Aerial Shot
An angle where the camera is very high up, on a plane, helicopter or drone, looking down on a large area. A wide landscape spreads out at a glance, and people become so small that the place, not the person, is the star. It usually looks down at a slant; looking straight down from directly above overlaps with a bird’s eye view. Flying while filming is treated separately as a drone shot.
How it feels
- Grandeur
- Scale
- Isolation
- Seeing the whole
- Lingering
When to use it
- Wide natural places like islands or coastlines
- A city intersection
- Introducing a place at the start of a story
- Action across a big space, like a battle or a chase
In the movies
Wings 1927
According to the AFI Catalog, the aerial scenes were filmed above Kelly Field in Texas, and many film historians rank its cinematography among the very best. It is an example of aerial filming; the sources do not say whether the camera was angled down.
Not to be confused with
- High Angle
- A high angle looks down at the subject from a few meters up, close by, with the subject at the center. An aerial is much higher and farther away, so the place is the center.
- Bird's Eye
- Bird’s eye is about direction (straight down from directly above); aerial is about height (very high altitude). Looking straight down from high up is both.
- Drone
- A drone shot is a movement, flying through the sky. An aerial is a camera position, held still high up.
Prompt
aerial shot
Aerial shot. The camera is high in the sky, looking down at a slight angle over a wide area, and the person is a tiny figure in the landscape.
Try these combinations
Aerial + wide shot: a small figure on the desert
Aerial wide shot, slight downward angle, a lone hiker crossing a vast desert, static hovering camera
Aerial + bird’s eye: a busy intersection
Aerial top-down view of bustling Tokyo intersection