Some of the most diligent students of angles and all the ways we interpret them are the people who tell stories with pictures: videographers, painters, and photographers—some of whom definitely belong to the subreddit we're scrolling through.
To learn more about how they approach the topic, we contacted Justas Ramanauskas, a director from Vilnius, Lithuania. His portfolio includes commercials, music videos, and short films, and he told Bored Panda, "Composition is absolutely key in every visual art."
"At first glance, it might look simple, but every artist puts a lot of thought into it. Nothing within a frame is unintentional. Composing a shot is about information—what do you want an audience to know and feel? [Through this technique], you control information and emotion. It's a visual language; it's talking without saying a word."
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Ramanauskas, who also enjoys both digital and film photography, said it's the context that guides visual creators to determine which angle they should choose to convey the intended message.
For example, as a filmmaker, you work on the story you are telling, and analyze which ideas you want to put on the screen. "Let's say that a character starts the scene with high emotions and confidence, but then bad news changes how he or she feels. So, you may begin with a medium shot and a low angle. He or she looks strong ... and takes a lot of the frame. We, as the audience, see it from below. The character feels bigger than us."
"In the next frame, we can completely change the emotion with a wide shot, and maybe slightly from above," the director said. "The character sits down on a chair, there's plenty of empty space around. Suddenly, he or she looks lonelier. We perceive the scene from above, making the person look smaller, using a wide shot.
"And if we shift the camera to be positioned in a Dutch angle—where it has been tilted to one side, either the right or the left, so that the horizon does not run parallel with the bottom of the frame–the shot becomes more ominous; is our character in danger?"
Ramanauskas said these are just a few short examples, but they allow you to easily visualize how you can manipulate emotion just by moving the camera closer or further away, tilting it up, down, or sideways.
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When we asked Ramanauskas for an example, he showed us this shot from Die Hard (1988). It's the Dutch angle, and in this scene, "The villain, Hans Gruber (played by Alan Rickman), meets with John McClane (Bruce Willis). Our hero doesn't know that Hans is the baddie and thinks that he's just one of the hostages.
"Hans manipulates John by lying and acting as a victim. This canted shot makes the scene feel uneasy, as we, the audience, know that Hans is lying, and the angle enforces the uneasiness of the scene. If it was just a usual medium shot, we wouldn’t have any visual clue that something was wrong here," the director explained.
But if we pause the film and look at the frame, we immediately notice that something's off, even without any dialogue or sound. "This is the power of angle and composition!"
"In this frame from the 1947 film Black Narcissus, we have a high-angle shot that shows the height of the mountain," Ramanauskas said, adding that in reality, this bit was actually recorded in a studio and the floor is just a painting!
"Change the angle and the whole illusion disappears," he highlighted. "Sometimes, the decision is about practicality."
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In the visual arts, composition techniques help you to arrange things within a particular shot to provoke emotion and let you in on some information, and Ramanauskas stressed that there's so much you can do with it. "You can use the high angle, but it can be a close-up, or a wide shot. You can have a blurry background, and you can have depth. You can place the character in the center of the frame, or you can shove them to the side. You can even 'cut out' half of their body by adjusting the edge of the frame. You can have a lot of negative space around them, or the entirety of the frame can be an extreme close-up of their eye."
"Camera angle is just one technical aspect, but usually you need a combination of multiple for art to 'happen,'" the director concluded.
However, we could probably say the same about life 'happening' to us—a single moment is fleeting, but the sum of multiple moments gives it meaning.