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Martin Scorsese 's new film The Irishman , which makes its streaming debut today on Netflix , is another landmark achievement from one of the world's greatest filmmakers. The film is also a reckoning for Mr. Scorsese. The fact that The Irishman opens up with a long tracking shot (photographed by Rodrigo Prieto ) is a deliberate nod to Scorsese's -- arguably -- most famous sequence: the long tracking shot into the Copacabana from Goodfellas (photographed by the late Michael Ballhaus ). Nearly 30 years after that shot first dazzled audiences, Scorsese looks to be making an amendment to his visual thesis. Gone is the glory and glamour from the Goodfellas days. In The Irishman , melancholy oozes from the edges of the frame. Right out of the gate, we're introduced to the end of the road: a senior home where mob hitman Frank Sheeran ( Robert De Niro ) sits alone, awaiting his meaningless death. When this shot is juxtaposed against the Goodfellas shot showing Henry H...

That moment when it feels like someone--or something--is standing behind you. But then you turn around and find nothing. For the cinematic narrative, the point of view (POV) shot is a high-powered filmmaking aesthetic that thrusts the viewer from omniscient viewer to dynamic player within the context of the screen. Whether it's a subjective POV (where the camera/our field-of-view takes the place of the screen figure's own line-of-sight) or an objective POV (where the camera/our field-of-view exists alongside the screen figure, a la "cheek-to-cheek"), the POV shot invades the frame's axis, breaking the 180-degree rule, taking the visual rhetoric of the film to the next level. And as technology and filmmaking tools (e.g. the advent of 3D) continue to push the boundaries of audience-to-screen immersion, one thing remains constant: the audience sure enjoys their God's eye view in the universe of the movie. Which is why the follow shot (sometimes calle...