Full Body (WS)

Narrative function

Full body is for costume, blocking, and gait. You need the shoes, the hem, the way weight sits on a hip, the path to the door.

The figure occupies most of the frame height, so this is a portrait of a body in space, not a map of a valley. It is the wrong tool when land must dwarf the person, or when the beat is a face.

Calling every complete figure a long shot or a wide shot erases this size. If the human is still large in the rectangle and the feet are in, you are here.

If they have become a small mark in weather, you have gone longer.

How it works

Keep head and feet both in, with a little floor and a little air. The figure should own most of the vertical.

A 35mm to 50mm from enough distance avoids stretching the legs; a 24mm too close will cartoon the feet. Do not confuse this with a 24mm Wide room map.

Prompt: Full-body shot of [Subject], head to toe, figure complete in frame, environment readable around the silhouette.

When to use it

Use it when costume, blocking, and gait matter: a walk in a new coat, a stand in a doorway, a body that has to be seen whole. Do not use it when the land must win, or when you only needed mid-thigh for the hands.

Compared with similar shots

A Cowboy Shot stops at mid-thigh; feet are out. A Long Shot shows a full figure plus so much geography that the person is small in the world.

A Wide Shot lets place speak; bodies may be smaller still. Full body is the complete figure as subject, not cowboy, not long, not wide.

An Extreme Long Shot makes them a speck.

• Cowboy ShotShow hands, weapons, or stance without going full body.
• Extreme Long ShotScale is the emotion.
• Extreme Close-UpA detail is the scene: an eye, a mouth, a trigger.

In film

The Searchers uses complete figures in doorways and desert edges so costume and stance read before the land fully claims them. Drive holds night walks head to toe so gait and scorpion jacket are the sentence.

Grammar: person complete, place as margin.

Prompt it

Say head to toe. Example: Full-body shot of [Subject], head to toe, figure complete in frame, environment readable around the silhouette.

Do not write long shot, wide, or mid-thigh. For video, if the figure shrinks into architecture you have drifted into a long shot.

Full-body shot of [Subject], head to toe, figure complete in frame, environment readable around the silhouette.

What usually goes wrong

The usual wrong cousin is a Long Shot (person small in land) or a Cowboy Shot (no feet). The tell is a tiny figure in weather, or a crop at the knee.

Fix: feet in, head in, person still large in the frame. Do not label it WS or LS just because the body is complete.

Questions