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Film & Television vocabulary · Shots and Camera Movements

Point-of-view shot

Meaning in film & television, with examples

nounCommon term

In film & television, point-of-view shot means: A shot that shows exactly what a character is seeing, as if the camera were the character's eyes.

In Turkish: öznel çekim, bakış açısı planı, POV

How it is used

Shortened to POV shot or just POV in scripts and shot lists: HER POV. It is usually edited between a shot of the character looking and a shot of their reaction. Horror and found-footage films use it to make the audience feel inside the scene.

Example sentences

  1. Cut to a point-of-view shot of the letter in his shaking hands.

  2. The whole opening is one long point-of-view shot from the killer's side.

Common collocations

  • POV shot
  • from her point of view
  • subjective camera
  • cut to a point-of-view shot
  • camera angleThe position and direction from which the camera looks at the subject, such as from above, from below or at eye level.
  • shotOne continuous piece of film recorded from the moment the camera starts until it stops, or the piece of it that appears between two cuts.
  • close-upA shot taken very near the subject, usually showing a person's face or a small object so that the audience can see emotion or detail.
  • frameThe edges of the image that the camera records, and everything inside them. It also means one single still image of a film.

More terms: Shots and Camera Movements

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