Pay attention to how it starts as a POV, becomes a close-up of Daniel Craig’s James Bond, and then shifts to a medium shot—all while giving the audience the most essential information. In the simplest of terms, a master shot is the one take of a film scene that covers all the subjects, objects, and pieces of the set relevant to the overall scene. In other cases, you can eliminate extraneous camera setups with a more thoughtful, and dynamic complex master shot.

I was thinking of planning it dividing the script parts in different shots so I can film certain parts in a certain shot size, instead of covering everything in masters. Get that shot after you’re all done getting EVERYTHING else in your scene, and pepper that reaction shot in during your edit. This will give you a base unit to refer back to for any subsequent shots, as well as provide a bit of rehearsal for all the acting, blocking, and effects that might be needed for a particular scene. Overall, this book points toward some interesting technique, but doesn't do enough to make sense of them; it mostly wastes its own, strangely-shaped space. But while that’s the only function of an establishing shot, master shots also capture the action within that setting from beginning to end.A key prop that should have been in the background was forgotten because it wasn’t relevant to the first small piece; now you can’t put it in because you’ll break continuity.

However, this deprives editors of the benefit of having a useful safety shot in case there are any unforeseen problems with other camera setups.This was a gift for a friend of mine that had been in the film industry for many years, but was starting to get more experience behind the camera. This master shot will cover all the necessary information just as you’d see as the audience during a play, before going into these more specific shots. At the end of the day, you’re shooting a master shot to provide the backbone for a scene that you’ll further build upon with the rest of your shot types and coverage. From there you can add in other shot types like long shots, medium shots and close-ups, as well as sprinkle in cutaways and other creative shot types (like POV shots for example).

He also created three Master Shots ebooks: Story, Action and Suspense, which use audio and video to expand on the original content. A master shot captures all the essential action and elements of a scene—relevant characters, setting, props, lighting, and movement—without pause from beginning to end. Let’s examine the differences between the master shot and other shots for which it’s often confused. If your scene is so complicated that filming a complex master would significantly increase your set time, consider scaling it back, or commit to the long take.However, once you start to get a feel for how a scene moves and breathes, it’s perfectly OK to add some smooth and cinematic movement as long as it doesn’t distract from the information in the scene.