Eye Level Shot: What It Is, Camera Height and 10 Examples in Film

Yasujirō Ozu didn’t like pointing his camera down at people. His cinematographer, Yūharu Atsuta, remembered him saying, “I don’t like to look down on people.”

So Ozu kept the camera low, near the eye level of someone kneeling on a tatami mat. Steven Spielberg kept his at a child’s height for E.T. Pixar’s Ratatouille spends much of its time at a rat’s height.

All three are eye level shots. They just answer a different question: whose eyes?

That choice matters more than it looks. In one study, viewers trusted actors most when the camera sat at eye level. They rated them 5.03 out of 9, against 4.27 when the camera looked up at them.

This guide covers what an eye level shot is, how it compares to shoulder, hip, knee and ground level shots, what the research says, 10 eye level shot examples from Ratatouille to Tokyo Story, and how to shoot one yourself.

What Is an Eye Level Shot?

An eye level shot is a camera angle where the lens sits at the same height as the subject’s eyes. StudioBinder calls it a “neutral perspective” that “doesn’t exaggerate power dynamics or emotions.”

Columbia University’s Film Language Glossary says the camera is usually “approximately at eye level, or up to six feet off the ground.” In other words, it’s the default. If nobody makes a choice, the camera ends up here.

That’s why the eye level shot is easy to miss. It doesn’t shout. The audience looks at the character as an equal, not up at a hero or down at a victim.

Film scholars David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson split this into two choices. The angle is which way the camera points. The height is how far it sits above the ground. An eye level shot is a level camera at the height of the subject’s eyes, whatever that height is.

Angle is a different choice from shot size, too. An eye level shot can be a close-up, a medium shot or a wide shot.

Whose Eye Level? Camera Height Is a Choice

Here’s where it gets interesting. “Eye level” depends on whose eyes you mean.

Spielberg told American Cinematographer that for most of E.T., “the lens was usually around four feet, eight inches in the air.” For Elliott he would “drop the camera a little lower.” And “E.T.’s point of view was even lower than that, two feet, nine inches off the ground.”

For The Shining’s Big Wheel rides, Steadicam operator Garrett Brown needed “the lens just a few inches from the floor.” Ozu’s camera has been put at about three feet, or as low as 40 centimetres, depending on who you ask.

Each height builds a different world. Put the lens at a child’s eyes, and adults become towering legs and faces out of reach. Put it at a rat’s eyes, and a kitchen becomes a mountain range.

The camera is still “at eye level” every time. It’s just borrowing someone else’s eyes.

Eye Level vs Shoulder, Hip, Knee and Ground Level

The five camera heights keep the camera level and only change how high it sits. Here’s how they compare.

Camera height	Where the camera is	What it usually says	Example
Eye level	Level with the eyes	Equal, honest	E.T.
Shoulder level	Level with the shoulders	Neutral, a touch stronger	Mulholland Drive
Hip level	Level with the hips	Watch the hands and the holster	The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Knee level	Level with the knees	Grounded, a little bigger	Fargo
Ground level	On the floor	Low, unsettling, a child’s or animal’s view	There Will Be Blood

Shoulder level shot. StudioBinder puts the camera at roughly shoulder height, “slightly lower than the eyes but still relatively neutral.” It says shoulder level is “about as common as an eye level shot” and is “often used to subtly empower the subject.” Most audiences can’t tell the two apart.

Hip level shot. The camera sits at the height of the subject’s hips. StudioBinder calls the Western its “favorite genre,” because it keeps the gun belt and the hands in the frame. Don’t confuse it with the cowboy shot. That’s a shot size, framed from mid-thigh up. Hip level is a camera height. They often go together.

Knee level shot. StudioBinder calls it “a distinctly low vantage point,” though “not as extreme as a ground level shot.” It’s a useful height for a child’s view or for making an adult look a little bigger.

Ground level shot. The camera sits “directly on or just above the floor.” Keep it level, and you get a ground level shot. Tilt it steeply up, and it becomes a worm’s eye view, which we cover in our guide to the low angle shot.

For all 12 angles side by side, see our guide to camera angles.

Why Eye Level Feels Neutral

Film theory has long said that looking up at someone makes them powerful and looking down makes them weak. Eye level sits in the middle, and the research backs up why that matters.

In a 2018 study in Empirical Studies of the Arts, Andreas Baranowski and Heiko Hecht filmed 12 actors in a game show set modelled on Split or Steal. The camera sat about 1 metre away, either at eye level or about 30 degrees above or below. 34 students took part, rating how much they trusted each actor on a scale of 1 to 9.

Eye level won. Actors scored 5.03 at eye level, 4.57 from above and 4.27 from below. The gap over the low angle was clear. The gap over the high angle was smaller, and not statistically significant.

The authors’ conclusion was simple: “an eye-level camera angle is unsurpassed when attempting to elicit trust.” Camera height didn’t change how attractive the actors seemed. It changed whether viewers believed them.

That’s why so much dialogue, so many interviews and nearly every vlog sit at eye level. If you want the audience to believe someone, meet them where their eyes are.

10 Eye Level Shot Examples in Film

These 10 eye level shot examples count down to the most famous camera height in film. Each one answers the same question in a different way: whose eyes is the camera using?

10) Ratatouille (2007)

Ratatouille shoots Paris from two heights, a rat’s and a human’s.

Director Brad Bird’s film switches between Remy’s view and the humans’ view, so the crew needed reference for both. Pixar’s team shot reference photos on their hands and knees as well as standing up.

Scale did the rest. Effects supervisor Apurva Shah described a scene where Remy falls into a sink: “From a rat’s perspective, it’s almost like a human falling into a pool from much higher up.” At Remy’s eye level, a kitchen is a cliff face.

9) Room (2015)

Room keeps the camera with a five-year-old who has spent his whole life in one small shed.

Director Lenny Abrahamson didn’t cheat the size of the shed. “We didn’t cheat,” he told the Montreal Gazette. “We were always filming from inside (the space).” Cinematographer Danny Cohen had wall tiles built to come off, “allowing us to also poke the camera lens through these openings.”

To Jack, the shed is the whole world. “Scale is really an elastic for a kid,” Abrahamson told The Moveable Fest. Staying close to his eyes, the camera lets the tiny room feel as big as Jack thinks it is.

8) Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

Moonrise Kingdom lines its characters up at eye level, face on, like a picture book.

Wes Anderson and cinematographer Robert Yeoman shot the film on Super 16 with very formal, centred framing. “When we set up shots, they frequently end up with that framing,” Yeoman told American Cinematographer. “He has always had a love of theater, and he likes very formal compositions.”

Film scholar David Bordwell calls this flat, face-on style “planimetric.” You frame people against a perpendicular background, he writes, “as if they were in a police line-up.” A level camera is what makes that work. Tilt it even a little, and the dollhouse look falls apart.

7) Before Sunrise (1995)

Before Sunrise lets the camera sit at the table and just listen.

Richard Linklater’s film follows Jesse and Celine for one night in Vienna, made on a budget of $2.5 million. Most of it is two people walking and talking. The camera stays level with them, so nothing in the frame takes sides.

The writing does the heavy lifting. Linklater wrote the script with Kim Krizan, and the film is almost all conversation. A camera that sat higher or lower would comment on Jesse and Celine. At eye level, it just listens.

6) The Florida Project (2017)

The Florida Project shows a cheap motel near Disney World through a six-year-old’s eyes.

Director Sean Baker and cinematographer Alexis Zabé almost always put the camera at Moonee’s height, shooting most of the film on 35mm. “I don’t think there’s one shot in the film where you look down” at the kids, Baker told RogerEbert.com. “It’s always eye-level or looking up.”

From down there, the adults change. Zabé took a cue from Charlie Brown: “the adults become like arms and legs.” The motel’s money worries happen above the kids’ heads, and so mostly above the frame.

5) Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)

Jeanne Dielman watches a woman’s daily routine from a fixed, level camera.

Chantal Akerman’s film follows Jeanne (Delphine Seyrig) through three days of chores, often in real time. Writing for the Criterion Collection, Ivone Margulies describes the camera as “fixed and low (matching the filmmaker’s short height).” It films her from the front and rarely cuts in.

Akerman wanted to respect her subject, and said she didn’t want to cut “this woman in pieces.” In 2022, Sight and Sound’s critics’ poll named it the greatest film ever made.

4) Moonlight (2016)

Moonlight sometimes lets its characters look straight down the lens at you.

Barry Jenkins and cinematographer James Laxton tell Chiron’s story in three chapters, from boy to man. “At times, we’ll even have actors look into the lens and deliver dialogue,” Laxton said.

It only works at eye level. Look down at the lens, and the character seems small. Look up, and they loom. Level, they’re simply facing you. Once Laxton saw it work, his reaction was, “Let’s keep occasionally dropping that in.”

3) The Shining (1980)

The Shining rides through the Overlook Hotel at a five-year-old’s height.

Stanley Kubrick wanted the camera to chase Danny’s tricycle through the halls. Steadicam inventor Garrett Brown explained the problem in American Cinematographer: “We needed to have the lens just a few inches from the floor and to travel rapidly just behind or ahead of the bike.” Running on foot at those speeds, he couldn’t get the lens “much lower than about 18″ from the floor.”

So Brown rode in a wheelchair prototype that Kubrick had helped design years before, with the Steadicam arm mounted on it. It could fly the camera “with a lens height of anything down to 1″.” The result stays down with Danny, so the corridors stretch out ahead like a maze.

2) E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

E.T. puts the whole film at a child’s eye level.

Spielberg told American Cinematographer that the camera “was always on the Fisher dolly and the lens was usually around four feet, eight inches in the air.” The AFI Catalog says the height was chosen “to reinforce the child’s perspective of the story.”

It changes who the film belongs to. “There are a lot of ceilings in the movie because so often a child’s point of view does look up,” Spielberg said. Apart from the kids’ mother, adults’ faces are mostly kept off screen.

1) Tokyo Story (1953)

Tokyo Story is the most famous camera height in film.

An elderly couple visit their grown-up children in Tokyo, and find that only their widowed daughter-in-law has time for them. Ozu shoots almost all of it from the same low, still camera. Roger Ebert, summing up the critic Tadao Sato, put it “about three feet above floor level, or at the eye level of a person kneeling on a tatami mat.”

Not everyone agrees. Some writers put it lower, around 40 centimetres. Bordwell argues it “doesn’t mimic a seated person’s view” at all. Ozu gave a practical reason: “I turned my camera upward in order not to show the floor.” Either way, the height became his signature, often called the “tatami shot.”

How to Shoot an Eye Level Shot

1. Find the eye line. Set the lens at the subject’s eye height, not yours. If you can see up their nose or down on the top of their head, you’re not at eye level.
2. Match each character. Spielberg dropped the camera for Elliott and lower still for E.T. Two characters of different heights may need two different setups.
3. Sit when they sit. When an actor sits, their eyes drop a long way, so drop the camera with them. StudioBinder says hip level shots are “often useful when one subject is seated while the other stands.”
4. Get down for kids and pets. “You need to get down to your pet’s eye level, even if that means lying on the ground,” Digital Camera World advises. The same goes for children.
5. Drop a few inches for strength. A camera at shoulder level is still near neutral, but it gives the subject a little more presence.
6. Use it for talking to camera. The trust study above is the reason. Interviews, testimonials and vlogs work best at eye level.

FAQs About the Eye Level Shot

The Final Cut on the Eye Level Shot

An eye level shot puts the camera level with a character’s eyes. It feels neutral and trustworthy, and in the trust study it beat both high and low angles.

The real skill is choosing whose eyes. Ozu chose someone kneeling on a tatami mat. Spielberg chose a child. Pixar chose a rat. Each choice built a different world without a single tilt.

What height would change the next scene you shoot?

For the angles that tilt up and down, see our guides to the high angle shot, the low angle shot and the bird’s eye view shot. For every angle and shot size, see our guides to camera angles and the types of shots in film.