Camera Angles

After you briefly mentioned the importance of camera angles in film, I was reminded of a movie that I recently viewed for my Latin American Film class. El callejón de los milargros follows the lives of several families who all live in the same neighborhood. Interestingly, the film tells the same story from several different perspectives. The film, which is not in chronological order, is divided into four chapters. Although each chapter tells the same general story, the camera is placed at a different angle in each chapter. In doing so, the film shows the same story from three different perspectives and demonstrates the importance of camera angles. For example, during a scene in the chapter which shows the perspective of a girl named Alma, the camera is outside the window of her house and shows two women in the background. In the next chapter, the film has the exact same scene, but the camera is angled to focus on the women with Alma in the background. Not only does this method of filming make for an interesting work, it also allows the viewer to understand how important perspective is in understanding a story. This method of filming also demonstrates the evolution that film has undergone during the last century. At the advent of film, a majority were shot with little movement and from only one perspective. Today, however, it is quite common to find films with an unbelievable amount of movement that are told from multiple perspectives.