Why do movie directors use long shots?
Thanks to technology we are seeing a re-emergence of the longshot, it is becoming a trend again, the opening scenes of La la land and the many Netflix TV shows which use drones for long shots. In Martin Scorsese’s Silence there are some beautiful examples reminiscent of a style 25 years ago, Long live the long shot!
Many directors are known for their use of the variety of wide shots. A key example of them is the frequent use of establishing shots and very wide shots in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy showing the vast New Zealand landscape to instill awe in the audience.
In the 1993 film Schindler’s List, there is a running image of a small girl trapped within a concentration camp wearing a red coat (the only colour in the film). She is frequently pictured in a wide shot format as a way to display both her and the horrific surroundings to build a disturbing contrast.
The 1962 Lawrence Of Arabia contains an enormous number of extreme wide shots which successfully induced the feeling of scale of the lead in his surrounding and aesthetically dwarfed him due to his surroundings making him seem more vulnerable and weak.
In the 2008 film Batman-The Dark Knight featured an impressive practical stunt in which a large truck and trailer are flipped nose first. This is shot very far back to give the shot more clarity and to see the flip through its entirety as oppose to cutting mid-way through.
In the 2015 Ridley Scott film The Martian our protagonist Mark Watney is stranded on Mars and the film contains an enormous amount of all the wide shots . These are used to show the martian landscape and give the character the sense of isolation that the film would want.
And some of those epic long shots from Scorsese’s ‘Silence’ which used vintage film techniques that creates an epic experience for audiences.
