Closing Walls, One Lens: The 10-Second Katla Chase
You are storyboarding a 10-second chase beat in a Punjabi short film. The location is a 2.4 m wide katla (lane) in old Amritsar: 4 m high walls, wet brick, three practical tube lights at 6 m intervals, and one shop shutter that is closed for the night. The boy runs toward camera; a vendor's cart is 6 m behind him and must stay visible. The director's brief is specific: 'I want the walls to feel like they are closing in, and I must see his face and the cart in the same beat.' You have a Super 35 camera (1.5x crop) with 18 mm, 35 mm and 50 mm primes, room for six panels in ten seconds, and permission to add exactly one prop from the art department. He also wants one panel where the boy's panic reads while his back is to the camera.
1. Which of the three primes opens the beat, and which one carries the face close-up? Justify using field of view, distortion, and what each lens does to a 2.4 m lane with 4 m walls.
Read the worked answer
Open on the 18 mm; close on the 50 mm. The 35 mm is the connector, not the star.
On a Super 35 sensor (1.5x crop) the 18 mm behaves like roughly a 27 mm on full frame - about 66-68 degrees horizontal field of view. At 1.5-2 m from the boy it holds him and both walls at once, and it leaves the cart 6 m back readable as a shape. Wide lenses exaggerate the convergence of nearby parallel lines, so the 4 m walls visibly lean inward - that is the brief, 'closing in', delivered by the glass rather than by the drawing. Camera height matters as much as the lens: put the lens at 0.8-1.0 m and the walls loom over him.
The cost of the 18 mm: inside about 1.2 m it stretches forehead and nose and makes him shrink into the lane, so it cannot carry the panic close-up. The 50 mm (roughly 75 mm equivalent, about 27 degrees horizontal) compresses the lane, throws the walls out of frame at close range and isolates the face - that is the panic panel, and a low 50 mm on the cart makes the cart look heavy and close behind him. The 35 mm (about 52 mm equivalent, near-normal) is the honest mid-tracking lens and the one that connects the two extremes.
Annotate lens and camera height on every panel. 'Wide shot' tells the DP nothing; '18 mm, lens 1.0 m, boy at 1.8 m' tells them everything.
2. The boy's back must be to us and the panic must still read in a single panel. Which one prop do you order, and how do you frame it?
Read the worked answer
Order a mirror, not a stunt. A steel-framed shop mirror (or a polished steel plate on the closed shutter) hung at head height about 4 m ahead of him gives you the face and the back in one frame, with no cut.
Framing, 35 mm, camera low at 1.2 m, slightly behind and to his left: his shoulders and the back of his head fill the near right third, the mirror holds his reflected eyes and open mouth in the centre third, and the cart's handlebar stays visible in the far left third. Three depth planes, one panel, and the audience reads the chase, the fear and the distance in the same glance.
Motivate the prop: the lane is already wet brick with a closed shop, so a mirror hung by a shopkeeper reads as real. Alternatives if the art department cannot hang anything - shoot into a rainwater puddle (works, but flattens the face and loses the cart), or use the shutter's polished steel (works if you light it). Weak fallbacks: a thrown object or a hunched silhouette; they show that panic exists but not the face, and the director asked for the face.
Critically, annotate it: write 'reflection' on the panel and draw a thin arrow from the mirror to the boy. Unlabelled, the animator or colourist will read the reflected head as a second character in frame.
3. You have six panels for ten seconds. Allocate the time and the lenses, and explain why those gaps rather than an even split.
Read the worked answer
Six panels over 10 s averages 1.67 s, but an even metronome will kill the beat.
- P1, 0.0-2.0 s: 18 mm, low. Boy enters frame right running at camera, walls converging, cart small at the back. This panel carries the geography, so it gets 2 s.
- P2, 2.0-3.5 s: 35 mm, tracking at his shoulder. 1.5 s.
- P3, 3.5-4.5 s: 50 mm, face only. 1 s. The shortest panel is the emotional hit; held longer, the fear goes slack.
- P4, 4.5-6.5 s: 50 mm, low on the cart bursting through a puddle or clipping a crate. 2 s, because the audience needs time to read 'it is gaining'.
- P5, 6.5-8.0 s: 35 mm, the mirror reflection. 1.5 s.
- P6, 8.0-10.0 s: 18 mm, same setup as P1 but closer. 2 s.
Reasoning: give the two wides the longest holds because they are doing the navigation work; give the face the shortest because recognition is instant. Cut within a lens family at the end (35 -> 50 -> 50 -> 35) so the eye is not re-adjusting to a new look while it is trying to follow the action. Repeating the P1 angle for P6 is a deliberate match: the audience recognises the frame and feels how much closer everything now is, which is the whole point of 'closing in'. No panel exists only to look good; every panel changes either the distance, the information or the emotion.