Introduction to Film Studies
Mise-en-scène
Lighting
• In under lighting the light comes from below the
subject filmed. In Tim Burton’s first Batman, the
low angle shot is combined with under lighting.
• It creates distorted images. Joker
Jack Nicholson again shown in under lighting. It is
frequently used in horror films. Stanley Kubrick’s
Shining
Lighting
• In top lighting the
spotlight shines down
from above. Marlene Dietrich’s face is lit from top
front in Josef von Sternberg’s Shanghai Express
(1932). A high frontal light brings out the line of her
cheekbones and create shadows in her eye sockets.
Hint of corruption and mysterious sexuality. SX
Lighting
• The position of light motivates the lighting
decisions and design. In a scene from La Terra
trema, Cora lights a lamp and light is directed to
him from below.
Lighting
• In Colour lighting, thin colour film placed in front
of a light gives image a universal tint.
Lighting
• In Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s
Black Narcissus, their cinematographer Jack
Cardiff got scenes lit in bold colours. Intense key
light comes from the screen right in blue and
orange.
Lighting
• The theatrical lighting in blue in the concluding
sequence of Nagisa Oshima’s last film, Taboo
(1999)
Lighting
• Dominant colour can be chosen to fit the mood of
the film. Woody Allen’s Purple Rose of Cairo
has sepia tone in order to reflect symbolically the
mood of the Depression, which was the period
setting for the film.
Photography: Tonality
• Film stock, lighting and development determines
the tonality of photography
• In general, a slow film stock will produce a highcontrast look – the sharp difference between the
darkest and lightest areas of the frame.
• Hard lighting (Low-key) lighting creates strong
‘contrast’
• In film developing process, contrast can be
heightened or lessened – high-contrast and low
contrast.
Photography:
Tonality
• In most black-and-white films, grays, blacks and
whites are balanced through high-key (soft)
lighting, ‘normal’ film stock and standard
developing.
• Jean Renoir’s Crime of M. Lange
Photography:
Tonality
• In the dream sequence of Ingmar Bergman’s Wild
Strawberries a bleached-out look (little colour
gradation) is created through a combination of film
stock, over-exposure and laboratory processing.
Photography:
Tonality
• News-reel like photography in Jean Luc Godard’s
Les Carabiniers ‘The positive prints were simply
made on a special Kodak high contrast stock …
Several shots, intrinsically too gray, were duped
again sometimes two or three times, always to
their highest contrast.’ In cinema
Photography:
Tonality
• Technicolor [colour film stock] famous for its
sharply distinct, heavily saturated hues. Rich
colours created by a specially designed camera and
a printing process. Vincent Minelli’s Meet Me in
St. Louis (1944) The Trolley Song
Photography:
Tonality
• Soviet film stock tended to lower contrast and
give the image a murky greenish-blue cast. The
monochromish colour design in Andrei
Tarkovsky’s The Stalker. Actions seem to be
taking place underwater. Stalker
Photography:
Tonality
• TINTING - Already developed positive film is immersed in dye. Lighter areas pick up the colour
while darker ones remain black and gray. In Abel
Gance’s J’accuse! (1919) the image was tinted in
pink. J’Accuse
Photography:
Tonality
• Toning – when dye is added during the developing
of the positive print, the darker areas of the frame
are coloured and the brighter portions remain white
or only faintly coloured.
• Veá Chytilová’s Daisies Night Club
Photography:
Tonality
• Hand colouring – Portions of black-and-white
images are painted in colours, frame by frame.
The ship’s flat in Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship
Potemkin is hand coloured red.
Photography:
Tonality
• Manipulations of tonalities
• Stan Brakhage scratches off the emulsion in
certain parts of the image for creating a graphic
design.
Photography:
Tonality
• Tonality is the most crucially determined by
exposure. Overexposure (too much light admitted
through the lens) make the image too bright and
underexposure (little light) make the image too
dark. Carl Dryer overexposes the windows to
create a religious atmosphere in Ordet. Funeral 5.30
Photography:
Tonality
• The city of Naples in Francesco Rosi’s Hands on
the City is a little overexposed so that details are
not clearly distinguishable. The city corrupt and
hazy.
Photography: Tonality
• Women in the foreground shot in well-exposure,
but the sun-lit town in the background is
overexposed.
• Inside the house a woman is underexposed, while
the countryside in the background well-exposed.
Photography: Tonality
• Filter – a slice of glass or gelatin placed in front
of the lens reduces certain frequencies of light
reaching the film. Day for Night – A filter can
block out part of the light and make footage shot
in daylight seem to be shot at night.
Perspective Relations
• Types of camera lenses
determined by their focal
length – distance between
the centre of the lens to the point where light rays
converge on the film.
Focal length of the lens can affect perspective
relations in the things in a frame.
Perspective Relations
• Short focal length (wideangle) lens - A lens of less
than 35 mm in focal length
• Distort straight lines lying
near the edges of the frame.
• Two towers appear to lean
rightward and leftward
Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now
Perspective
Relations
• Anything nearer the camera appear to bulge and
its shape look distorted.
• In Terry Gilliam’s Brazil a wide-angle lens is
used extensively
opening
Perspective
Relations
• The wide-angle lens exaggerate depth. In a scene
from William Wyler’s Little Foxes the lens
makes the characters seem farther away from
each other than we would expect. Arrival
Perspective
Relations
• Middle focal length (normal) lens – A lens of
medium focal length between 35 and 50 mm.
• No noticeable perspectival distortion: horizontal
and vertical lines are rendered straight and
perpendicular
• Depth does not look stretched apart
Perspective
Relations
• Long focal length (telephoto) lens - A lens of long
focal length between 75 and 250 mm or more.
• It flatten the space between what is in the
foreground and in the background
• The planes seem squashed together
• Chen Kaige’s Life on a String
Perspective Relations
• In Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi an airport is
shot from a great distance by a telephoto lens.
The long lens makes the aeroplane look as if it
were landing on a crowded motorway. 25.15
Perspective Relations
• Akira Kurosawa frequently used the telephoto
lens. In his Red Beard a mad woman walks in a
doctor’s room. It is filmed over the shoulder of
the doctor and the distance between the two
characters appear close at first. When they are
shown sideways, the viewer would know that
they are far apart.
Perspective Relations
• As the telephoto lens flatten depth, a figure
moving towards the camera appears to take more
time to cover what seems to be a small distance.
• Running-in-place
• Mike Nichols’ The Graduate
Perspective Relations
• Zoom lens – a lens which can change focal length
and transform perspective relations within a single
shot.
• The zoom lens can substitute for moving the
camera forward and backward, as it can magnify
and demagnify the subject. The Conversation