Single Camera Techniques

What is this essay about?

In this essay I will be talking about the different techniques and the differences between Single camera and Multi-Cam. As you can imagine, a single camera set-up is when the production use one camera at a time to shoot a scene , giving the film a much more intimate feeling, however it takes longer as you have to set up the shot each time you want to change the shot, which in turns make the production more expensive. On the other hand a multi cam setup conventionally uses 3 cameras, one focused in a wide shot, one a close up on a main character, and a final one may be a mid shot/two shot.

Camera:

Most moving image production is filmed with a single camera setup,  with the exception of documentary's, the news and soap's. However, saying this, single camera shorts don't always only use one camera as for high intensity action set pieces, such as a fight scene or large jump on top of a building, They do this so that they don't have to do it multiple times making it cheaper, but also using multiple cameras allows them to cut it together better.



Soaps, such as Eastenders or Coronation street, use a multi-cam set up because they have to film an episode for every night, so for them is is faster and more cost effective to use a multi-cam set up than a single camera set-up.

Lighting:

When lighting a shot during a single camera production you can re-adjust lighting on characters as and when you need to, whereas when you shoot with a multi-cam you set it up once and have to stick with it, which can make it look fake/a bad studio set.



In this scene they would have had to light each individual character/actor as otherwise you wouldn't be able to see their faces properly.

Sound:

 In single camera productions they usually use the "Land J cut" technique allowing there to be a slight overlap over the footage to make the conversation flow better. Often "Boom" mics are normally used to record the background/spoken audio during a single camera production. In interviews or on other multi-cam shoots, it can be easier to mic up the people in shot so they wear a small mie, allowing a crisp sound without worrying about seening the boom in shot.

Editing:

In a live show (Multi-cam) such as the news or the x-factor, the production team use a editing technique called "Mixing" where they simply cut between each camera while the act is perfoming, allowing the audience at how to see the performance from different angles and to see the judges (and audience) reactions.




For a single camera production, such as CW's "Constantine" the editing process would have been a large team of editors working together after shooting had wrapped to cut the scenes in the episodes together and to do all of the SFX. It would be costly and time consuming, expecially compared to live mixing.

Genres:

The most common genre's to use single camera production are; Crime Drama (Such as NCIS Los Angeles) Period Drama (Frontier) Horror (IT) Comedy (Thor: Ragnarok). The main reason most of these genre's use single camera is because it allows the filmmaker to get more emotion and feeling behind the shots/scenarios, as well as make it more interesting.




On the other hand, multi-camera productions are usually limited to Live shows (Such as Britain got talent) The news, some comedy shows (such as Mrs Browns Boys / Big Bang Theory). The reason for this is it is easier to get a more genuine reaction if they are filmed in the same take, rather than making the actor do a fake reaction in a different shot.