Establishing shots and Cutaways

What is an establishing shot and a cutaway? Well you're about to find out!

Establishing shot
An establishing shot will be used at the beginning of any movie or new scene. The establishing shot tells the viewers where the movie or scene is taking place. Sometimes this will be iconic clips, for example: If we were introducing the viewer to New York City an establishing shot may be Yellow Cabs, Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty or Times Square. Quite often the opening credits of a movie will appear with the establishing shots.

The Video below shows the opening scene of What happens in Vegas. This shots tells the viewer that the following scene takes place in modern day New York City.

Cutaway's

A cutaway is a piece of footage which has many uses. Some of these uses include: covering over a mistake or to make a long take less boring.

Covering over a mistake:

If the cameraman accidentally knocked the camera, or a child or animal got in the way of a take, then a cutaway may be used to cover it over. How? Before the shooting the cameraman will film for a few minutes some of the scenery or other related happenings. This will later be used as cutaway material. So, back to our mistake, the filmmaker has this mistake and if he were to just cut it out that would leave a jump (see video). So what does he do? He takes a small piece of 'spare' cutaway footage and places it over the mistake but keeps the dialogue flowing. This give the viewer the illusion that nothing has changed in the main take.

The following video I made demonstrates the use of a cutaway to hide a mistake