Wednesday 1 May 2013

Point of View in Film

Point of view is used for lots of things in film and many important texts have been written about it. Principally Mulvey's Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (Mulvey 1997) in which she establishes the terminology of the "gaze", and specifically the "male gaze" which dominates hollywood cinema. A common thing to do, especially in student films, is to use the POV to show a problem with vision, either a drunk state or passing out is common, it doesnt fit with our film and often looks cheap we wanted to use an effective but more subtle POV.

Another term often used within film when considering POV's is an eyeline match, a shot before the POV in which a head or eye movement signals the motion of the camera in the next. We sort of do this, our POV comes from a dead man, whilst we cant show moving eyes or head we use a shot from behind the shoulder with a fish eye lense to esablish the sense of space and then go to the POV a few shots later.

This helps the viewer realise they are looking through the dead bodies eyes. Our opening shot is also technically from the same point of view, the effect it should have is to make the detectives and forensic staff look towering, almost intimidating and to take away from the identity of the dead body, its just another case.



1. "Visual pleasure and narrative cinema." Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism Mulvey L., (1997): 438-48.

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