Tilt Down

The view drops, so the move usually ends on something smaller, lower or worse off than where it began. Looking down carries the weight of the position the camera is in.

It is also how a scene lands. After a wide sky or a tall building, a tilt down settles the audience onto the person the scene is actually about.

The camera pivots downward from a fixed height, with the lens position unchanged. The angle steepens and the distance to everything stays the same.

Give it a surface to travel down: a facade, a flight of stairs, a body, a rope. The route is what keeps the move readable.

The end frame is the point. It holds long enough to register, and it usually composes the subject with something above it left over from the sweep.

Use it to arrive at a person after establishing where they are, to reveal something on the ground, and to move from a face down to what the hands are holding.

Avoid it when the descent should be felt. Dropping through a space is a crane down, and it looks nothing like a tilt.

Crane Down travels through the height of the scene and the angle changes all the way. Tilt Down stays put and only steepens the look.

The check is the foreground. A tilt down leaves near objects at the same size and the same perspective. A crane down grows them as it descends toward them.

The model lowers the camera instead of pivoting it. Say the camera stays at the same height and only the lens turns, and ban crane and pedestal in the same line.

The other failure is a drift with no ending. Name the start of the sweep and the frame it lands on, so the move has a shape.