A Survey of Point of View (POV)

November 1, 2013

A Survey of Point of View  (POV)

In this paper I will survey the concept of Point of View (POV) for film by looking at it from varying perspectives. I will explore POV in writing as a means for understanding it in filmmaking; discuss POV narration in documentary filmmaking; explain POV camera shots; and look at new technologies and how they are enabling filmmakers to depict POV in innovative ways that create deeper sensory experiences.

When sifting through possible references, I came across the book The Power of Point of View: Make Your Story Come to Life, by Alicia Rasley. While this is a writing reference, I thought it might shed some light on the concept for film, after all, as filmmakers we also tell stories. Rasley is referring to the narrative perspective through which a story is told (2). During my first residency at the Art Institute of Boston/Lesley University, students and faculty who critiqued my Iran doc sample would ask me, “Where is your voice?” My mentor Michal Goldman has since asked me, “Is the film about my relationship with the characters? Is it a character’s personal story? Or is it an educational historical film?” In her opening chapter, Rasley says an author can individualize her story . . . by considering who the POV character is and how that affects the narration of the plot” (9), and that this narrator is “a person with values, thoughts, emotions, attitudes, and a unique way of perceiving the world and telling a story” (9). Michal Goldman has pushed me to think about my perspective in the Iran documentary: What does it mean to me that I was friends with the main character for many years before she opened up about her story? Perspective refers to perception, thought, and emotion, and POV determines whose perspective, that is perceptions, thoughts, and emotions, you get in the story (Rasley 9).  

In her book Documentary Storytelling, Sheila Curran Bernard discusses POV when crafting narration in documentary film (212). First-person narration is when the narrator refers to himself; second-person narration is seldom used; third-person omniscient, the most commonly used form, is when the narrator using “he” or “she” can discuss anyone’s thoughts or actions and is limited to objective factual information; and finally, third-person subjective, uses “he” or “she,” but has the same point of view as first-person narration (Bernard 212). As an experiment, I wrote a first-person narration on my thoughts and emotions about my experience filming Israeli citizens from different backgrounds preparing salads—Arab and Jew, religious and secular, Sephardic and Ashkenazi. Ross McElwee in his documentary film Bright Leaves is the first-person narrator as he tells the story of his family’s legacy in the North Carolina tobacco industry.

The most common reference I found was for POV shots, where the scene is shown from a particular character’s viewpoint. POV shots are subjective because they show us the story from the perspective of a character in the film (Edgar-Hunt 121). A POV shot is accomplished by placing the camera at the side, over the shoulder, or at the position of the eyes of an actor whose viewpoint is being shown (Mascelli 22; Asher and Pincus 324). The audience sees the event from the character’s viewpoint as though he is standing alongside him (Mascelli 22). This contributes to the audience’s sense of identification with the character and of participation in the action (Phillips 92). In Psycho, for example, the audience often sees the horrible events through the eyes of Norman Bates (Phillips 92). A character looking at the character, whose viewpoint is being depicted, looks slightly to the side of the camera not into the lens (Mascelli 22). POV shots can follow medium wide over-the-shoulder shots where the over-the-shoulder shot establishes a relationship between two characters (Mascelli 22).

When a shot is preceded by a shot of a character looking off-screen, that shot becomes a POV shot (Mascelli 22). The audience will always make the connection between the two shots (Brown 8). For example, in The Birds, Hitchcock quickly cuts between a horrified Melanie looking out the window of the Tides restaurant and the explosions at the gas station. Similarly, in his film North by Northwest, Hitchcock shows Roger Thornhill looking into Van Damm’s window, then cuts to a shot of what he sees, then back to a shot of him looking (Bordwell and Thompson 106). Godard uses POV shots in his opening scene of Breathless when he cuts between Michel reading a newspaper and a dark-haired woman who signals him about a car to steal. Not only are POV shots important for storytelling and presenting the emotional side of a character, they also demonstrate the importance of off-screen space as part of the story (Brown 8). 

Bordwell and Thompson use the term “optical POV” as a device that generates a degree of subjective depth (390), where the audience sees what the character sees as she sees it (390). In North by Northwest, Hitchcock controls the audience’s knowledge through Roger Thornhill’s POV (Bordwell and Thompson 390). We see what Roger Thornhill sees as he sees it and are restricted through the POV shot to what he learns at that moment (Bordwell and Thompson 390).

           

The POV shot can instill sympathy in an audience if it belongs to the protagonist, but fear if it belongs to the antagonist (Sijll 156). In Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, the shark’s POV is used to instill fear in the audience (Sijll 158). For example, first he shows beautiful underwater shots of a woman swimming followed by the woman being attacked and killed a moment later. From this we glean that the first shots were the shark’s point of view (Sijll 158).

It is the filmmaker who introduces a point of view by choosing what shots the audience sees and arranging them in an order (Brown 2). David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson call this the “Kuleshov effect,” after Lev Kuleshov, one of the early filmmakers of the 1920s (Bordwell and Thompson 281, Brown 8). Kuleshov experimented by using the same shot of a Russian actor with a neutral expression intercut with shots of nature, some soup, a baby, and a dead woman. The audience connected the respective shots with tranquility, hunger, joy, or sorrow (Brown 8).

When the filmmaker wants to involve the viewer more closely with the event, she uses POV shots. These shots are intended to give audiences a sense of intimacy with the character (Sijl 156). As an exercise for my Iran doc, I shot my character Sharona making Persian rice from her viewpoint, standing above her with the camera at her eye level, focusing on her hands as she worked. With this I intend to give the viewers a more intimate glimpse of the process and help them identify with this culinary tradition that Sharona lovingly maintains.

Advances in technology have generated a whole new level of shooting POV. For their film Leviathan, filmmakers Verena Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, of the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard University, mounted GoPro cameras on helmets, cranes, chains and ropes in this documentary about the New England fishing industry (Greene). The film includes shifting perspectives from the crewmen’s point of view to that of the fish to that of the water and is an experiment in radical subjectivity (Greene). Through the varying perspectives, the viewer viscerally experiences the beauty and the horror of life at sea (“Leviathan”).

In summary, whether it is through the character or filmmaker’s voice, narration or a camera shot, the filmmaker uses POV to disclose information that propels the story. It can be used to personalize a documentary about the tobacco industry, share information in a Hitchcock-like suspense thriller or create a sensory experience about the New England fishing industry. Almost a century after the concept was first developed, new technologies are broadening the definition and taking it to new level.

Works Cited

Ascher, Steven and Edward Pincus. The Filmmaker’s Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide for the Digital Age, New York: Plume, 2007. Print.

Bordwell, David and Kristin Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction. 5^th Ed. New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies, 1997, Print.

Brown, Blain. Cinematography: Theory and Practice. Boston: Focal Press, 2002. Print.

Breathless. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard. Perf. Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg. The Criterion Collection, 1960. DVD.

Edgar-Hunt, Robert, John Marland and Steven Rawle. The Language of Film. Lausanne: Ava Publishing, 2010. Print.

Greene, Robert, “Leviathan is a Non-Fiction Game Changer,” Filmmaker Magazine. Web. 28 Feb. 2013 http://filmmakermagazine.com/65679-leviathan-is-a-nonfiction-game-changer/

“Leviathan.” Cinereach. Web. 2011 http://www.cinereach.org/grants/grants-recipients/leviathan

Mascelli, Joseph V., The Five C’s of Cinematography. Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 1965.

North by Northwest. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Perf. Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Maison. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayor, 1959. DVD.

Phillips, William H., Film: An Introduction. 4^th Ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2009. Print.

Rasely, Alicia. The Power of Point of View: Make Your Story Come to Life. Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, 2008. Print.

Russan Ark. Dir. Aleksandr Sokurov. Perf. Sergey Dreyden, Mariya Kuznetsova, Leonid Mozgovoy. The State Hermitage Museum, 2002. DVD.

The Birds. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Perf. Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy. Universal Pictures, 1963. DVD.

Van Sijll, Jennifer, Cinematic Storytelling: The 100 Most Powerful Film Conventions Every Filmmaker Must Know. Studio City: Michael Wiese Productions, 2005. Print.