Camera Shot Types, Angles & Movements

A bird's eye view shot looks straight down at a scene from high above, with the lens roughly perpendicular to the ground. Depth collapses, so figures read as shapes moving across a flat plane rather than as people we are standing among.

overhead shot · top-down shot · god's eye view

Camera angles describe where the camera sits relative to the subject's eyeline, and therefore what the audience is invited to feel about that subject. The angle never changes what is in the frame, only the vantage point on it, which is why the same performance reads as powerful from below and vulnerable from above.

types of camera angles · camera angle · shooting angles

Camera movements are the ways a camera changes position or orientation during a shot, from a pan that rotates it in place to a dolly that carries it through space. Movement adds information across time rather than within a frame, which is why a moving shot reveals, follows or reframes instead of simply showing.

camera movement · types of camera movement · camera moves

A close up shot fills the frame with one thing, most often a face from the shoulders up or a single object. Because context is cropped out, the audience has nowhere else to look, which is why this is the size that carries emotion, decision and detail.

close-up · extreme close up · big close up · insert

A crane shot is taken from a camera mounted on a crane or jib arm, so the camera physically rises, descends, or arcs through the air during the take. The vertical travel is what defines it, and it is what separates the move from a dolly, which stays on the ground, or a tilt, which only rotates.

jib shot · boom shot · crane up

A dolly zoom moves the camera toward or away from a subject while zooming the lens the opposite way, so the subject stays the same size while the background appears to stretch or compress. The subject holds still and the world behind it changes shape, which is why the effect reads as vertigo or dawning realisation.

vertigo effect · Hitchcock zoom · zolly · contra-zoom · trombone shot

A dutch angle is a shot where the camera is rolled sideways so the horizon sits at a slant instead of level. The tilt reads as instability, which is why it signals unease, disorientation, or a character losing control.

canted angle · oblique angle · dutch tilt

An establishing shot is the frame that tells an audience where a scene is happening before anything else in it happens. It is usually wide and usually first, and its job is to hand over the geography of a place so that every tighter shot afterwards can be read without confusion.

scene setter · re-establishing shot

A high angle shot places the camera above the subject's eyeline so the lens looks down. Looking down shrinks the subject against the ground, which reads as vulnerability, exposure or surveillance, and it trades sky for floor in the background of the frame.

high angle · downward angle · overhead angle

An insert shot is a tight shot of a detail that exists inside the scene, such as a hand on a door handle, a watch face, a note, or a gun on a table, cut into the wider coverage. It carries information the wide framing cannot, and it gives the editor a place to compress time or hide a join.

cutaway shot · detail shot · insert

A long take is a single uninterrupted shot that runs far longer than the average cut around it, often a minute or more, so a whole scene plays without an edit. Duration is the only requirement: the camera can be locked off on a tripod or travelling through a building.

oner · continuous take · sequence shot

A low angle shot places the camera below the subject's eyeline so the lens looks upward. The vantage point makes the subject loom over the viewer, which reads as power, threat or heroism, and it replaces the floor in the frame with ceiling or sky.

low angle · upward angle · worm's eye view

A master shot is one continuous take that covers a whole scene from start to finish, framed wide enough to hold every actor and every important action. It is the take an editor can always cut back to, and the reference that keeps the closer angles consistent.

master angle · master scene technique

A medium shot frames a person from roughly the waist up, close enough to read facial expression and still wide enough to show gesture and posture. It is the default size for dialogue because it carries performance and body language in the same frame without forcing the audience to choose.

mid shot · waist shot · medium two shot

An over the shoulder shot frames one character past the shoulder of another, so the audience sees the speaker from roughly the listener's position. The near shoulder anchors the frame in a real place, which is what makes a conversation feel shared rather than assembled from separate portraits.

OTS · over-the-shoulder · dirty single · reverse angle

Pan and tilt are the two ways a camera rotates from a fixed position: a pan turns it horizontally, a tilt turns it vertically. Neither changes where the camera is, which is what separates them from a tracking or crane move, where the camera itself travels through space.

panning · tilting · zoom in zoom out

A POV shot places the camera where a character's eyes are, so the audience sees exactly what that character sees. It only reads as subjective when the surrounding edit establishes whose eyes they are, which is why it almost always arrives between a shot of someone looking and a shot of their reaction.

point of view shot · first-person shot · subjective shot

A rack focus shifts the plane of focus from one subject to another during a single take, so what the audience is looking at changes without a cut and without the camera moving. It needs shallow depth of field and two subjects at clearly different distances from the lens.

focus pull · pulling focus · snap focus

Shot types are the standard names for how a camera frames a subject. Each name fixes three things: how much of the subject the frame holds (shot size), where the camera sits relative to the subject (angle), and whether the camera moves during the take. Naming all three is what makes a shot repeatable.

types of camera shots · camera shots and angles · camera terms · shot list vocabulary

A tracking shot is a shot in which the camera physically travels through space with a moving subject, holding them in roughly the same part of the frame while the background slides past. The movement of the camera itself, not a rotation or a zoom, is what defines it.

trucking shot · travelling shot · follow shot

A whip pan is a pan executed so fast that the image smears into horizontal streaks. It is used either inside a shot, as a violent redirection of attention, or across two shots, where the blur at the peak of the move hides a cut and the two clips read as one continuous camera move.

swish pan · flick pan · whip transition

A wide shot frames a subject in full with visible space above and below, so the audience reads the subject and the environment at the same time. It is the size that explains where a scene takes place and how the people in it are arranged, which is why scenes are usually built outward from one.

long shot · full shot · extreme wide