The video-craft encyclopedia.

Camera pulled back so the subject reads small against their environment. Sets the world before you let people care about who is in it.

Subject framed from the waist up. The workhorse of dialogue scenes - close enough for performance, wide enough for gesture.

Face fills most of the frame. Used when an emotion is doing more work than a line.

Shot from behind one character toward another. The visual grammar of two people listening.

Frame the world through a character's eyes. Use sparingly - it commits the audience to a perspective.

Camera tilted off the horizon. Unease, disorientation, or - when overused - a film-school cliché.

Camera physically moves toward or away on a track or wheeled rig. The most cinematic move you can make.

Camera lifts or descends on a mechanical arm. Cheap drones replaced 70% of these. The other 30% are why you still rent a crane.

The opening wide that tells the audience where they are before anyone speaks.

Close-up of a listener, not the speaker. Reactions are where stories live; most editors don't cut to them enough.

Operator holds the camera. Imperfection is the look - energy, intimacy, urgency, all at once.

Eyes, hands, a watch face. Cut here when one detail has to land harder than the whole scene.

Two characters sharing the frame. The single best way to show a relationship without writing dialogue about it.

Three subjects sharing the frame. Triangles read as group dynamics; line them up and you flatten the energy.

Four or more subjects in one frame. Hard to block, easy to ruin - assign a focal point or it's chaos.

Mid-thigh to top of head. Named because it included the holster. Reads as confident, ready, slightly mythic.

Cousin of the cowboy - knees up. Older Hollywood standard for two-shots before the medium took over.

Whole body, head to feet, with a sliver of room. The performance-and-costume framing.

Subject is a dot in the landscape. Use it to make people feel small, or to set scale before the close-ups land.

A brief cut to something outside the main action. Hands, a clock, a window. Buys you time and rhythm.

A close-up of an object the audience needs to read clearly - phone screen, note, key. It's a cutaway with a job.

The wide take that covers the whole scene end-to-end. Your safety net when coverage goes sideways.

Camera below eye-line, looking up. Makes the subject loom - power, threat, mythology. Use intentionally.

Camera above eye-line, looking down. Diminishes the subject. Often misused on protagonists.