advertisement is not written and then filmed. It moves through eight stages, and each one hands something specific to the next: planning phase, scripting, casting, preproduction, shooting, post-production, approval and delivery. Skip a stage and the cost of fixing it later multiplies.
The order matters because each stage removes a kind of uncertainty. Planning removes uncertainty about who and why; scripting about what happens on screen; casting about who is seen; preproduction about how it will physically be done; and so on until nothing is left to decide on the shooting day except performance. Fig. 3.1-1 sets out the sequence.
Diagram
Fig. 3.1-1 – flow: planning phase → scripting → casting → preproduction → shooting → post-production → approval → delivery; draw as eight linked boxes in one line, with a short label under each naming what that stage produces (a brief; a script; a cast list; a shooting plan; raw footage; a finished cut; a cleared version; a scheduled telecast)
Planning phase
The planning phase is where the advertisement is decided before it is imagined. The advertiser and the agency settle the objective — is this meant to launch something new, remind people of something familiar, or shift what they believe about a brand they already know?
They then define the target audience: the specific group the message is built for. This is described both by demographics (age, income, location, occupation, language) and by psychographics (habits, interests, attitudes, what the group watches and when).
A budget is fixed, covering both the making of the advertisement and the far larger cost of buying airtime. And a creative strategy is agreed — the central idea, the tone, and the unique selling proposition (USP), the one claim that separates this product from every competitor.
The output of this stage is a written brief: a short document that tells the creative team what the advertisement must achieve, for whom, and within what limits.
Notice that the brief has not written a single line of the advertisement. What it has done is close off options. Twenty seconds and one location means no travel montage. “No celebrity” means the persuasion must come from the product itself. “Sealed and dated” tells the writer which two seconds of the film matter most. A weak brief leaves everything open and produces work that pleases nobody; a good brief is felt as a relief by the people who have to make the thing.
Scripting
Scripting turns the brief into a shot-by-shot plan of what will be seen and heard. A television script is written in two parallel columns or two alternating lines — VIDEO, which describes what is in the frame, and AUDIO, which carries dialogue, voice-over, sound effects and music. Cues are written in capitals so that a crew can find them at a glance.
This is the convention used throughout this book: a video line names the shot size, the angle, the subject and any movement, in that order; an audio line names the speaker or the cue type, then the sound.
Read the two close-ups against each other. The first shows a mess being cleaned; the second shows a printed date. The film never says the loose product is bad, which would insult the viewer who has been buying it for years. It simply places one image after another and lets the viewer draw the conclusion. That restraint is a craft decision made at the scripting stage, not in the edit.
Casting
Casting is the selection of the performers who will appear or be heard — actors, models, presenters, voice artists. The choice is made against the brief: does this face, this voice, this way of standing belong to the world the advertisement is describing?
Auditions, screen tests and voice trials exist because performance on camera is not the same as performance in a room. A voice that is warm in conversation can sound theatrical over a thirty-second film.
Casting also carries a responsibility. An advertisement that always shows the same kind of face in the same kind of role teaches the audience something about who belongs where, whether or not it intends to. Whom you cast is a claim about the world.
Preproduction
Preproduction is everything that must be arranged before the camera rolls: locations scouted and permitted, sets built, costumes and props gathered, lighting planned, equipment booked, the crew called, the schedule written.
Its central document is the storyboard — a sequence of drawn frames showing each shot as it will be composed, with the shot size and any camera movement noted beside it. A storyboard lets everyone argue about the film while it is still cheap to change.
Diagram
Fig. 3.1-2 – a four-frame storyboard strip for the buttermilk script; frame 1 medium shot of a figure pouring at a counter, frame 2 close-up of a hand wiping, frame 3 medium shot of a sealed carton being opened, frame 4 close-up of a printed date panel; label each frame with its shot size and mark the frames as generic non-identifiable figures
Preproduction is where most of the real problem-solving happens, and it is the stage the audience will never see any trace of. A day of careful scheduling here saves a crew of thirty people standing idle on the shooting day.
Shooting
Shooting, also called the production stage, is the recording of the material. The director works with the performers; the cinematographer — the person responsible for the camera and the lighting — composes and exposes each shot; the sound recordist captures clean audio.
Shots are almost never recorded in the order the viewer will see them. Everything needed at one location is shot together, which is why continuity — matching clothes, light and props across takes filmed hours apart — becomes a job in itself.
More material is recorded than will be used. Alternative takes, wider and tighter versions of the same moment, and cutaway details are gathered so that the edit has choices.
Post-production
Post-production is where the recorded material becomes a film. The editor selects and orders the shots, fixing the pace. Colour is corrected so that shots taken at different times match. Graphics, titles and the brand element are added.
Sound is built in layers — dialogue or voice-over, effects, music — and then balanced against one another in audio mixing so that no layer buries another. On a twenty-second film, a decision to hold a shot for four frames longer changes how confident the whole thing feels.
Approval
Approval is the formal clearance of the finished advertisement before it can be broadcast. The client checks it against the brief. Legal and regulatory review checks that claims can be substantiated, that comparisons are fair, and that the advertisement meets the codes governing broadcast content in India.
This is not a formality. A claim that cannot be proved, a disclaimer too small to read, or a depiction unsuitable for the time slot will be sent back at this stage — which is exactly why it exists before telecast and not after.
Delivery
Delivery is the handover of the approved advertisement to broadcasters or platforms in the required technical format, together with the media plan — the schedule of which channels will carry it, in which slots, at what frequency, for how long.
A brilliant advertisement placed in the wrong slot reaches nobody it was made for. Delivery is where the craft meets the arithmetic of airtime.
Read down the middle column and a pattern appears: the questions get narrower as the process advances. Early stages decide strategy, later stages decide seconds. That is why a change of mind at the delivery stage is so expensive — it reopens a question that was closed seven stages ago.
3.1.3 The Functions of Television Advertising
Advertising on television is bought for five reasons. Each of them is a genuine capability of the medium, and each has a limit that a careful student should be able to state.
Reaching large audiences
Television delivers a message to a very large number of households at the same moment. A single insertion during a widely watched programme can put one message in front of an audience that no other single placement in India can match at that instant.
The limitation is that reach is not the same as attention. A set may be switched on in a room where nobody is watching, and viewers routinely leave the room or look at a phone during the break. Reach counts opportunities to see, not seeing.
Informing and educating
Advertising tells people that something exists, what it does, how it is used and what it costs. Because television can demonstrate, it explains physical products more efficiently than words alone — a machine can be shown working in four seconds.
The same capability carries public messages: immunisation drives, road safety, water conservation, financial caution. Here the medium is being used to change behaviour rather than to sell, and it reaches audiences that print cannot.
Entertaining and retaining attention
An advertisement that bores you has failed, because you were never obliged to watch it. So advertisers use story, humour, music, animation and familiar faces to hold the viewer for the length of the break.
A jingle — a short musical phrase written to carry a brand — works because melody is remembered more easily and for longer than a spoken sentence. This is the same reason a class remembers a rhyme years after forgetting the paragraph next to it.
The limit is that entertainment can outrun its purpose. Viewers sometimes recall an advertisement vividly and cannot say what it was for, which advertisers call the vampire effect: the entertainment has drunk the message.
Creating a loyal following for a product
Repeated exposure over time builds familiarity, and familiarity is one of the ingredients of preference. Consistent music, colours, characters and tone across years make a brand feel known rather than merely seen.
The honest limitation is causal. It is difficult to prove that advertising created the loyalty, because the brands that advertise most are usually also the brands that are most widely available, most stocked and longest established. Sales data show that heavy advertisers hold loyal customers; they do not by themselves show which caused which. A reasonable position is that advertising sustains loyalty more reliably than it manufactures it.
Affordable information distribution
Producing and broadcasting a television advertisement is expensive in absolute terms. Measured per viewer reached, it is often cheap — a large single cost divided by a very large audience gives a low cost per viewer.
This is what “affordable” means here, and it explains a puzzle students often notice: why an organisation would spend an enormous sum on one film. The sum is large; the sum divided by the audience is not. The limit is that this arithmetic only favours advertisers whose customers really are everybody. For a product wanted by a narrow group, paying to reach millions of uninterested viewers is waste, and a targeted medium is cheaper.
3.1.4 The Types of Television Advertising
The break is not the only place a brand appears on television. Seven recognised forms are used, and they differ in length, in placement, and — most importantly for a student of media — in how openly they declare themselves.
Fig. 3.1-3 places them across a single hour of programming so that the differences in placement are visible at a glance.
Diagram
Fig. 3.1-3 – a horizontal strip representing one hour of a television programme, marked with: an opening sponsorship credit at the start, short bumper ads at each transition into and out of two commercial breaks, standard spots inside the breaks, a covert placement marked inside the programme body itself, a long infomercial block shown as a separate wide band after the hour, and a call-to-action end-screen; label each marker with its type
Cross promotion
Cross promotion is an arrangement in which two brands, channels or platforms promote each other, each lending its audience to the other. A channel trails a forthcoming film; the film’s own trailer announces which channel will premiere it.
Both partners gain reach they did not pay for separately, and the cost of promotion is shared. It works best when the two audiences overlap partially — enough to be relevant, not so much that nothing new is gained.
Merchandise
Merchandise advertising promotes branded physical goods tied to a programme, character or campaign — school bags, water bottles, toys, clothing carrying a show’s characters or marks.
The object leaves the screen and enters the viewer’s daily life, where it advertises continuously and at no further cost to the advertiser. It also earns money in its own right, which makes it unusual: the advertisement is itself the product being sold.
The audience for merchandise is often children, which is precisely why it attracts scrutiny. A child who wants the bottle because of the character on it is responding to an advertisement they may not recognise as one.
Covert advertising
Covert advertising, also called product placement, is the deliberate placement of a branded product inside the content of a programme or film, so that it appears as a natural part of the scene rather than as a separate advertisement.
It works precisely because it is not recognised. A viewer watching a break knows to be sceptical; a viewer watching a story does not raise that defence, and the brand arrives without resistance. That is its commercial value and its ethical problem in a single sentence.
Infomercials
An infomercial is a long-form advertisement, typically running from a few minutes to half an hour, built in the style of an informational programme — demonstrations, explanations, comparisons and testimony from users.
Length is the point. Products that need to be understood before they are bought, such as a water purifier or an exercise machine, cannot be explained in thirty seconds. The infomercial trades the mass audience of a peak slot for the small, genuinely interested audience of an off-peak one.
Its risk is the mirror image of covert advertising: because it resembles a programme, an inattentive viewer may take its demonstrations for independent testing. Broadcast codes therefore require infomercials to be identifiable as paid content.
Bumper ads
A bumper ad is a very short spot, commonly five to ten seconds, placed at the join between programme and break, or between segments. It carries almost no argument — a mark, a phrase, a sound.
Its job is recall, not persuasion. Because it is cheap to produce and cheap to place, it can be repeated often, and repetition at that length is tolerated where a repeated thirty-second film would irritate.
Sponsorship
Sponsorship is an arrangement in which a brand funds a programme, segment or event and receives named recognition in return — in the opening and closing credits, in a segment title, or in an on-screen mark carried through the broadcast.
The brand is not making a claim about itself. It is borrowing the standing of the programme: a sponsor of a respected news bulletin is asking to be thought of as that bulletin is thought of. Sponsorship is declared, which is what separates it from covert advertising.
Both sponsorship and covert advertising put a brand inside programme time rather than inside the break, and students routinely confuse them. Table 3.2 sets the distinction out.
The decisive row is the third from the top. Sponsorship buys an association the viewer can see and judge; covert advertising buys one they cannot. Everything else in the table follows from that single difference.
Call to action
A call to action (CTA) is an advertisement, or the closing portion of one, that instructs the viewer to do something immediately and tells them exactly how — a number to ring, a code to use, an offer that closes on a date.
Its purpose is measurable response rather than long-term memory, so its effectiveness can be counted directly in calls, visits or registrations. That measurability is why it dominates retail and service advertising.
The technique it depends on is urgency, and urgency is easy to manufacture dishonestly. A deadline that is real gives the viewer information; a deadline that resets every week is a pressure device aimed at stopping them from thinking. The difference is invisible on screen and matters a great deal.
Reading down the last two columns shows what actually separates these forms. Length and placement are not decoration; they follow from the goal. A form that wants recall must be short and frequent, a form that wants understanding must be long and infrequent, and a form that wants to be absorbed rather than noticed cannot sit in the break at all.
3.2 Film Stages
Everything made with a camera — a feature film, a documentary, a serial, a thirty-second advertisement — passes through the same three stages: pre-shooting, shooting and post-shooting. The industry usually calls them pre-production, production and post-production, and the two sets of names mean exactly the same thing.
The eight-stage sequence you met in section 3.1 is not a rival scheme. It is the same three stages, opened out for a form in which a client has to approve the work and buy airtime for it. Table 3.4 lines the two up so that the relationship is clear.
The table shows that the extra stages in advertising are not extra craft. They are extra permission. An advertisement has to satisfy someone who is paying and someone who is broadcasting; a film has to satisfy itself first and find its distribution afterwards.
Fig. 3.2-1 shows what each stage receives and what it passes on.
Diagram
Fig. 3.2-1 – flow: script and plan → pre-shooting → shooting → post-shooting → finished film; draw as three large boxes on the arrow, and under each box list what it produces (a shooting plan; recorded picture and sound; a finished, mastered film)
3.2.1 Pre-shooting
Pre-shooting is the whole of the preparation: reading the script for what it will physically require, and then arranging every one of those requirements before a camera is switched on.
The first task is the script breakdown — going through the script scene by scene and listing what each scene needs. How many performers, which location, day or night, what props, what costumes, what special equipment, how much time.
From the breakdown comes the schedule. Scenes are regrouped by location and by resource rather than by story order, because moving a unit of forty people between two places twice costs a day that a production cannot spare.
The director and the cinematographer also plan the coverage: which shots will be taken of each scene, in what sizes and from what positions. This is written as a shot list, the document that turns a written scene into a set of specific camera tasks. You will be able to read one properly after section 3.3.
The last pre-shooting document is the call sheet: a one-page instruction issued for each shooting day, telling every member of the unit where to be, at what time, and what will be shot.
Look at the instruction about scene 2. It is the shortest scene of the day and needs no performers, and it is shot first — not because the story begins there, but because an empty corridor exists for only twenty minutes. Pre-shooting is largely the discipline of noticing such facts before they become emergencies at eight in the morning.
3.2.2 Shooting
Shooting is the recording of picture and sound. It is the most visible stage, the most expensive per hour, and usually the shortest of the three.
The director works with the performers on blocking — where each person stands and moves within the scene — and on performance. The cinematographer sets the camera position, the lens and the lighting so that the composition planned in the shot list can actually be achieved in that room, on that day.
Each shot is normally recorded several times. The recorded takes are called the rushes, and they are reviewed at the end of the day, so that a problem is discovered while the location, the cast and the light are still available.
Because scenes are shot out of order, continuity — the matching of costume, hair, props and light across takes recorded hours or weeks apart — becomes a job in its own right. A sleeve rolled up in one shot and down in the next tells the audience that something is wrong without their being able to say what.
Shooting deliberately gathers more material than the finished film will use. A moment is covered in more than one size and from more than one position, and separate detail shots are recorded, so that the editor has real choices rather than a single unusable version.
3.2.3 Post-shooting
Post-shooting is where the recorded material becomes a film. Nothing new is photographed; everything is selected, ordered, corrected and combined.
Editing comes first. The editor assembles the chosen takes into a rough cut — a complete but unrefined version, correct in order and loose in timing — and then works towards a fine cut in which every join has been judged to the frame. This is the stage that decides pace, and pace is what an audience feels as tension, calm or haste.
Sound is then built. Dialogue is cleaned and, where necessary, re-recorded; sound design adds the effects and atmospheres that make a space feel inhabited; music is composed or selected; and the layers are balanced against one another in the mix. A corridor scene recorded almost in silence becomes a school only when footsteps, distant voices and a ceiling fan are laid under it.
The picture is finished through colour grading — adjusting the colour and brightness of every shot so that shots recorded at different times match, and so that the film carries one consistent look.
Finally the film is mastered: output in the technical format required by the screen it will play on, whether a cinema, a television channel or a streaming platform.
Diagram
Fig. 3.2-2 – flow: rushes → assembly → rough cut → fine cut → sound mix and colour grade → master; draw as six linked boxes, and mark below the chain that no new photography enters at any point
Fig. 3.2-2 makes one thing plain. Every arrow in post-shooting is a choice among materials that already exist. This is why a weak shooting day cannot be repaired later: an editor can only choose between what was recorded.
Read the right-hand column downwards and the logic of the three stages appears: a plan, then material, then a film. Each stage can work only with what the previous one handed it, which is why film-makers say that a film is made three times — once on paper, once on location, and once in the edit.
3.3 Camera Angles
3.3.1 How an Angle Shapes Meaning
Stand in front of a small child and look down at them. Now crouch until your eyes are level with theirs. Nothing about the child has changed, but your relationship to them has. A camera does exactly this, and the audience feels the result without ever thinking about where the camera was standing.
A camera angle is the position and height of the camera in relation to its subject. It is decided by three things: how high the camera sits, whether it points up, down or straight ahead, and whether it is level or tilted.
Framing, or shot size, is a separate decision: how much of the subject the frame contains. A camera can be at eye level and very close, or at eye level and very far away. Angle answers from where; shot size answers how much.
The syllabus lists both kinds of decision together, and it is worth keeping them apart in your own head, because on a set they are chosen separately. Table 3.6 draws the line.
The last two rows are the useful ones. Because angle and size are independent, a film-maker gets two separate levers on the same moment, and the same event can be made to feel eight or ten different ways without a word of the script changing.
None of these choices has a fixed meaning. A low angle does not mean power; it tends to produce a sense of power in most contexts, and a skilled film-maker can defeat that tendency deliberately. Treat the effects described below as strong tendencies, not as rules.
3.3.2 Angles Set by Camera Height
The first four angles are all decided by one question: how high is the camera compared with the subject? Fig. 3.3-1 shows the four positions together, which is the quickest way to see that they form a ladder rather than a list.
Diagram
Fig. 3.3-1 – side view of a single generic standing figure with four camera positions marked on a vertical scale: (a) eye level, camera at the figure’s eye height pointing straight ahead; (b) low angle, camera at chest height pointing slightly upward; (c) high angle, camera above head height pointing downward; (d) ground level, camera resting on the ground pointing straight ahead; draw the sight line from each camera to the figure and label the height of each
Eye level
An eye level angle places the camera at the height of the subject’s eyes and points it straight ahead. It is the ordinary view — the way you see a person you are speaking to — and so it makes no comment.
This neutrality is its value. Two people shot at eye level appear equal; neither is being made larger or smaller by the camera. Interviews, news reading, dialogue between characters of similar standing and most conversational television are shot this way.
Because the eye level angle does not draw attention to itself, it is also the baseline against which every other angle is read. A low angle feels powerful only because the viewer has an unspoken expectation of eye level.
Low angle
A low angle places the camera below the subject’s eye line and points it upward. The subject fills the upper part of the frame, the background falls away behind them, and there is often sky or ceiling behind the head.
The effect is an impression of size, authority or dominance. Part of this is physical experience: looking up at people is what a small person does, and the frame reproduces that relation. Part of it is compositional — with the horizon low, nothing in the frame competes with the subject.
The same angle can also produce unease rather than admiration, depending on what the subject is doing. Looking up at someone who is calm reads as respect; looking up at someone who is angry reads as threat.
Diagram
Fig. 3.3-2 – low angle; camera placed below the subject’s eye line and tilted upward towards a generic standing figure; the figure occupies the upper two-thirds of the frame with open sky behind the head and the horizon line low in the frame; label the camera position, the upward tilt and the low horizon line
High angle
A high angle places the camera above the subject and points it downward. The subject appears smaller in the frame, the ground fills the background, and the surroundings look larger than the person.
It tends to produce vulnerability, exposure or diminishment. It is also the honest choice when the point of a shot is the environment rather than the person — a crowded platform, a flooded field, a classroom seen from the back.
A high angle can carry a second, colder meaning: being observed. When the camera looks down on someone who does not know it is there, the shot begins to suggest surveillance or judgement.
Diagram
Fig. 3.3-3 – high angle; camera placed above the subject’s head height and tilted downward towards a generic seated figure; the figure occupies a small part of the lower frame with a large area of floor visible around them; label the camera height, the downward tilt and the dominance of the surrounding space
Ground level
A ground level angle places the camera on or almost on the ground, pointing straight ahead rather than upward. The frame fills with the surface itself — road, grass, floor, dust — and whatever moves across it.
It produces immediacy. Feet, wheels and falling objects pass close to the lens, so speed feels faster and texture becomes visible. A ball rolling along the ground shot from ground level looks urgent; the same ball shot from standing height looks like a ball.
It is also the natural viewpoint for anything low to the ground — a small animal, a dropped object, a child crawling — and so it is used when a film wants the audience to see a world from below without making a subject look dominant, which is what separates it from the worm’s eye view.
3.3.3 Angles from High Above and Low Below
Three angles are defined by extremity rather than by a small adjustment of height. Two look down from far above; one looks steeply up from the ground.
Aerial
An aerial angle is taken from high above the scene — from a drone, a helicopter, a crane or a tall building — and is usually taken while moving or looking across a landscape rather than straight down.
Its function is geographic. It tells the audience where they are, how far apart things are, and what the scale of the place is, which is why it is so often used as an establishing shot: the shot at the start of a sequence that fixes the location before the story narrows to people.
Emotionally it tends to produce openness or exposure. Characters placed inside a very large space read as free or as insignificant, and which of the two is felt depends almost entirely on what the story has already told us about them.
Bird’s eye view
A bird’s eye view places the camera directly above the subject, looking straight down. The floor becomes the background and everything in the scene is flattened into a pattern.
Because it is a viewpoint no ordinary observer occupies, it detaches the audience. Bodies become shapes, a crowd becomes a texture, and a room becomes a diagram. It is used for layouts — who is where, how a space is arranged, how a queue or a procession is organised — and for moments where a character should look isolated inside an empty area.
Aerial and bird’s eye view are frequently confused with each other and with the high angle, so it is worth fixing all three at once.
The row that settles most arguments is the second. A high angle and an aerial both look down at a slant; only the bird’s eye view looks straight down. And a high angle is still about the person, while an aerial has become about the place.
Worm’s eye view
A worm’s eye view places the camera at ground level and points it steeply upward at the subject. It is the extreme form of the low angle.
Everything above the lens is exaggerated. A building leans inward towards the top of the frame, a tree becomes a canopy, a standing figure becomes a tower. This is not how anything looks to a standing adult, and the strangeness is the point.
It is used for architecture, for monuments, for skies, and for moments where a figure must be made larger than life. Used often it becomes theatrical, which is why most films spend one shot on it and then return to human height.
Diagram
Fig. 3.3-4 – worm’s eye view; camera resting at ground level and tilted steeply upward towards a generic standing figure beside a tall building; the figure and the building converge towards the top of the frame with sky filling the upper area; label the ground-level camera position, the steep upward tilt and the converging vertical lines
3.3.4 Framings Set by Distance
The next four decisions in the syllabus’s list are not angles at all in strict craft usage — they are shot sizes, decided by how much of the subject the frame holds. They are grouped here because they answer one shared question: how close are we?
Fig. 3.3-5 shows the same figure at each of the four sizes, which makes the ladder easier to remember than any definition.
Diagram
Fig. 3.3-5 – four frames in a row showing the same generic standing figure at four sizes: (a) close-up, head and shoulders filling the frame; (b) medium shot, figure from the waist up with part of the room visible; (c) long shot, whole body with a significant amount of surrounding space; (d) extreme long shot, figure very small within a wide landscape; label each frame with its name and mark how much of the body is included in each
Close-up
A close-up fills the frame with one thing — most often a face, sometimes an object that matters. Everything else is excluded.
Its power is that it removes the choice of where to look. The viewer must attend to a mouth tightening, a hand hesitating, a date printed on a label. Small changes that would be invisible in a wider frame become the whole content of the screen.
It is therefore the shot of interiority: what someone is feeling rather than what they are doing. Used too often it exhausts the audience, because a film made entirely of close-ups gives them no space to breathe and no idea where anyone is standing.
Long shot
A long shot shows the whole body of the subject together with a significant part of the surroundings. Face and environment are both legible, though neither dominates.
It is the shot of behaviour and relationship. You can see how a person moves, how far they are standing from someone else, and whether they belong in the space they are in. Movement, work and physical action are almost always covered in long shots.
Because it keeps a certain distance, it holds the audience at a neutral emotional range — observing rather than sharing.
Extreme long shot
An extreme long shot places the camera far enough away that the environment fills the frame and any human figure is small, sometimes barely findable.
It is used to establish a location and to state scale: a field, a coastline, a city at dusk, a fairground before it opens. When a person is included, the meaning usually comes from the ratio between the figure and the space around them.
Medium shot
A medium shot frames a person roughly from the waist up. It carries facial expression and gesture at the same time, which is why the great majority of conversational television is shot this way.
It is the practical middle of the ladder. Close enough for a smile to register, wide enough for two people to be framed together and for the viewer to keep track of where they are.
Now that both angle and size have names, a shot list can be read. Each line names the shot size, the angle, the subject and any movement, in that order.
Follow the movement of the list. Shots 1 to 3 travel inward — place, then person, then the one detail she is depending on. Shot 4 goes to a high angle at the exact moment she loses control of the situation, so the camera diminishes her just as the story does. Shot 5 answers it with a low angle, which does not make her powerful so much as restore her as the subject of her own scene. Shot 6 lifts the camera straight up and turns her into a small mark on a wide floor. The scene’s meaning is carried almost entirely by height and distance.
3.3.5 Tilted Framings
The last two members of the list share a single physical action: the camera is rolled sideways so that the horizon is no longer level.
Dutch angle
A dutch angle is created by rolling the camera about the axis of its own lens, so that vertical lines in the scene lean and the horizon runs at a slant across the frame.
The tilt is uncomfortable because human balance is fixed to the horizontal. A viewer registers the slant before they can name it, and reads it as instability, disturbance or wrongness — which is why it is standard in thrillers, in scenes of panic and at moments when a character’s grip on the situation is slipping.
Its strength is its weakness. Because the effect is so unmistakable, a dutch angle held for long, or repeated, stops being unsettling and starts being noticeable as a technique.
Diagram
Fig. 3.3-6 – dutch angle; camera rolled about the axis of its lens so the frame is tilted roughly twenty degrees; inside the frame, a generic figure standing in a corridor with the doorframes and the floor line running diagonally; label the axis of roll, the slanted horizon and the leaning verticals
Oblique
An oblique angle also tilts the frame off the horizontal, but as a compositional or stylistic device rather than as a statement about a character’s mental state. The slant is usually slighter, and it is used to make a composition more dynamic, to lead the eye along a diagonal, or to give an ordinary object an unexpected shape.
In practice the two terms overlap, and many practitioners use them interchangeably. The distinction worth holding is one of intention, and Table 3.8 states it.
Read the fourth row across and the distinction becomes usable. Both tilt the world; only the dutch angle claims that the tilt belongs to the character.
The thirteen together
Table 3.9 gathers the whole list in the order the syllabus sets it out, as a revision object rather than as a substitute for the explanations above.
Read the third column on its own and a pattern emerges that is worth carrying out of this chapter. Almost every entry describes a change in the viewer’s position, not in the subject’s. The camera never alters what is in front of it; it alters where you are made to stand.
3.4 Camera Movement
3.4.1 Why the Camera Moves
A still camera asks the audience to look at something. A moving camera takes them somewhere. That is the whole difference, and it is why movement is chosen far more carefully than beginners expect.
There are only two things a camera can do. It can stay in one place and turn, or it can travel through space. Everything in the syllabus’s list — pan, tilts, dolly shots, handheld, crane shots — is one or the other, and knowing which is which prevents most of the confusion in this topic.
A camera that turns in place changes what you see. A camera that travels changes where you are. The second is far more powerful and far more expensive, which is a fair summary of most decisions in film craft.
Movement also carries time. A cut moves the audience instantly; a movement makes them wait, and the waiting is itself an effect. A slow move towards a closed door is suspense; a cut to the same door is information.
3.4.2 Pan
A pan is a horizontal rotation of the camera on a fixed point, usually a tripod head. The camera does not travel; it pivots left or right while its position in the room stays exactly the same.
It imitates the natural act of turning your head, so audiences accept it easily. A pan is used to follow horizontal action — a vehicle along a road, a bowler’s delivery towards the batter — and to reveal a wide space that will not fit in one frame.
Its second use is quieter and more interesting. Because a pan withholds part of the scene until the camera reaches it, it can deliver information in a controlled order: a room, then a table, then the person sitting at it. The audience discovers things in the sequence the film-maker chose.
Diagram
Fig. 3.4-1 – pan; camera fixed on a tripod at one position, rotating horizontally from left to right; draw three dotted frame outlines fanning out from the single pivot point to show the changing field of view; label the fixed pivot, the arc of rotation, and mark clearly that the camera does not travel
Fig. 3.4-1 makes the key point visible: all three frames come from the same pivot. Nothing in the room has been approached, so objects near the camera and objects far away shift across the frame at similar rates. That is why a pan reveals a space without ever making the audience feel they have entered it.
3.4.3 Tilts
A tilt is the vertical equivalent of a pan: the camera stays in one position and pivots upward or downward. Again, nothing travels.
Tilts are used wherever the subject is taller than the frame — a temple gopuram, a hoarding, a staircase — and wherever a reveal should happen in a fixed order. A tilt from a pair of muddy shoes up to a face tells the audience what to think about the face before they see it.
A tilt also connects two things at different heights and asserts that they belong together: a queue on the ground and the announcement board above it, a crowd and the balcony over them.
Diagram
Fig. 3.4-2 – tilt; camera fixed on a tripod at one position, pivoting vertically from a downward view to an upward view; draw three dotted frame outlines stacked from the single pivot point to show the changing field of view; label the fixed pivot, the vertical arc, and mark that the camera height does not change
3.4.4 Dolly Shots
A dolly shot is made by physically moving the camera through space, mounted on a wheeled platform — the dolly — which is often pushed along laid track so that the motion is perfectly smooth.
Because the camera actually travels, the relationship between near and far objects changes as it goes. Foreground objects sweep past quickly while the background drifts slowly, and this difference is what the eye reads as depth. A dolly is the only one of the first three movements that makes a space feel three-dimensional.
Moving towards a subject concentrates attention and raises intensity; moving away from a subject releases it and tends to produce distance, loneliness or finality. The speed matters as much as the direction: a slow push in over several seconds is felt, while a fast one is noticed.
Diagram
Fig. 3.4-3 – dolly; camera mounted on a wheeled platform on straight track, travelling forward towards a seated generic figure; draw the camera at its start and end positions with the track between them, and show a foreground object passing out of frame while the background figure grows larger; label the track, the direction of travel, and mark that the camera position itself changes
3.4.5 Handheld
A handheld shot is one in which the operator carries the camera on the shoulder or in the hands, with no tripod or mechanical support. The image carries small, irregular movements that no machine produces.
Audiences read this instability as presence. Because home video, news footage and documentary have all been shot this way for decades, a shaking frame has come to mean somebody was really there — which is a learned convention, not a natural fact.
Handheld is used where a mounted camera cannot go: through a crowd, up a narrow staircase, alongside someone running. It is also chosen deliberately in drama for scenes of confusion, argument or crisis, where its restlessness matches the content.
Its cost is legibility. A handheld frame is harder to compose precisely, and prolonged unsteadiness tires an audience, so it is usually reserved for the passages that need it rather than spread across a whole film.
3.4.6 Crane Shots
A crane shot is taken from a camera mounted on a crane or jib, an arm that lifts, lowers and swings the camera through the air. It combines vertical and horizontal travel in one continuous move.
Its characteristic gesture is a change of scale within a single shot: rising from a face to reveal the whole crowd that face is standing in, or descending from a rooftop to arrive at a doorway. Because the movement is unbroken, the audience understands the small thing and the large thing as parts of one world.
Crane shots are therefore common at beginnings and endings — at an opening, to place a story inside a landscape; at a close, to withdraw from it. The rising final shot has become so familiar as an ending that it now functions almost as punctuation.
Diagram
Fig. 3.4-4 – crane shot; camera mounted on a jib arm rising from head height to well above a crowd of generic figures in a fairground; draw the arm at its low and high positions with the arc of travel between them, and two frame outlines showing the view narrowing on one figure at the bottom and widening to the whole ground at the top; label the pivot base, the arc of the arm and the change in framing
Fig. 3.4-4 also shows why the crane is the most expensive movement on the list. The equipment is large, it needs space and a trained crew, and the shot has to be rehearsed until the arm, the framing and the action arrive together.
Trace the sequence and the design becomes obvious. Every move opens the frame a little wider than the one before, so the audience is never told the market is busy — they watch it become busy. The pan at twenty seconds is the only move that does not enlarge the scale; it exists to hand the shot over to the cart, which then gives the crane something to follow. Because there is no cut anywhere, the viewer cannot separate the single vendor from the crowded ground. They are the same place, and the camera has proved it in one breath.
Read the second column downwards and the whole topic reduces to one distinction. In the first two rows nothing leaves its position; in the last three the camera goes somewhere. Everything in the third column follows from that.
The third row is the one to remember, because it is the row you can actually see on screen. If the background slides past at one flat rate, the camera turned. If the foreground races and the distance crawls, the camera travelled.
3.5 Summary
Advertising for television
An advertisement is a message paid for by an identified sponsor, placed to inform an audience and influence what they think or do. Television advertising delivers that message through picture, sound and motion to a large simultaneous audience that is watching something else, which is why it must earn the seconds it takes.
Making a television advertisement runs through eight stages in fixed order: planning phase, scripting, casting, preproduction, shooting, post-production, approval and delivery. Each stage closes a question the next stage depends on, so the questions get narrower as the work advances and a late change of mind is the most expensive kind.
The planning phase settles the objective, the target audience described by demographics and psychographics, the budget and the unique selling proposition, and issues them as a brief. Scripting turns the brief into VIDEO and AUDIO lines; casting chooses who is seen and heard; preproduction arranges locations, sets, equipment, storyboard and schedule.
Shooting records the material, out of story order and with more takes than will be used. Post-production selects and orders the shots, corrects colour, builds and mixes sound. Approval clears the advertisement against the brief and against broadcast regulation; delivery hands it to broadcasters with a media plan of slots and frequency.
Television advertising is bought for five functions: reaching large audiences; informing and educating; entertaining and retaining attention; creating a loyal following for a product; and affordable information distribution. Each has a limit — reach is not attention, entertainment can outrun the message, loyalty is sustained more reliably than it is created, and low cost per viewer only helps an advertiser whose customer really is everybody.
Seven types of television advertising are used: cross promotion, merchandise, covert advertising, infomercials, bumper ads, sponsorship and call to action. They differ in length, in placement, and above all in how openly they declare themselves — sponsorship names the brand, covert advertising conceals that the placement was paid for, and that difference in disclosure is what decides whether a viewer can discount the persuasion.
Film stages
Film production has three stages: pre-shooting, shooting and post-shooting. Only the middle one involves a camera, and it is the shortest and costliest of the three, which is why the stages on either side exist to protect it.
Pre-shooting finalises the script, breaks it down by location, cast and daylight, draws the storyboard, casts the film, secures locations and fixes the schedule and budget. Shooting records picture and sound out of story order, with coverage of each scene from more than one position and a continuity record kept across takes.
Post-shooting is where the film is finally determined: editing selects takes and fixes order and pace, and the relationship the audience reads between two adjacent shots may never have existed on set. Sound is rebuilt in layers and mixed, colour is corrected and graded, titles and effects are added, and the film is mastered for its release formats.
Camera angles
A camera angle is the position and height of the camera relative to its subject. The camera’s position becomes the viewer’s position, so the angle decides the viewer’s relationship to what is shown before a word is spoken.
An angle answers from where the subject is seen; a shot size answers how much of the subject is in the frame. Every shot is a choice of both, which is why a close-up at eye level and a close-up from a high angle contain the same face and say opposite things about it.
The syllabus’s thirteen framings, in order, are: eye level, level with the subject and neutral; low angle, from below and tilted up, giving dominance; high angle, from above and tilted down, giving vulnerability; ground level, at floor height with the lens horizontal, giving texture and speed; the dutch angle, rolled sideways for instability; aerial, from high above and to one side, establishing landscape with a horizon; close-up, the face or object filling the frame, for emotion and significance; bird’s eye view, directly overhead with no horizon, showing layout and producing detachment; worm’s eye view, from the ground looking steeply up, making the subject monumental; long shot, the whole figure with its surroundings, showing relationships; extreme long shot, the environment dominant and figures tiny, giving scale and isolation; medium shot, from the waist up, the workhorse of conversation; and oblique, a slighter or off-centre tilt used for visual interest.
Three distinctions carry most of the confusion. The aerial angle keeps a horizon while the bird’s eye view looks straight down and has none. The low angle sits below the eye line while the worm’s eye view sits on the ground looking almost vertically up, and the ground level angle sits at the same height with the lens horizontal. The dutch and oblique angles name the same tilted framing in most professional use, and where they are separated it is by degree and intention rather than by any settled rule.
Camera movement
Camera movement reveals what was outside the frame, follows a moving subject, and changes the viewer’s relationship to the subject during a shot without a cut. It also carries a feeling of its own, because the audience reads the behaviour of the camera as they would read the behaviour of a person standing beside them.
The five movements, in order, are: pan, a horizontal rotation from a fixed position; tilts, the same rotation on the vertical axis, exploring height; dolly shots, in which the camera itself travels through space, usually on track; handheld, carried by the operator without stabilisation, reading as unarranged presence; and crane shots, which lift, lower and swing the camera through an arc, changing altitude within a single shot.
The decisive test between them is whether near and far objects change their relationship to each other during the shot. If they do, the camera travelled — a dolly, a handheld move or a crane. If they do not, the camera only turned — a pan or a tilt. Pans and tilts leave the viewer standing still and looking; the other three take the viewer somewhere.
3.6 Key Terms
Advertisement — a message paid for by an identified sponsor, placed in a medium to inform an audience about a product, service or idea and to influence what they do about it.
Aerial angle — a shot taken from a considerable height above the scene, looking down and across, so that the landscape and a horizon are visible.
Approval — the formal clearance of a finished advertisement by the client and by legal or regulatory review before it may be broadcast.
Audio mixing — the balancing of the separate sound layers of a film — dialogue, effects and music — against one another so that each is audible at the right moment.
Bird’s eye view — a shot taken with the camera directly overhead, looking straight down, so that the ground appears flat and no horizon is visible.
Brief — the short written document produced in the planning phase that tells the creative team what the advertisement must achieve, for whom, and within what limits.
Bumper ad — a very short advertisement, commonly five to ten seconds, placed at the join between a programme and a break, aimed at recall rather than persuasion.
Call to action (CTA) — an advertisement, or the closing part of one, that instructs the viewer to do something immediately and tells them exactly how.
Camera angle — the position and height of the camera relative to its subject, and the direction in which it points, which fixes the viewer’s relationship to what is shown.
Casting — the stage of selecting the actors, models, presenters or voice artists who will appear or be heard.
Cinematographer — the person responsible for the camera and the lighting of a production, who composes and exposes each shot.
Close-up — a framing in which a face or a single significant object fills the frame and the background almost disappears.
Continuity — the matching of costume, props, light and action across takes filmed at different times, so that a scene assembled out of order appears unbroken.
Cost per viewer — the total cost of an advertisement divided by the number of viewers it reaches, which is the sense in which television advertising is called affordable.
Covert advertising — paid promotion in which a brand is placed inside the content itself, so that the audience receives it as part of the story rather than as an advertisement.
Crane shot — a shot taken from a camera mounted on a crane or jib arm, which lifts, lowers and swings the camera through an arc during the shot.
Cross promotion — an arrangement in which two brands, channels or platforms promote each other, each lending its audience to the other.
CTA — call to action.
Delivery — the final stage, in which the approved advertisement is handed to broadcasters or platforms in the required format, together with the media plan.
Demographics — the measurable characteristics of an audience, such as age, income, location, occupation and language.
Dolly shot — a shot in which the camera itself travels through space on a wheeled platform, usually running on laid track.
Dutch angle — a framing in which the camera is rolled sideways so that the horizon slants and vertical lines lean, used to suggest instability.
Editing — the selection of takes and the ordering of shots, which fixes the film’s sequence, pace and much of its meaning.
Establishing shot — a shot, usually wide, placed at the head of a sequence to tell the audience where the action is now taking place.
Extreme long shot — a framing taken from very far away, in which the environment fills almost the whole frame and human figures are small or barely distinguishable.
Eye level angle — a framing with the camera at the height of the subject’s eyes and the lens roughly horizontal, presenting the subject as an equal.
Ground level angle — a framing with the camera at or near the ground and the lens roughly horizontal, so the world is seen from floor height.
Handheld — camera movement produced by the operator carrying the camera without a tripod or stabilising rig, giving an unsteady, present-feeling frame.
High angle — a framing with the camera above the subject and tilted downward, making the subject appear smaller and the surroundings dominant.
Infomercial — a long-form advertisement, running from a few minutes to about half an hour, built in the style of an informational programme.
Jingle — a short musical phrase written to carry a brand, used because melody is remembered more easily and for longer than a spoken sentence.
Long shot — a framing that shows the subject complete from head to foot with a substantial part of the surroundings visible.
Low angle — a framing with the camera below the subject’s eye line and tilted upward, which tends to give the subject dominance.
Media plan — the schedule stating which channels will carry an advertisement, in which slots, at what frequency and for how long.
Medium shot — a framing that shows the subject from roughly the waist up, holding both a readable face and visible gesture.
Merchandise — branded physical goods tied to a programme, character or campaign, which carry the brand into the viewer’s daily life.
Oblique angle — a tilted or off-centre framing; in most professional use a synonym for the dutch angle, and where distinguished, a slighter tilt used for visual interest.
Pan — a horizontal rotation of the camera about a fixed point, in which the camera turns but does not travel.
Planning phase — the first stage of making an advertisement, which settles the objective, the target audience, the budget and the unique selling proposition.
Post-production — the stage in which recorded material is edited, colour-corrected, given sound and graphics, and finished.
Post-shooting — the third film stage, covering editing, sound, colour, effects and mastering; nothing new is photographed in it.
Preproduction — the stage in which locations, sets, costumes, props, lighting, equipment, storyboard and schedule are arranged before filming.
Pre-shooting — the first film stage, covering script, breakdown, storyboard, casting, locations, schedule and budget.
Psychographics — the characteristics of an audience described by habits, interests, attitudes and what they watch, rather than by measurable categories.
Public service announcement — a message made in the public interest rather than for profit, using the craft of advertising to promote health, safety or civic behaviour.
Scripting — the stage that turns the brief into a shot-by-shot plan of what will be seen and heard, written as VIDEO and AUDIO lines.
Shooting — the stage in which picture and sound are actually recorded, normally out of story order and in multiple takes.
Shot size — how much of the subject the frame contains, set mainly by the camera’s distance from the subject; also called the framing.
Sponsorship — an arrangement in which a brand funds a programme, segment or event and receives named recognition in return.
Storyboard — a sequence of drawn frames showing each shot as it will be composed, with shot size and camera movement noted beside it.
Target audience — the specific group of people an advertisement is built for, described by demographics and psychographics.
Tilt — a vertical rotation of the camera about a fixed point, exploring height rather than width.
Unique selling proposition (USP) — the single claim that separates a product from every competitor, fixed during the planning phase.
USP — unique selling proposition.
Worm’s eye view — a framing with the camera at or near the ground pointing steeply upward, making the subject tower and vertical lines converge.
3.7 Points to Ponder
If a viewer knows that a product in a scene was paid for, the placement stops working. Can a form of advertising that only succeeds while it goes unrecognised ever be made fair, or does disclosure destroy the thing it is meant to regulate?
An interview filmed from slightly above and an interview filmed from slightly below contain exactly the same words. If the two versions leave audiences with different impressions of the same person, has the camera reported the interview or commented on it?
Editing can place two shots side by side so that the audience reads a connection that never existed on the day of filming. If meaning is produced by the join rather than by either shot, who is the author of what the audience finally understands?
Handheld footage is read as honest because it looks unarranged. What happens to that trust once film-makers begin choosing instability deliberately, precisely because audiences read it that way?
Airtime is sold, so the products that appear on television are the products that can afford to appear. What is a viewer learning about the world from a medium whose contents are selected by the ability to pay, and how would they know what is missing?
Merchandise turns the audience into an advertisement that walks around. When the audience for that merchandise is largely children, where should the responsibility sit — with the advertiser, the broadcaster, the retailer, or the adult buying the object?
3.8 Objective Questions
- (The stage at which the objective, the target audience, the budget and the unique selling proposition are settled is —) [1 mark]
- Scripting
- Planning phase
- Preproduction
- Approval
- (In which of the following is no horizon visible in the frame?) [1 mark]
- Aerial angle
- Bird’s eye view
- High angle
- Long shot
- (Which camera movement turns the camera without moving its position in space?) [1 mark]
- Dolly shot
- Crane shot
- Pan
- Handheld
- (A five-to-ten second spot placed at the join between a programme and a commercial break is called a —) [1 mark]
- Bumper ad
- Infomercial
- Cross promotion
- Call to action
- (A framing in which the camera sits at floor height with the lens roughly horizontal is a —) [1 mark]
- Worm’s eye view
- Low angle
- Ground level angle
- Oblique angle
- (Assertion (A): During a dolly shot, foreground and background objects change their positions relative to each other. Reason (R): In a dolly shot the camera travels through space rather than turning on a fixed point.) [1 mark]
- Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A.
- Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A.
- A is true, but R is false.
- A is false, but R is true.
- (Assertion (A): A viewer can discount the persuasion in sponsorship more easily than the persuasion in covert advertising. Reason (R): Sponsorship places the brand inside the storyline of the programme.) [1 mark]
- Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A.
- Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A.
- A is true, but R is false.
- A is false, but R is true.
- (Assertion (A): Pre-shooting is the stage at which a change of plan is least expensive. Reason (R): No unit, cast or equipment has yet been assembled at that stage.) [1 mark]
- Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A.
- Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A.
- A is true, but R is false.
- A is false, but R is true.
- (Match the framing in Column A with the effect in Column B.) [1 mark]
| Column A | Column B |
|---|---|
| a. High angle | i. The subject towers over the frame and vertical lines converge |
| b. Worm’s eye view | ii. A slight change of expression becomes readable |
| c. Extreme long shot | iii. The subject appears small and the surroundings dominant |
| d. Close-up | iv. Figures are tiny and the environment fills the frame |
- (Match the type of television advertising in Column A with its description in Column B.) [1 mark]
| Column A | Column B |
|---|---|
| a. Infomercial | i. Two brands or platforms promote each other, sharing audiences |
| b. Cross promotion | ii. A long-form advertisement built in the style of an informational programme |
| c. Merchandise | iii. An instruction to the viewer to respond immediately, and how |
| d. Call to action | iv. Branded goods that carry the brand into the viewer’s daily life |
(Fill in the blank: The written document produced at the end of the planning phase, stating what the advertisement must achieve and for whom, is the ______.) [1 mark]
(Fill in the blank: The matching of costume, props and light across takes filmed at different times is called ______.) [1 mark]
(State whether true or false: A tilt requires the camera to travel vertically through space.) [1 mark]
(State whether true or false: The bird’s eye view and the aerial angle place the camera in the same position relative to the subject.) [1 mark]
(Write the full forms of: USP; CTA.) [1 mark]
3.9 Check Your Concepts
(Define a camera angle.) [2 marks]
(Name the three film stages in order, and state what happens in the middle one.) [2 marks]
(What is a media plan, and at which stage of making a television advertisement is it used?) [2 marks]
(Name any one function of television advertising and explain it with an example.) [2 marks]
(Differentiate between an aerial angle and a bird’s eye view, with reference to camera position and effect on the viewer.) [3 marks]
(Give reasons why a film is shot out of story order, and state one difficulty this creates.) [3 marks]
(Explain briefly, with an example, why a jingle helps a television advertisement do its work.) [3 marks]
(Explain the low angle and the effect it produces, with an example, and state one situation in which that effect would not hold.) [4 marks]
(Describe what happens during post-shooting, and explain why this stage is said to determine a film’s meaning even though nothing new is photographed in it.) [4 marks]
(Evaluate the claim that television advertising creates brand loyalty. Support your evaluation with at least one limitation of the claim.) [4 marks]
(Describe the eight stages of making a television advertisement, in order, stating what each stage settles and what it hands to the next.) [6 marks]
(Discuss the seven types of television advertising with reference to disclosure. Which of them declare themselves to the viewer, which do not, and what follows from that difference for the audience?) [6 marks]
3.10 Analyse the Media Text
- *(Study the following shot list for a short scene, then answer the questions below.
SCENE 2 – RAILWAY PLATFORM – EVENING 1. EXTREME LONG SHOT, HIGH ANGLE – the platform from the footbridge; one traveller waits beside a heap of luggage; static. 2. MEDIUM SHOT, EYE LEVEL – the traveller checking a ticket; static. 3. CLOSE-UP – the printed date on the ticket; static. 4. LONG SHOT, LOW ANGLE – the departure board above; camera TILTS down to the traveller.
a. Name the shot size and the angle used in shot 1, and explain what that combination makes the viewer feel about the traveller.
b. Shot 4 contains a camera movement. Name it and explain what it connects.
c. If shot 1 were changed to a medium shot at eye level, what would the scene lose?)* [6 marks]*(A district cooperative is promoting a water-testing service. It buys two very different placements on the same channel. Placement A runs for eighteen minutes in an afternoon slot, with a technician demonstrating the test, followed by three users describing what they found. Placement B runs for eight seconds and appears four times an evening, carrying only the cooperative’s mark and a two-note sound.
- Identify the type of television advertising used in each placement.
- Explain why the length of each suits its purpose.
- Which placement is more likely to be mistaken for something other than an advertisement, and why does that matter?)* [6 marks]
*(In a weekly cookery programme, the presenter uses the same brand of mixer in every episode, refers to it by name while cooking, and keeps it in the frame during the closing shot. The brand has paid the production company for this arrangement. Nothing is said about the payment on air.
- Identify the type of advertising being used.
- Explain why this form is more difficult for a viewer to resist than an advertisement placed in the break.
- State one change that would make the arrangement acceptable, and give the reason behind it.)* [6 marks]
*(An editor is given an interview in which a speaker says that a scheme has helped many families, pauses, and then says that it has still not reached the villages furthest from the road. The broadcast version carries only the first half of the answer, cut tight, followed by a shot of a busy market.
- Explain what the edit has done to the speaker’s statement.
- Name the technique by which the market shot changes how the audience reads the answer.
- State what a responsible edit of this interview would keep, and why.)* [6 marks]
3.11 Craft Practice
(Write a 20-second television script for a public service message urging pedestrians to use the foot overbridge outside a busy school gate. Use the VIDEO and AUDIO format followed in this chapter. The voice-over must not exceed twenty-five words. Submit the script only.) [5 marks]
(Draw a four-frame storyboard, by hand, for the following situation: a student returns a lost wallet to a shopkeeper. Label each frame with its shot size and its camera angle, and write the audio for each frame beneath it. Submit the storyboard on one sheet.) [5 marks]
(Write a six-line shot list for the arrival of a school bus in the morning, naming for each shot the shot size, the angle, the subject and any movement, in that order. At least two shots must carry a camera movement. Below the list, add two lines explaining what motivates each of those two movements. Submit the shot list and the note.) [6 marks]
(You are given this brief: a small library wants more students to borrow books during the examination term; audience is students of classes IX to XII; constraint is one location and no performers other than the borrowers themselves. Write the brief’s missing single-minded proposition in one sentence, then write a 15-second script in VIDEO and AUDIO format that delivers it. Submit both.) [6 marks]