Any one with movie or film making knowledge have an answer for this 2 part inquiry?
What is the name of the camera shot involving 2 or more actors where the camera is behind the head of one actor, showing the other actors face front during dialogue. Then the camera will switch places and show the face of previous actor whom before we could only see the back of their head. Sorry for the vague description. A good example would be The preacher Cain confronting the father at the front door of the house in Poltergeist 2.
In regards to that shot, when the camera is showing the face of one actor and the other actor with camera behind them is speaking - is that actor actually speaking, or is it just redubbed from another time.
Sorry if this is hard to follow, but its the best I can describe it and I’m curious.
Sounds like you are referring to the “180 degree rule” of filming:
Basically, when you go back and forth between two people speaking, one character should always be on the right, and the other one always on the left. See diagram at link.
For your second question, my guess would be that it is filmed with two cameras and then edited, but I don’t really know. And it probably depends on the production, director, budget, etc.
The shot is called an over theshouldershot. I don’t know if there is a special term for a series of OSSes.
Could go either way. At the very least they are saying the lines (so you can see the associated movements) even if the lines are dubbed in later. (In some cases, it might even be a body double, if they have a good match.)
Regarding question 2, ironically enough it oftentimes isn’t even the actual actor if all you see is the back of the head… for larger productions with complex shooting schedules, they will have a body double to use for all the establishing shots, and when they seem to be using the 2-camera technique, it’s actually just 1 camera, with a different actor each day.
I believe point of view (POV) is another term that’s used, at least when the back of the other person’s head isn’t in the frame. Normally it’s filmed with someone else reading his/her lines, and often in more than one take.
I first noticed this many years ago watching an episode of Bewitched. Due to some extraordinarily bad continuity, details of Samantha’s hairdo kept changing as they cut back and forth from her to her interlocutor.
Yeah, I’ve noticed in some of those shots, the back of the head of the actor, doesn’t seem like it really is the actor, just a body double. So I was wondering if I was right.
Bewitched was a single-camerashow. This means that they film the scenes facing one direction, then move the camera(s), lighting, microphones, etc to the next position and film those scenes. (Contrast with multiple-camera.)
POV if the onscreen actor is from the offscreen actors point of view, over-the-shoulder if the facing-away actor is in the shot. Changing the camera to the other side is reverse-angle. The actor you can’t see speaking is usually recorded, and the recording is used or the actor dubs his lines in post (ADR, Automated Dialogue Replacement , or ‘looping’).
Another good example of your first question is the opening scene of Reservoir Dogs.
Regarding your second, according to imdb.com, in the film Almost Famous, there’s a scene where Frances McDormand has a telephone conversation with Billy Crudup. When Frances McDormand’s character reprimands Billy Crudup’s character over the phone, Crudup was actually was on the other end of the line.
Yes, but the OP was asking specifically about the type of shot that shows the back of the head and shoulders of one of the two people, which is an Over the Shoulder. A POV can be an Over the Shoulder–provided that it is intended to be the view seen from a third figure standing watching the first two, otherwise, an Over the Shoulder is not a POV.
Ok then, so for another example, since I just watched it this last weekend. In the Lord of the Rings/Fellowship - during Borimir’s death scene conversation with Aragorn. Would that be a POV shot, since I don’t recall ever seeing the back of Aragorn’s head.
You might be misremembering, as the scene (at least the dialogue between Aragorn and Boromir part) clearly has a number of OTS* shots involving the back of A’s head.
*At least as close as you can get when one of them is lying on the ground.
Hi. Cinematographer of the last 37 years chiming in here.
Features, episodic, music videos, broadcast etc.
It’s called an “over”. Or OTS. For Over The Shoulder. We will be told “dirty” or " clean".
If it it’s dirty that means you see a piece of the shoulder and or head and shoulders of the actor you are shooting past. If it is clean it means you’re emulating the eye line of an over-the-shoulder shot without seeing a piece of the other actor at all.
As for whether or not it is actually the actor you believe it is doing the work- that varies greatly from show to show and situation to situation.
Those people who have spoken about a stand-in being used are entirely correct. If star number one must be on another location they will put a stand in an identical costume to stand in.
I was working on The Sopranos once and did a tracking shot behind James Gandolfini that result in a dirty over.
The problem was that he was so much taller than the actress I was facing that I decided to move the camera down and shoot past his arm and elbow as I finish the shot. The DP was satisfied with that idea in rehearsal and that’s how we shot the scene.
Same here. I think our attention is meant to be directed at the actor facing the camera, whether they’re speaking or not (for reaction shots and such), so directors and editors figure we won’t notice this. But I tend to focus on the speaking actor, even if it’s just the back of the head, and it’s often very obvious when they’ve overdubbed the dialogue from a different shot.