Extra Shot for Safety, Yes or No? – Various Approaches to Coverage

MZed Education

by Mascha DeikovaJuly 11^th, 2025

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“This was great, let’s go for coverage now!” How often do you hear or say this phrase on set? Have you ever found yourself in the editing room, not having enough footage to piece the scene together? Or, on the contrary, massively overshooting, knowing you’ll toss half the angles in post anyway? Of course, there is no single correct approach to coverage. It differs, depending on the scene, situation, and personal preferences. So, when is the extra shot worth it? What can it enhance or, conversely, destroy? Let’s take a look at various filmmakers of our time and how they handle this topic, and try to find the answers together.

Renowned German film director Werner Herzog once famously said that he sees the finished film play out in his mind. In his words, other directors sometimes don’t know what they’re doing, and so they push their decisions into post-production. And that’s okay. But not for Werner Herzog, because “there are many essentials – the rhythm of a film, the quality of acting, the focus on the wrong character – that you can’t fix in postproduction. You’d better take charge on the set and do it right there.”

Sounds harsh, doesn’t it? Yet there is truth to his words. At the same time, some directors would disagree and choose a different approach to coverage. Filmmaking is art, after all, and art is always subjective. What ways are there to choose from?

Universal principles of coverage

Let’s start with some universal principles that you would learn in film school. In the MZed course on “Directing Motion,” commercial director and Pulitzer-Prize winner Vincent Laforet guides us through the main ideas behind coverage.

First off, it should give you outs. Normally, we would always strive to meticulously plan a shoot whenever possible. (Let’s not take the event films or travel documentaries into account for now.) The best-case scenario is when a director knows how they will cut a scene before filming, just like in Werner Herzog’s quote. However, things don’t always go according to plan.

Focus gets buzzed, actors flub lines, booms come in frame, a multitude of things happen. And the idea behind coverage is if you shoot a scene three times in a row, at least, and then a reverse, you’ll always have enough material to cover up your mistakes.

A quote by Vincent Laforet from the MZed course

Secondly, a specially designed approach to coverage can help to increase the scene’s intensity and make it more engaging. According to a classic convention, you do it by going from wide to medium to tight. As Vincent explains, in a wide shot, we establish the scene’s geography and help the audience to orient in space. On a medium, the focus narrows onto a particular individual, introducing them to the viewers. Then the camera can go tighter, connecting us to the emotions of the character by showing their eyes more clearly.

Of course, it’s more of a tradition than an established rule. There are millions of creative and powerful ways to break it. Yet if you’re just starting out, approaching your coverage like this might be the first route to try.

Dynamic abundance in the approach to coverage

Please welcome: in the “overshoot” corner of the ring, we have… Michael Bay! Let’s start with his example, as it seems to be his signature style. The director of “Transformers” is known for shooting very fast and using an orchestra of cameras to capture wide, medium, close-ups, overheads, POVs, and whatnot simultaneously. (I might be exaggerating here, but only to make a point.) For example, on the Netflix series “6 Underground,” they would roll around 10 cameras at once for more extensive action sequences, according to the show’s cinematographer Bojan Bazelli. Up to eight Reds with different lenses, as well as smaller-format crash cameras like the GoPro Hero, Sony a7s, and iPhone X.   

For scenes like this, you need to shoot from multiple angles simultaneously, as they involve difficult stunts and special effects that require a lot of time and money to reset. Also, every stunt coordinator would advise against repeating them unnecessarily, because they are dangerous. This is common sense, and most directors would agree.

However, Michael Bay loves to introduce a multi-camera approach to other sequences as well. Why? To maintain high energy both on set and in post-production. Short, efficient takes help actors stay in the moment, and editors get a lot of raw material to play around with. No arguing that Michael Bay is famous for his extremely dynamic editing style. (I’d even call it visually overstimulating.) So, shooting rather too much is what helps to achieve it.

The coverage maximalist route

Some may say, ‘Well, now that we shoot digitally, we can work with coverage more loosely.’ However, it’s definitely not only about the type of data and its limitations. There are other legendary filmmakers who pursued a maximalist approach even back then, on film. A prominent example is Peter Jackson and his workflow on “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

You might have heard about his habit of shooting from as many cameras and angles as possible to ensure editorial flexibility. On top of that, throughout the trilogy, Peter Jackson famously demanded numerous takes of scenes, repeatedly calling “One more for luck!” The anecdote goes that Christopher Lee, who portrayed Saruman, remarked about having twelve takes for one scene. Later, Ian McKellen (playing Gandalf) shrugged him off, saying that he did 24 takes for two lines the previous day.

So, that was the way Peter Jackson worked. Unusual for actors, overly perfectionistic, and with too much “love for detail.” Yet, look at the kind of legacy this approach has provided us with! Personally, I can rewatch the director’s cut of “The Lord of the Rings” every year and still find it fantastic, engaging, and visually beautiful. A true masterpiece.

Resisting temptation

On the other side, some directors prefer to set constraints, and rightly so. In the “Team Deakins” podcast, Denis Villeneuve explains how he came to this conclusion.

He was shooting one of his earlier movies, “Incendies.” There was a moment at the end of the film, where the main characters – brother and sister – come to a tremendous revelation. (It’s the biggest plot twist of the story, so I won’t spoil it for you with details.) In the scene, they emerge from the building, and Denis recalls capturing a wonderful wide shot. It perfectly expressed their feeling of being lost and small in this huge and scary world. He thought to himself back then: “That’s it. Everything is there.” And the next thing he remembers was saying to the DP: “Let’s do coverage.”

I hated myself for that. We got another shot, and I was thinking: What am I doing? Why am I doing it? I am a coward. I don’t follow my instincts. Never again.

A quote by Denis Villeneuve from the “Team Deakins” podcast

“Never again” became his guiding motto. Thus, when a similar moment happened on “Sicario,” he refused to go in for coverage after a perfect take of a wide shot. Namely, this one (starting at 05:08):

In Denis’s words, some things cannot be translated into a close-up. In this shot, we see the character’s vulnerability in these surroundings, and the way she moves expresses so much! It’s powerful and meaningful. At the same time, the director explains that if they had gone tighter “for safety,” he might have been forced to use the close-up as well. He didn’t shoot it, so as not to have the temptation in the editing.  

That’s a bold approach to coverage, for sure. It requires taking the risk and trusting your instincts. When you do, though, it feels like acquiring a new superpower.

Singular lens throughout the whole movie

Constraints can also be a mighty creativity tool. They urge you to come up with a lot of different solutions for problems that will oh-so-certainly pop up on set.

Let’s take, as an example, Luca Guadagnino’s “Call Me By Your Name” from 2017. Do you know what was special about this movie? It’s a minimalistic approach to the coverage. Guadagnino and his DP, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, decided to use a single lens throughout the whole film – the observational Cooke S4/i 35 mm prime. No option to switch, no jumping to wide, no room for mistakes.

As the cinematographer explains, he was enthusiastic about embracing this challenge for a variety of reasons. Firstly, because he loves limiting himself to something and struggling with the idea. Such an approach gives him a lot of insight. Secondly, filming with only one lens required meticulous planning, extensive knowledge of the locations, and devising creative technical solutions for each shot. Last, but not least, this decision helped filmmakers to create a consistent and suitable visual tone for a coming-of-age story centered on discovery and desire:

Observation was my goal on this film – to try to observe every moment. The Cooke S4/i 35mm was close enough for the close-ups and wide enough to frame the characters in relation to one another and in perspective with their surroundings.

A quote by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom from the interview to the Cooke

Approaching coverage through takes and not angles

Another example of a similar minimalistic approach to coverage is Ruben Östlund’s “Triangle of Sadness.” The director generally prefers to go for extended single takes instead of breaking them down into multiple angles. Allegedly, on the set of “Triangle of Sadness,” they shot only one scene per day and favored long takes. Actors often ran through the same scene 10 to 15 times, refining rather than repeating.

Certainly, you can restrain your shooting style even further and follow the cinematographer Christopher Doyle’s advice. When someone from the team asks him, “So, what’s the first shot of the scene?” he answers, “They are all the first shot. There’s no first, second, or third shot.” This sounds much like Werner Herzog’s approach from the beginning, so I guess we’ve come full circle at last.

What is your approach to coverage?

However, there are definitely many more ways to approach coverage that we haven’t covered here (pun very much intended).

What is yours? Are you team “overshooting,” “one more take for luck,” or “constraints rule?” Or have you maybe found your special recipe? Let’s open this discussion in the comments below. We’d be glad to hear your opinion!

Full disclosure: MZed is owned by CineD.

Feature image: film stills from “Sicario” by Denis Villeneuve, 2015; “The Lord of the Rings” by Peter Jackson, 2001; and “Triangle of Sadness” by Ruben Östlund, 2022.