CLOSE-UPS

Don't you love close-ups on big movie screens? Having live silhouette heads between you and the screen makes the experience even better.

If you've never seen a Clampett cartoon on a big theater screen, then you've really missed something. His characters are always leaning into the audience and looking down. They plead with the audience, patronize them, almost pat them on their heads. You don't get that when you see the cartoons on TV.

I love the idea of giant heads and bodies looming out over the audience and looking down. You don't even need 3D to get the effect.

If you're Eisenstein or Richard Lester or Sergio Leonne then you love the technique where you show the audience an ultra-long shot then....

...then, on the same shot you have someone step in front of the camera for an ultra close-up.

I love it when monsters stick their heads out over the audience and look around, as if they're trying to figure out which person to eat first.

Amazing but true: on a big 2D screen you can give the audience the physical sensation of looking up at something. I don't mean a simple upshot, I mean a shot where you get a definite sensation of light-headedness and insecurity about your balance, as if you'd tilted your head way back. To see what I mean, click to enlarge.

It's not enough to tilt the camera up to get this effect. You have to have something very distracting to look at up there, else the audience's logic will kick in, and they'll talk themselves out of the vertigo you want them to feel.

Oddly enough, shooting a glamorous woman in close-up doesn't always work. You can convey personality and charm in a close-up, but not sexiness...not sexiness in the glamour meaning of the word. I guess visual sex cues have a lot to do with proportions, and you need to step back a little to take that in. The close-ups are just punctuation.

Okay, there are exceptions. How about "Rear Window" where Grace Kelly leans into the audience and almost kisses the camera? Watching this scene was what your grandfather did to cure erectile dysfunction in the days before Viagra.

I saw "North by Northwest" on a big theater screen and the experience was a revelation. On a big screen the close-up shots in the cornfield make you feel that Cary Grant wants to jump into your lap. He seems to be appealing to the audience for help. I never got that from seeing the film on TV.