Crane Shot
Camera lifts or descends on a mechanical arm. Cheap drones replaced 70% of these. The other 30% are why you still rent a crane.
- COINED
- 1900s
- TAXONOMY
- SHOT TYPES
- RELATED
- 4
- TEMPLATES
- 0
The crane lifts the camera off the ground. The shot starts grounded, then rises - or starts up and descends into the action. Either way, it puts a vertical move into the language of the scene. Vertical moves carry meaning that horizontal moves don't. Up is power, transcendence, escape. Down is intimacy, commitment, descent.
Cheap drones replaced 70 percent of crane work. Drones do horizontal moves better than cranes ever did, and they fly into shots no crane could safely reach. What they can't do is move from ground-level into the air smoothly, with a precise endpoint. A drone hovers. A crane glides.
Use the crane when the move itself is the event. A great crane shot is one the audience feels - they may not consciously notice, but the lift puts a button on the scene that no cut could replicate.
Endings - pulling back and up. Reveals where the camera rises to expose new geography. Slow, deliberate establishing shots into a moment.
When the rig footprint won't fit. When a drone could do the job for a quarter the budget. When the moment is intimate - a crane reads as 'event'.
Terms next to this one.
Aerial camera via UAV. The new establishing shot. Most are 8 seconds too long.
Camera rotates vertically on a fixed point. Reveal upward for power, downward for collapse.
The opening wide that tells the audience where they are before anyone speaks.
Dolly backward away from the subject. Endings, reveals, isolating loneliness.