Dutch angle

The Dutch angle, also known as Dutch tilt, canted angle, oblique angle or German angle, is a type of camera shot where the camera is set at an angle on its roll axis so that the shot is composed with vertical lines at an angle to the side of the frame, or so that the horizon line of the shot is not parallel with the bottom of the camera frame. This produces a viewpoint akin to tilting one's head to the side.

In cinematography, the Dutch angle is one of many cinematic techniques often used to portray psychological uneasiness or tension in the subject being filmed.

Dutch refers to a bastardisation of the word "Deutsch", which means German in German. It is not related to the Dutch people or language. It originated in the First World War, as Navy blockades made the import (and export) of movies impossible. The German movie scene was part of the expressionist movement, which used the Dutch angle extensively.

A Dutch angle is a camera shot in which the camera has been rotated relative to the horizon or vertical lines in the shot. The primary use of such angles is to cause a sense of unease or disorientation for the viewer. Many Dutch angles are static shots, but in a moving Dutch angle shot the camera can pivot, pan or track along the established diagonal axis for the shot.

Dziga Vertov's 1929 experimental documentary Man with a Movie Camera contains uses of the Dutch angle as well, among other innovative techniques discovered by Vertov himself.

The angle was widely used to depict madness, unrest, exoticism, and disorientation in German Expressionism, hence its name , meaning German, was often conflated with the etymologically similar word which gives the corruption of the term now commonly used. Montages of Dutch angles are structured in a way that the tilts are almost always horizontally opposite in each shot, for example, a right-tilted shot will nearly always be followed with a left-tilted shot, and so on.

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