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Television Production & Broadcast Journalism
Copyright Goodheart-Willcox Co., Inc.
Subjective shot, also known as point of view (POV) shot, is a special
camera technique, Figure 4-18. The camera itself becomes the eye of one
cast member. The viewer sees the world through the eyes of that charac-
ter. Examples of this technique include:
• A camera is mounted in a stunt driver’s car. As the car is driven up
and down hills at high speeds, the audience’s stomachs lurch as if
they were actually riding in that vehicle.
• In a suspense fi lm, the camera is positioned outside a house in the
middle of the dark woods. “We” are looking through the branches of
a bush into a window of the home. “Our hand” reaches up into the
fi eld of view of the camera and pushes away leaves on the bush to
clear our view into the house.
subjective shot: A hand-held
camera technique in which
the camera itself becomes the
eye of one cast member. The
viewers see the world through
the eyes of that character.
Also commonly called POV
shot.
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Figure 4-18. In a
subjective camera shot,
the camera becomes the
eyes of one character in
the program.
POV is pronounced by saying each of the individual letters
P-O-V. It is not pronounced like ‘pov’ as in the first syllable in
the word “poverty.”
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A reaction shot captures one person’s face reacting to what another
person is saying or doing. This is a very powerful type of shot. For exam-
ple, in a scene where a policeman delivers sad news to a distraught par-
ent, the shot should be of the parent hearing the news, not the policeman
delivering the news.
A reaction shot is similar to a subjective shot. The difference between
them is that a reaction shot is literally a shot of a face reacting to what some-
one else is saying or doing, while a subjective shot is when the camera liter-
ally is the eyes of a character. In a subjective shot, the people the camera
“sees” may or may not be aware that they are being watched.
reaction shot: A shot that
captures one person’s face
reacting to what another
person is saying or doing.