A master shot is a film recording of an entire dramatized scene, from start to finish, from an angle that keeps all the players in view. It is often a long shot and can sometimes perform a double function as an establishing shot. Usually, the master shot is the first shot checked off during the shooting of a scene—it is the foundation of what is called camera coverage, other shots that reveal different aspects of the action, groupings of two or three of the actors at crucial moments, close-ups of individuals, insert shots of various props, and so on.
Historically, the master shot was arguably the most important shot of any given scene. All shots in a given scene were somehow related to what was happening in the master shot. This is one reason why some of the films from the 1930s and 1940s are considered "stagey" by today's standards. By the 1960s and 1970s, the style of film shooting and editing shifted to include radical angles that conveyed more subjectivity and intimacy within the scenes Today, the master shot is still an extremely important element of film production, but scenes are not built around the master shot in the same way that they were when professional filmmaking was in its infancy.
Famous quotes containing the words master and/or shot:
“Remember that you are an actor in a drama, of such a part as it may please the master to assign you, for a long time or for a little as he may choose. And if he will you to take the part of a poor man, or a cripple, or a ruler, or a private citizen, then may you act that part with grace! For to act well the part that is allotted to us, that indeed is ours to do, but to choose it is another’s.”
—Epictetus (c. 55–135 B.C.)
“In health of mind and body, men should see with their own eyes, hear and speak without trumpets, walk on their feet, not on wheels, and work and war with their arms, not with engine-beams, nor rifles warranted to kill twenty men at a shot before you can see them.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)