The document discusses how eye lines and camera angles create different levels of empathy and perspective between the audience and the characters. It explains that a direct eye line and close camera angle results in the highest level of empathy, while a profile or back view creates more objective distance. As tension and drama increase in a scene, eye lines tend to move closer to the camera. The exact direction of the eye line compared to the face can also subtly influence the perceived expression or perspective.

1. Eye-lines and the Camera
Practical Cinematography

2. Compass Points of the Eye-lines
The Camera is a ‘presence’. It is a kind
of ‘stand-in’ for the audience.

3. • The eye-line is a measure of our feeling of
empathy with a character. The more the
camera angle, the greater our sense of
subjective involvement.
• Interactions shot in semi-profile are relatively
objective. We, the audience, remain outside
and relatively neutral observers.

4. • With the three-quarter eye-line, close to
camera, tension is at its maximum.
• It is common practice, as a scene builds in
dramatic tension, to use eye-lines closer to
the camera.

5. Front View

6. Front View
• Eye-line narrow to the lens. In a close shot this
is commonly the image that a director uses for
the full impact of personality. Our sense of
empathy with the character is strong.

7. Three Quarter View

8. Three Quarter View
• Eye-line is wider. The impression of empathy is
not quite so strong. But we still see the
thoughts and feelings and, depending on the
context, will ‘identify’ with her.

9. Side View

10. Side View
• Eye-line is now very wide and we can see only
a little of the the eye that is furthest from
camera. We now seem to be looking at the
character. It’s a more ‘objective’ shot.

11. Complete Side View

12. Complete Side View
• As soon as we can see only one eye the shot
becomes much more impersonal. Camera
feels like an onlooker. We may or may not feel
empathy, but we are likely to feel empathy,
but we are likely a degree of objectivity, a
distance.

13. Semi Back View

14. Semi Back View
• If we can see enough of the curve of the cheek
and eye to recognise what expression there
might be on the face that is turned away, we
may still get some sense of personality. But it
is likely to feel like a point of view angle.

15. Full Back View

16. Full Back View
• Nothing of the face can be seen. Because all
expression is left to our imaginations,
paradoxically, a back-view can sometimes be
used –in certain contexts – to produce a very
strong sense of empathy.

17. Eye-lines and the Camera
• In matching what is important is the eyes, not
the face.
• Notice that when the eye-line is not in the
same direction as the face, there is apt to be a
suggestion of slyness in the expression.

18. • An eye-line just below the level of the lens
may – in some contexts have a slightly more
‘introspective’ feeling than one over the
camera.
• Needless to say it is dangerous to theorise
about these things.

20. Eye-line
Eye-line is narrowly to left though the face
is turned to the right of camera.

21. Eye-line is Narrow Left though the face is
turned slightly to the Right of camera.

22. Eye-line is Narrowly Right though face is
turned towards the left of camera.

23. Eye-line is wide right though the face is
turned narrowly to the left of camera.

25. • When the eye-line is well above the level of
the lens, the off-screen look will sometimes –
in some situations – imply a feeling of awe or
admiration, literally of ‘looking up to ’ the off-
screen person or situation.

27. • Conversely, when the eye-line is underneath
the lens, a close-up may have a sense of more
‘interior’ and private thought or feeling. It is
we ( the camera) who are looking for what is
‘behind the eyes’.