In film, a medium shot is a camera angle shot from a medium distance. The dividing line between "long shot" and "medium shot" is fuzzy, as is the line between "medium shot" and "close-up". In some standard texts and professional references, a full-length view of a human subject is called a medium shot; in this terminology, a shot of the person from the knees up or the waist up is a close-up shot. In other texts, these partial views are called medium shots. (For example, in Europe a medium shot is framed from the waist up). It is mainly used for a scene when you can see what kind of expressions they are using.
There is no evident reason for this variation. It is not a distinction caused by, for example, a difference between TV and film language or 1930s and 1980s language.
Medium shots are relatively good in showing facial expressions but work well to show body language.
The Doctor from Doctor Who is usually included in these shots. The TARDIS is also hidden somewhere in the background, or else it is not considered a Medium Shot.
Famous quotes containing the words medium and/or shot:
“As a medium of exchange,... worrying regulates intimacy, and it is often an appropriate response to ordinary demands that begin to feel excessive. But from a modernized Freudian view, worrying—as a reflex response to demand—never puts the self or the objects of its interest into question, and that is precisely its function in psychic life. It domesticates self-doubt.”
—Adam Phillips, British child psychoanalyst. “Worrying and Its Discontents,” in On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored, p. 58, Harvard University Press (1993)
“Politics in a literary work, is like a gun shot in the middle of a concert, something vulgar, and however, something which is impossible to ignore.”
—Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783–1842)