Tilt-Shift
Tilt-Shift is a composition technique: The focus plane is tilted off perpendicular, leaving a narrow band sharp across the frame. On a wide view it makes real places look like models. In PREVIZ picking it sets the lens in Keyframe, Director and Infinitum.
by the PREVIZ team
The focus plane is tilted off perpendicular, leaving a narrow band sharp across the frame. On a wide view it makes real places look like models.
- Reads as
- Artistic
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Runs in
- Keyframe · Director · Infinitum
- LensKeyframe · Director
Canon TS-E 24mm
Tilt-shift for selective plane of focus and perspective correction.
circular bokeh · minimal flare · sharp
Best for: Architecture, Miniature effect, Selective focus
Picking the technique sets these controls; it does not paste text into a prompt. The setting can be re-run, checked against the settings beside it, and carried into the next shot.
Also in composition
What the glass does to the frame: how much of it is sharp, how wide it reads, what the edges do.
- Shallow FocusBasic · Cinematic, Romantic
- Only a thin slice of the scene is sharp. Isolates the subject from its surroundings and is most of what makes an image read as 'cinematic'.
- Deep FocusAdvanced · Dramatic, Documentary
- Everything from foreground to horizon is sharp. Lets action play out on several planes at once instead of directing the eye by focus.
- AnamorphicIntermediate · Cinematic
- Squeezed capture that yields a very wide frame, oval bokeh and horizontal blue flares. The most recognisable 'big film' signature there is.
- Vintage GlassIntermediate · Nostalgic, Romantic
- Older uncoated lenses: lower contrast, swirling backgrounds and flares that bloom easily. Imperfection used deliberately.
- Split DiopterAdvanced · Dramatic
- Half the lens carries a close-up element, so a near face and a far face are both sharp with a visible seam between them.
Reads the same way
Other techniques that read as artistic — a light or a lens to pair with this move.
- Bird's Eye ViewIntermediate · Artistic, Cinematic
- Straight down from directly overhead. Flattens the scene into pattern and geometry, and detaches the viewer from the action entirely.
- Steep OverheadIntermediate · Dramatic, Artistic
- Steeply down but not fully vertical. Keeps faces readable while a true bird's eye loses them — the usual choice when you want the detachment but still need performance.
- Profile ShotBasic · Artistic, Dramatic
- Dead side-on, ninety degrees to the subject's facing. Reads as formal and observational — you are watching rather than being addressed.
- Extreme Wide ShotIntermediate · Cinematic, Artistic
- The figure is small against the landscape. Scale is the subject — the person is there to give the environment a size.
- Locked OffBasic · Artistic, Documentary
- The camera does not move at all. A deliberate choice, not an absence of one — stillness reads as composure or as unsettling patience.
- ChiaroscuroAdvanced · Dramatic, Artistic
- Extreme contrast between light and dark with very little in between. Borrowed from Baroque painting; the darkness does as much work as the light.
- SilhouetteIntermediate · Artistic, Dramatic
- The subject is unlit against a bright background, reduced to outline. Identity withheld — shape carries the whole shot.
- Blue HourIntermediate · Nostalgic, Artistic
- The twilight window after the sun is gone but before full dark. Cool, even, and just bright enough to hold detail in the sky.
- Neon LightingIntermediate · Cinematic, Artistic
- Saturated coloured light from signage, usually two clashing hues. The look of a city at night in almost every film made since 1982.
- MoonlightIntermediate · Horror, Artistic
- Cool, dim, directional light with deep shadows. Cinema's moonlight is a convention — real moonlight is far dimmer and has no colour at all.