Long ShotWS

The whole body is in frame and the setting is in frame with it. That is the size where physical performance reads: how someone walks in, where they stop, what they do with their hands when nobody is talking.

It is also the honest size. Nothing is cropped, so the audience can check the geography of a scene against what they were told.

Head to feet, with air above the head and a little ground below the shoes. The subject fills most of the frame height without touching either edge.

A normal to slightly wide lens is usual. Going wider adds setting and bends the body at the edges of frame. Going longer flattens the figure against the background, which is why a long lens long shot feels more like a poster than a place.

Use it for entrances, exits, blocking, and anything the body does. It is the size that makes a stunt, a dance step or a walk legible.

Leave it alone when a line depends on the eyes. At this distance a face is a few percent of the frame and the expression is a guess.

Long shot and wide shot get used for each other constantly, and on a set nobody stops to argue about it. The useful split is what the frame is about. A long shot is about the figure. A wide shot is about the space the figure stands in.

Full body describes the same crop from the subject outward, so most requests for one produce the other. An extreme long shot is further out again, past the point where posture reads.

Carol Reed ends The Third Man (1949) on a long held frame of an avenue, with Alida Valli walking the whole length of it toward the camera. The shot works because the body stays readable the entire time and the cut never comes.

Models drift tighter. Asked for a long shot they often deliver a cowboy or full body crop with the feet clipped. Ask for head to feet in the same breath as the name.

The second problem is a face-first result. If the wording dwells on the expression, the model pushes in to deliver it. Describe the posture instead.