Great establishing shots are a very subtle thing. It not only sets the place and time in which the story happens, but also establishes a tone, establishes a mood, and brings the viewer into what's about to occur. Establishing shots in silent films were pretty much just still images. Citizen Kane innovated in a different way by adding live action of monkeys in cages in front of this beautiful painting of a Gothic manor on the hill. As the medium of film evolved and every new generation of filmmaker strove to put their own stamp on the establishing shot, a visual language developed and establishing shots were woven into the opening of the story or of the scene. The out of the establishing shot is showing where the story is going to take place, not revealing a big wide open frame that overloads us with information. Beautiful establishing shots, pan up or crane up or dolly in, slowly revealing and pushing back the edges of the world. A dense cityscape or landscape just sort of doesn't really show us where to look. It doesn't give us the information in a way that we can consume it. A device that was established in the 70s and 80s was a slow tilt up that revealed the city or the house or the country where the story was going to take place. A often used trope is a shot speeding across nameless water, then a flurry of light appear and the camera tilts up to slowly reveal the skyline of New York or Chicago. But it's become a trope for a reason. It gives us the information at the speed at which we can take it in. It not only shows us the location, but it takes us to the location. Some films take this to the next level by pushing all the way into the city and ending on a specific office or place where the action is centered. Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy took this to on a whole nother level where we fly into the city and discover the Dark Knight brooding on the rooftops of Gotham City or Hong Kong. These shots work because they show us not just the space, but the characters and they interrelate them so that we can understand and get context for the story that's about to take place. In Brande Parmer's Scarface, there's a masterful shot that starts on the neon pink industrial skyline. A beautiful Cadillac drives into shot and we pan down with the Cadillac to arrive at a modest house. Each element is introduced in turn and we get the connections as they appear. Everything is woven together, which is pretty surprising since 20 minutes before this in the same movie, we saw a guy get dismembered with a chainsaw. Great establishing shots not only tell us where we are, when we are, but how the characters are related to this space and the links that bind them. I want to close by looking at two great establishing shots that do the opposite of one another. The first one is from Trading Places. We start on a well-to-do street. We crane down following a brawls-roice and end up as a three shot of the main characters in the backseat of the car. Because the car moving down the street brings us into the scene and shows our characters related to where we are. The second one is the opposite of this from Skyfall. We start tight on a car. The car turns into the driveway and in the distance we see Skyfall, but the camera keeps craning up and reveals this amazing statue of a stag that's both proud, but also the subject of the hunt. Sam Mendes, the director of Skyfall, will have all these elements together in a beautiful visual tapestry that connects them, locates us and sets up the final climactic act of the film. That's our look at the art of the establishing shot. I encourage you to use these techniques in your own films and rather than just cut to an establishing image of a city. Work out ways that you can integrate all the elements of the story that you're trying to tell, the characters, the location, the setting, the time frame into one integrated shot so that your audience is slowly drawn into and becomes almost a character themselves in the story. Thanks very much for watching. I will see you next time.