Medium Shot

What this is about

Most dialogue coverage lives here: hands stay visible, faces stay readable, two people fit without crowding. Because the size feels neutral, it neither comments nor intensifies — which is exactly why scenes settle into it and visit wider or closer sizes for emphasis. In the German ladder this is Halbnah. For planning, mediums are efficient: modest lighting precision, forgiving continuity, quick to repeat. When a schedule collapses, the scene often survives as mediums plus one close-up.

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:

• Waist-up is a convention, not a law; cutting at joints looks amputated, so frame between them.
• Medium shot, medium close-up and American shot are neighbors on the same ladder.
• Neutrality is its power: mediums establish rhythm so closer sizes can break it.

With TillyGen

Medium is the default size Tilly AI assigns to dialogue shots in TillyGen; you push individual beats closer or wider.

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.