technique · 11 recipes
Close-Up & Shot Sizes
A head-and-upper-shoulders view prioritizes facial expression while retaining a small amount of body context.
Selected recipe
Full Body
Full Shot is an alias for Full Body in the Shot Size and Subject Scale family. This route selects that exact variant recipe, not the family default.
Free short AI video prompt
A starter line you can copy. The full timed recipe, still-image and production prompts are on the shot card.
Prompt rule: Honor the selected crop landmarks and subject-to-frame scale throughout the essential action. Choose focal length and camera distance together; no single crop or focal length applies to all size variants.
Close-Up: A head-and-upper-shoulders view prioritizes facial expression while retaining a small amount of body context. Keep the subject readable; motivate camera and light.
Technique guide
- When to use
- In close-up, read subtle expressions; in medium shots, retain gestures; in full-body shots, read posture; in wide and extreme long shots, read movement paths and environmental scale.
- How it works
- First clarify whether the information this time requires the eye area, the whole face, shoulders and chest, waist and legs, or the environment, then choose the shot type. Adjust the distance according to actual shooting or generated cropping, leaving edge margin for complete actions, and do not use focal length numbers as a guarantee of shot type. Compare the boundaries and scale of the beginning, middle, and ending frames to ensure the shot hasn't unintentionally pushed or pulled into another shot type.
- Common mistakes
- Using the same chest-up composition to pretend to represent all shot types. Cutting off hands and feet that should be kept during action, or enlarging or reducing them without reason.
How to read this page
Close-Up & Shot Sizes is one technique in Framing. The definition states the single mechanism the frame has to show. The technique guide covers when to use it, the steps, the usual mistakes, how it differs from the neighbors, and what a successful take looks like.
The clip above is one reading, made with a third-party video model. Another model, or the same model on another day, can land on a different frame. It is an example, not a promise that a prompt will match it.
The free short prompt is a starter sentence. The shot card is the timed recipe: scene, start and end frames, action, light, and color. Three sample cards are free on the site. The rest are part of GrokCine Pro. A second name for the same shot keeps its own URL and points back at this definition.
When you write a prompt, keep the one mechanism in the definition, then name the subject, the motion, and why the light is there. Do not stack a neighboring technique into the same sentence. If the name or the example is wrong, send this page's URL from the contact page.
Recipe
8 seconds · single take
A flamenco drama: in a shaded Andalusian courtyard in the late afternoon, moments before she walks out to dance in her late mother's place, a flamenco dancer in her twenties in a scarlet dress with a ruffled hem tests how it moves, against an ochre wall hung with blue pots of geraniums.
Shot cards
The full recipe for Full Body is a shot card
The full recipe for Full Body is a shot card. The start and end frames, timed action, lighting and color specs, a camera parameter table, copy-ready still-image and video prompts and negatives are open to GrokCine Pro members on the web.
Seen in these film styles
More in Framing
References
Sources we studied for this technique. External links; we don't embed them.
Articles & definitions
- Wikipedia: Full shot
Wikipedia · Web
A full shot frames the whole body from head to feet.
- StudioBinder: Full shot explained
StudioBinder · Web
Full shot explained.
Videos
- Cine study: shot size vs. focal length
@mattworkman · 2019-05-15 · X
Cine study: pick a shot size (e.g. medium shot), then vary focal length and distance.