Perspective through cinematography

[Gustavo Perez]

I’m curious to know if you had a point in your early career where you needed to think consciously about making your camera subjective or objective… or maybe you ride by the seat of your pants, and I’m thinking too deeply about it.

I saw this interesting essay about how cinematography can illustrate perspective—the broader perspective of the narrative and that of the character(s).
For example, they gave an interpretation of No Country. The essayist believed that through multiple subjective POVs, you get a more objective narrative, as you can sample various individuals’ experiences to get the film’s cat-and-mouse EXPERIENCE.

 

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[dmullenasc]

That’s interesting, the idea that a movie takes on the perspective of so many characters in a subjective camera style that the overall effect is objective. That often seems to be the case in crime dramas, particularly with a detective / police investigator character — information is doled out to the viewer as a character learns it.  And despite the subjective nature of that approach, there is also an objective tone of a dispassionate or cynical “god’s eye” view of humanity.  And the truth is, most movies switch back and forth from subjective to objective perspectives.

[Gustavo Perez]

I do like that you note that most do switch between perspectives. I’m still new to all this, so I did an interesting thought experiment (to me, it was, at least). I found that you could use objective framing/ composition with subjective movement within a shot and still get an overall objective perspective of that scene with the bonus of emotionally motivated movement for a hint of empathy.

[James Parsons]

This may be a bit of a cliche answer, but whenever I think of a character’s subjective POV in a shot, I think of Jonathan Demme, especially (but not only) Silence of the Lambs. And of course, that’s a detective story which is powerfully concerned with diving the objective facts of the case from these subjective interactions…

[Author]

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