Writing a camera direction

Gohanto

Gohanto

Veteran
Working on a script that I'm shooting myself (so writing a shooting script). There's a camera move I knew that I need to make a scene work, but I'm not sure how to write in script format.

An identical move is used in A.I. when the mother turns to see David pulling her "real" son towards the pool. The camera starts on a CU of her fast, then she turns around and the camera dollies and pans a 180 very quickly to reverse direction (showing her world has just dramatically changed)

Any idea how to write that in script form?
 
There's a great quick formatting book, called "The Hollywood Standard" I love it, it's honest and written by trusted and experienced people and very clear and basic. It's helped me tons for stuff like this as a resource.

And Ninja has it right imo, but I have not read AI's script or seen the movie for a long time, perhaps you can try and find it on script-o-rama.com or another place, dig through it for the scene see how they wrote it.

There are many ways to go about this, you can give literal specific direction like

"CLOSE on (character) as they (insert description)
"CAMERA PULLS BACK and WHIP PAN'S around to reveal..." or whatever. When you use or say camera, you should always capitalize it and the action/movements associated with it.

Since this is a shooting script and you are shooting it yourself don't stress too much, it doesn't have to be pristine or fancy, be literal with the directions. And since you know what you want you can be more specific with the shot description/direction (like say 180 degrees with the pan) but what Ninja said imo works as a very general direction for what you described (and is clear and concise, and short, unlike my response to you =D
 
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