Therefore, shots communicate beyond just visuals. They’re a filmmaker’s tool to steer your emotions as you watch a film.
One of the most multi-dimensional shots used in films is an extreme long shot.
What Is an Extreme Long Shot?
To define it technically, an extreme long shot is when the camera is significantly far away from the subject, including everything around the subject within the frame. While often misunderstood to be a simple establishing shot, extreme long shots are more like a visual literary device that has its strategic uses.
Technical Features of an Extreme Long Shot:
- Includes the subjects along with their entire surroundings.
- The camera is kept at a significant distance away from the subject, reducing their size in context to the vastness of their surroundings.
- Higher depth of field.
- Might feature significant negative space within the frame
- Can be static or moving, depending on the filmmaker's intent.
What Does an Extreme Long Shot Mean in the Language of Cinema?
If a film is like a sentence, then each shot determines the tone and emphasis used to deliver that sentence.
Words can be highly deceptive when not backed by tone, a reason why texts can be misleading in their expression. Similarly, if the correct choice of shots does not back your narrative, your audience might take away something that you didn’t mean.
So what’s the impact of an extreme long shot in a narrative and on the audience’s psyche?
Let’s understand the framing and composition in an extreme long shot to analyze its impact.
In an extreme long shot, your subject or character is usually far away from the camera, reducing their size in relation to everything else around them.
Next, the depth of field is medium to high in most extreme long shots. Finally, lighting in extreme long shots is often very well exposed because the shot holds for so long.
An extreme long shot is used in the following cases:
1. Establishment of Locations, Emotions, Relationships, and Situations
Most of the time, extreme long shots are underutilized. They do much more than establish the location for the audience.
Try to visualize a man standing in the middle of a field, all alone, and you're watching him from far away. Or a man dodging his way through the busy streets of a Chinese night market. In the first, an extreme long shot will effectively convey the man's loneliness, while in the second, it might evoke feelings of chaos, being overwhelmed, or the character being lost in the crowd.
It’s not like the other shots cannot express similar emotions, but with an extreme long shot, you’re presenting the emotion with greater vigour. As viewers, we feel a sense of distance from the character, which intensifies our emotional response to the unfolding events.
“What would I do if it happened to me?”
An extreme long shot effectively reaches your deepest emotions.
2. Cinematic Disconnect
By widening the frame, the filmmaker presents more information to the audience in a single shot. An extreme long shot also disconnects the audience from the character they’ve been deeply invested in so far, making them concentrate on the things around the characters instead by introducing physical space between them.
Think of it like taking a step back to see the bigger picture. Especially when suddenly used after a series of close-ups and mid shots, extreme long shots can trigger a variety of emotions, depending on the story, just by breaking you out of the trance.
This temporary disconnect allows for a fresh emotional reconnection.
3. Cinematic Reveal
An extreme long shot is one of the most iconic ways of making a reveal. Imagine using a sequence of mid-shots, close-ups, and extreme close-ups for a build-up, and then an extreme long shot, out of the blue, to end the scene with a bang!
An extreme long shot reveals more than just physical details—it exposes emotional depths and narrative significance.
You can also use extreme long shots to flip emotions or emphasize them.
Breaking Down Three Iconic Extreme Long Shots by Great Filmmakers
1. Inglourious Basterds Directed By Quentin Tarantino
Amidst the lush green pastures, cows grazing on one side, there’s a quaint little hut, clothes hanging to dry, and a man busy at work.
Visually, that's how the film opens. The colors are bright yet comforting, the composition balanced, but when combined with other filmmaking elements, the extreme long shot allows the film to open with ease. However, by the fourth shot, another extreme long shot quickly shifts the tone to discomfort.
Here, the emphasis is not primarily on location, but rather on revealing the lives of the characters on screen.
The polar opposite usage of extreme long shots is brilliant in the opening sequence of Inglourious Basterds. If you notice, there is zero or very minimal movement. We observe alongside the main character without experiencing his perspective directly, creating a sense of helplessness and concern. We learn about their lifestyle without even knowing what’s going on.
2. La La Land Directed By Damien Chazelle
This is one of the most beautiful sequences in this heartfelt love story set against the backdrop of Hollywood.
As the two main characters slowly fall in love, we take a tour around the city—a place of dreams, magic, and hope.
3. Forrest Gump Directed By Robert Zemeckis
In the “Run, Forrest, run!” scene, the sequence ends with an extreme long shot.
After a series of mid and close-up shots, as the camera goes static on the extreme long shot, we experience Forrest's sense of freedom while remaining emotionally grounded as observers.
An extreme long shot is dramatic and expressive.
While this shot has the power to reset a narrative, they are often underused, being employed primarily to open and close narratives or establish locations.
An extreme long shot breathes confidence into the narrative across emotions, themes, and subtexts.
To better understand the impact of extreme long shots in film, revisit the above examples and try to pinpoint how the shot and its strategic timing impact your emotions. Next, try to analyze it within the narrative, with the character, and then with yourself.
What’s your favorite example?
