Tilt

Turning the camera up or down from a fixed point. Height given meaning: we look up to, or down on.

The tilt is the pan turned vertical: the camera's chin rising or falling from a fixed stand. With it comes the oldest spatial metaphor in the body, up to authority, awe and hope; down to the defeated, the small, the ground truth. Height given meaning is nearly automatic.

The classic figures write themselves: the slow tilt up a tower until the neck feels it; the reveal that climbs from boots to a face and builds a character in stages. Order is the craft, a tilt is information delivered in sequence, and what the audience sees last, they weigh most.