Natasha Krinsky, an Animation Mentor mentor who teaches in the Game Animation and Character Animation programs, walks through how camera placement works in video games and why modern game cameras have started to feel more like film cameras. She covers the history of game cameras, the film techniques studios borrow from, and how developers blend cinematic shots with everyday gameplay to keep players immersed.
Meet Natasha Krinsky
With experience on major game titles like Life is Strange, Madden, and Clockwork Revolution, Natasha brings a wealth of industry knowledge to her students at Animation Mentor. Her focus: helping animators master the art of nuanced, emotional performances. She mentors students in both the 3D Character Animation program and 3D Game Animation program.
You can learn more about Natasha here.
From Blocky to Cinematic
Natasha opens by comparing older games, where the camera barely moved and just tracked the character from a fixed distance, to newer titles where the camera behaves almost like it was shot by a film crew. She points to the upcoming Wolverine game as an example of a camera that leans into cinematic framing during exploration, then shifts into a more gameplay-driven feel during combat.
She also compares old and new versions of Final Fantasy VII to show how far camera work has come. The original game used a simple, static camera, while the remake moves dynamically with the action, tracking enemies and characters the way a live-action film would.
Borrowing from Film School
Because games now aim for that movie-like feel, Natasha explains that camera placement in games draws heavily on traditional film cinematography. She runs through core concepts every animator should know: shot types, camera angles, camera movement, lighting, composition and framing, and lens or depth of field choices.
She also touches on specific film vocabulary that shows up constantly in games, including pans, tilts, handheld and tracking shots, the rule of thirds, leading lines, symmetry, the 180 degree rule, and shot types like close-ups and over-the-shoulder framing.
Switching Between Gameplay and Cutscenes
One of the trickiest parts of game camera work is the handoff between gameplay and cinematic cutscenes. Natasha shows several examples of this in action, including a finishing move in Spider-Man: Miles Morales and a scene in God of War where the camera shifts from a gameplay shot following the character from behind into a close, handheld cinematic framing of a conversation, then back again.
She also breaks down a similar moment in Uncharted, where an over-the-shoulder cinematic shot leads into gameplay that keeps the camera close behind the character. In Madden, the camera design goes further, mimicking the look of a live TV broadcast so the game feels like watching football rather than playing a video game, then pulling back to a wide gameplay camera that shows the whole field.
Camera Angles and Emotional Tone
Natasha spends time on how camera angle choices shape how a player feels about a character or scene. In Life is Strange, she points out over-the-shoulder framing and rule-of-thirds composition used to build emotional, intimate moments between characters, including a shot that shifts focus between two characters to show one of them coming back into the present moment.
She contrasts this with a tense, horror-style narrative game that uses a close, shaky handheld camera to make the player feel uncomfortable during a conversation, and with Resident Evil Village, where low camera angles looking up at a powerful character make the player feel small and out of control. She notes that this is the opposite of a scene she shows from Grand Theft Auto V, where a high angle looking down on a captive character gives the player a feeling of power instead.
Gameplay Camera Styles
From here, Natasha moves into the cameras players actually control during gameplay. She starts with classic side-scrolling cameras from games like Mario and Little Nightmares, which keep the action locked to a 2D plane even as the games have gotten more visually dynamic.
She then walks through over-the-shoulder combat cameras in Uncharted, The Last of Us, and Red Dead Redemption 2, all of which zoom in tighter when aiming and pull back out during regular movement. Flying and mounted cameras in Red Dead Redemption 2 and Hogwarts Legacy get their own mention, along with the swinging camera in Spider-Man, which moves aggressively with the character to make the player feel like they are swinging through the city too. She closes this section with first-person cameras, noting that they trade cinematic variety for a more immersive, in-the-eyes feel.
Building a Camera in Unreal Engine
To make things practical, Natasha switches over to Unreal Engine for a short demo. She shows the default third-person gameplay camera that follows a character from behind, then moves into Sequencer to build a more cinematic camera from scratch.
Using Sequencer, she creates a new camera, keyframes a zoom, and adjusts focus using the focus plane tool so a character can shift between being in and out of focus. She also points out settings like film back, aperture, and film grain, noting that Unreal’s camera tools work a lot like a real camera, similar to camera tools in Maya.
Key Takeaways
Natasha wraps up by reinforcing that modern game camera work sits at the intersection of film cinematography and gameplay design. Understanding both is what allows animators to build cameras that feel cinematic without getting in the way of how a game actually plays.
For animators who want to go deeper into gameplay camera work and cinematics, Animation Mentor’s Cinematic Cutscenes course covers this kind of camera work in more depth.
Want to be mentored by professional animators like Natasha?
At the core of Animation Mentor are our 3D Character Animation and Game Animation programs. Follow your animation dreams by learning from animators at studios like Disney, DreamWorks, Pixar, ILM, Riot Games, Netflix, and Blizzard!
