Height, or the perception of height, is critical when it comes to characterization. Characters that are tall are typically powerful, menacing, and intimidating. Conversely, characters that are small are seen as weak, youthful, and less frightening. Skillful movie makers utilize this technique to give their characters a certain level of believability, but this can also be manually altered or warped. One of the easiest ways to create the illusion of height is to adjust your camera angles accordingly. To make a character seem taller, lower the camera so that it is looking up towards the subject. The opposite is true if you want to make the subject look shorter. Other tricks can be used such as using wide angle lenses, having the actor stand on boxes, giving the actor larger props to work with, having the subject sit in a taller seat, and altering the setting so that the objects are bigger or smaller than reality.
I thought that the article was very informative and it taught me about tricks that I never would have guessed or realized. I learned of a few new ways to increase or decrease the perceivable size of an actor. How much is too much? What is the fine line between realistic and cheesy when it comes to increasing or decreasing the size of the subject? This is a helpful and very useful trick to know and I should keep it in mind for later use.
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