From Closeup to Wide in Moving Shots: SOY CUBA
Soy Cuba (“I Am Cuba”) is rightly famous for the incredible ingenuity and daring camera operation which went into making it, including this iconic oner.
A recent shot which does a similar “close to wide to close” is the ending of Adolescence Episode 3, which transferred its camera to a drone to get its effect of moving through the air and then brings it back down again.
Meanwhile, this Soy Cuba scene shot 50 years earlier (1964) used pulleys, specially designed rigs strapped onto its camera operator, and a custom-built cable device.
As Alexander Calzatti, the first camera operator, relates in American Cinematographer:
We used a special cable device which I built in Moscow before going to Cuba. We planned to fly the camera between two big buildings in a major street. Because of security and insurance problems we used it in a little street. We used two cables and a small cart with eight wheels and a fork underneath where the camera was placed at the [end] of a handheld move. The secret of how we attached the camera to the cart was a magnet, part of which was in the cart and part of which was built on the camera. From the window the camera moved out about 100 feet.
More than showing off, what are some purposes and effects of such a shot?
Physical Responses
First, showing off inspires awe. When a shot is this impressive, the utter technical audacity can make us feel swelling emotion.
And when the camera literally rises up off the streets, many viewers will feel the same stomach-drop we’d feel if we were attached to a cable.
Strong Contrasts
Starting close on faces, going incredibly wide, moving close again to show individuals reacting to the events of the street, then showing the scope of streets teeming with people small as ants, covers the full spectrum of an event like this.
There’s a sense of scale, but also a feeling of the personal. You can observe the grand event from different angles, but also see the emotions on those participating in it, and thus feel some of those smaller emotions elicited by grandeur.
Takeaways
Consider what you want the shot to accomplish; then shotlist or pre-vis or draw or test-shoot it; then plot it with extras and heads of department. After all that, if the camera rigs don’t exist to do what you need, simply build them from scratch.
Simple, right?