Camera Placement

Weir brings our attention, without overdoing it, to the mix mode of our observation position as the audience.

The only PoV we never have is Truman. We are always outside him. We have a number of camera shot types

• Bug-eye / Fish-eye cameras in objects, embedded and unobservable
• Medium shots
• Sky cams
• Audience inteviews
• Audience Shots
• The Christof interview
• In the control centre, and the character, Sylvia’s home

Let’s try and contain this in a way that makes sense from Weir’s PoV. He has

In world (Seahaven) cameras:

which give us The Truman Show audience’s view of the world. As we watch Seahaven and Truman our attention is drawn to the fact we are viewing this via the secretly placed in-world cameras. From this point of view, we are the barmaids, the security guards, the man in the bathtub. (We are not philosophy professors, leaders of nations or business executives. It's implied that this for low brow and for-the-masses). 

Mockumentary cameras

The interviews with the audience members are in this world of cameras also, albeit in a behind-the-scenes sense. This is also the case for the interviews with the cast members of the Truman Show, and the Cristof interview, but we will differentiate this as BTS cameras. These are the mockumentary cameras. 

Out-of-world cameras:

are the control Room and Sylvia’s home where we experience both the most manipulative and most caring and empathetic extremes of observation of Truman Burbank by others.

Cinematic Cameras

This leaves us with some of the camera action of the film being, on closer examination, shot from another 'world of cameras'; a cinematic world. These shots are cut between the other camera world, and serves the purpose of creating an intimacy directly between us and Seahaven and Truman. (It also serves the need of the Director, Weir, to create a more manageable, aesthetically pleasing film that serve’s the narrative we are following of ‘Will Truman learn of his constructed existence, and what will he do about it’?

But it does more than this, it works on us, it puts us both inside and outside the Truman show world, and it allows us to be manipulated by Weir. It’s that montage of these shots that is of particular interest.

In the language of Delueze, we can swap out ‘camera’ for the more formal terms of frame, shot, and montage.

I contend here that Weir sets up the film for subtle but deep progandistic effect. He wants us, the real world audience to take seriously the deep philosophical issue of hyper surveillance and it's affects on our concept of real freedom. I suggest that he does this though key moments and sequences in the film. These are pure Deleuzian montages.