How to Take a Perfect Movie Screenshot

The Conversation (1974)
Cinematography by Gordon Willis

⚫ The Magic Moment

A movie is composed of scenes.  A great movie typically has, maybe, five or six great scenes, maybe fewer.  These are frequently the fertile grounds for great screenshots.  Within each of these scenes is a moment that will provide that scene's best screenshot. This moment often appears to last for several frames or at least a few frames, but after a careful review of those frames it invariably turns out that one of them is what I call The Magic Moment, the frame where the scene lights up, where it suddenly develops a personality, where the magic happens.  In still photography, 19th century Frenchman Henri Cartier Bresson called it The Decisive Moment.  Cartier Bresson is considered the father of photography as an art form.

⚫6 Tips for Capturing The Magic Moment.

1.  Work with a movie you have seen.

If you have seen the movie at least a few times, you probably know where to go to find your first Magic Moment.  You know something of the plot and probably the scenes marked by humor or pathos or suspense. If you have seen it several times, you definitely know.  Exploit this knowledge.  Go to these places to find a Magic Moment.

2.. When you can, work with first-rate cinematography.

Our screenshots are snapshots of paused moving film.  Their quality can be no better than the work of the cinematographers who shot the films in the first place.  Bad cinematography will leave you little to work with.  Great cinematography can yield more than a hundred great screenshots from a single movie.

In the Heat of the Night (1967)
shot by Haskell Wexler. He won
an Oscar for Who's Afraid of
Virginia Woolf? (1966)

Rio Bravo (1959), shot by Russell Harlan. He shot
Red River (1948), Witness for the Prosecution(1957),
and To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Titanic (1997) shot by Russell
Carpenter who won an Oscar
for his work on this film.

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)
shot by Karl Struss who won an
Oscar for this film.

The Maltese Falcon (1941) shot by
Arthur Edeson. He shot Casablanca (1942),
Frankenstein (1931), and All
Quiet on the Western Front (1930).

Casablanca (1942) shot by Arthur Edeson. Notice the eyes of both actors: different thoughts and emotions

but both moving the story forward.

Sunset Blvd. (1950) shot by John
Seitz who had 174 credits as
a cinematographer.

Mister Roberts (1955) shot by 3-time
Oscar-winner Winton Hoch who
also shot The Searchers (1956).

3. Use the desktop or laptop computer with the best screen resolution.

4. Take several screenshots, one or two frames between each, in the span where you believe you will find The Magic Moment.

5. Examine the first photo, then the second.  Compare the second to the first, the third to the second, etc.  If you are unsatisfied when finished, try again in the same part of the scene, try later in the scene, or move to a different scene.

  

6. If your screenshots include human faces, closely compare facial expressions in your series.  Look at the eyes!  Which screenshot in the series has a pair or even a collection of eyes that grab your attention immediately?  If you have captured a Magic Moment, and you have identified the frame, it will be obvious in hindsight.  That frame will likely have an arresting look in the eyes of at least one actor.

 

Good luck.

Bookman's 101 Favorite Movies

Lee J. Cobb as Juror number 3 in 12 Angry Men (1957)

Bookman's 101 Favorite Movies is a 28-minute, 20-second screenshot video with all 101 movies, more than 300 screenshots, and rousing, familiar theme music from six of those movies.  Additional music accompanies the closing credits that will keep you glued to your seat.  These are my favorite movies, not a collection of the greatest films ever made.  I applied only one criterion to the movies that made the list.  They had to be movies that, if any of them came up in conversation, I would exclaim, "That's one of my all-time favorite movies!"  

Amanda Plummer and Tim Roth in Pulp Fiction (1994)

Bookman's 101 Favorite Movies (Abbreviated Version) is an 18-minute, 42-second slideshow video of all 101 movies. The music accompanying the screenshots is George Gershwin's "An American in Paris."  Enjoy.