Close-up

What this is about

Directors budget close-ups like strong spice: the scene earns its way in from wider sizes, and the cut into the close-up marks the turning point. For camera and light the size is demanding — focus depth shrinks to centimeters, skin and eyes need care, and every continuity slip of hair or make-up suddenly becomes legible. Shot lists mark the close-up beats so make-up knows when the precision hour arrives, and so the schedule protects quiet set time for them.

A term only helps when everyone on set means the same thing by it — so what follows is how it is used, not a dictionary definition.

What runs differently here

Where this differs from the general case:

• The English close-up maps to the German Groß; the medium close-up roughly to Nah — the ladders differ slightly.
• Eye light is part of the size: without a catchlight the face reads dead.
• Close-ups cut best arriving from a wider size; stacking them flattens the scene.

With TillyGen

Shot sizes are a field on every TillyGen shot, so the list shows at a glance how many close-ups a scene leans on.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.