Neutral is a position, not a default
Every camera height makes an argument. Looking up at someone grants them scale and authority. Looking down at them reduces them. Sitting at eye level declines to make that argument, and the audience reads the absence.
This is why the angle dominates documentary and journalism. Testimony that is shot from slightly above is subtly discredited, and testimony shot from below is subtly aggrandised, whether or not anyone intended it. Placing the lens level with the eyes is the closest a camera comes to not having an opinion.
It also has a practical effect on how a scene plays. When nothing about the geometry is telling the audience what to feel, everything else gets louder: the performance, the framing, the lighting, the pauses. Directors who favour an eye level shot for long stretches are usually making that trade on purpose.
Getting the height right
The reference point is the subject's eyes, and that single fact accounts for most errors.
- Seated subjects. The camera has to come down, often to about a metre. Shooting a seated actor from standing height is a high angle, no matter what the shot list says.
- Children and animals. The correct height is often uncomfortably low, and it is the whole reason films about childhood feel different: they are shot at a child's eye height.
- Height differences between two people. There is no single eye level for a tall and a short character. Either split the difference, which flatters neither, or accept that each single carries its own angle, which is usually the better answer.
- Lying down. Eye level rotates with the subject. For someone in bed, the neutral position is beside them, not above.
Horizontal angle is a separate decision. Eye level with a three-quarter view is the workhorse of dialogue coverage; eye level shot straight on, with the subject addressing the lens, is a much stronger and rarer move.
Prompting it
Image and video models drift upward. Most of their training photographs were taken by a standing person holding a camera, so the learned default is a slightly high three-quarter view.
State the height relative to the subject rather than in the abstract: camera exactly at her eye height. The phrase eye level alone is often read as a style rather than a measurement.
Forbid the tilt explicitly: no tilt, straight on, horizon level. Small downward tilts are the most common way a generated frame quietly becomes a high angle.
Say what the eyes are doing, because it changes the whole reading: she looks slightly past the lens is observational, while looking directly into the lens is direct address. Both are eye level and they play completely differently.
For seated or short subjects, describe the position in the world as well: camera at the height of the chair back. Giving the model a physical reference in the scene holds the geometry better than any naming of the angle.