02.02.02
Coverage with Intent
Plan the views your scene actually needs.
- Directing
- Producing
What the Instructor can readThe Instructor reads your frames in the order you give them. It cannot assess movement, performance timing or sound from stills. This lesson's feedback rubric is new and has not been reviewed by an instructor yet.
The Idea
Plan the views your scene actually needs.
Coverage is the set of views that gives an editor ways to construct a scene. More views can offer flexibility, but each costs setup time and may distract from the central event. Start with the scene's change, then ask what the viewer must see to understand it. A wide shot may preserve a relationship; a detail may reveal information unavailable there. A close-up is not automatically more emotional.
Separate essential evidence from insurance. If returning a key is the scene's change, the editor needs a readable transfer or a deliberate decision to withhold it. Repeating the same information at several distances may not add useful options. Plan overlaps in action where you want to cut, while allowing a single sustained shot when that better serves the scene.
Watch
Watching is optional. The worked example below is a complete route through the lesson on its own. These links identify the films — they are not a promise of free streaming, and the questions are FILMCRAFT's own.
Bicycle Thieves
Vittorio De Sica · 1948
Identify which view supplies a necessary fact in a short passage.
PlayTime
Jacques Tati · 1967
Consider what a shared wide view preserves that separate close-ups might remove. These are alternatives to test, not a hierarchy.
Break It Down
For The Spare Key, a simple plan uses: 1, hallway view establishes door and person; 2, hand and key show the snag; 3, a wider ending shows the person leaving with the ring. The detail earns its place by revealing the obstruction. An additional face view might help another interpretation, but it is not mandatory evidence. If the snag is already clear in view 1, the detail may be optional.
- 01
Worked example
For The Spare Key, a simple plan uses: 1, hallway view establishes door and person; 2, hand and key show the snag; 3, a wider ending shows the person leaving with the ring. The detail earns its place by revealing the obstruction. An additional face view might help another interpretation, but it is not mandatory evidence. If the snag is already clear in view 1, the detail may be optional.
Frame Lab
Visual mission
Write three columns: beat, information needed, proposed view. Delete any view whose only purpose is “coverage.” Replace that label with the particular editorial option it provides.
FILMCRAFT stores your observations and source links — never other people's images.
Try It
Try It
Submit a three-row shot plan as text, 150–220 words total. Cover an object being offered and accepted or refused. For each row state the information, camera position and an action overlap. Solo: one hand offers; the object is left or withdrawn.
Constraints
- Exactly three rows
Deliverable
your beat-to-view plan (150–220 words)
Make It
Make It
Submit exactly five original storyboard photographs in planned order plus a 180–250-word shot plan. Use one location and at most two performers. Explain which views are essential, which provide alternatives, and where you would cut. Still photographs demonstrate planned views, not edit timing or completed action continuity.
Exactly 5 frames.
Constraints
- Exactly five views
- A still plan cannot prove moving continuity
Deliverable
exactly 5 original frames, in order · what each view carries (180–250 words)
AI Lab
Ask AI to identify one missing piece of evidence and one potentially redundant view. Require frame references. It may default to conventional wide/medium/close coverage; compare that template with your actual scene. Revise one of five views or its role. Keep purposeful long-take plans if they supply the intended experience.
Sign in to sketch reference frames for this lesson.
Reflect
Go Deeper
Plan the same event as one unbroken shot. List the staging changes needed to make your essential information visible.