Cinematography
Production Techniques 1
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Cinematography
• Includes photographic elements (e.g.
camera position, colour, lens, depth of
focus), lighting, framing and composition
and special effects.
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Cinematography
CONTENTS
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Colour Film
Black & White
Using colour to create meaning
Lighting
Camerawork
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Colour
• This may be used in highly artificial ways for particular
expressive purposes: the cold blue tint and contrasting
red lipstick employed for the scene with the changed
Jude in the The Crying Game. Jordan. UK. 1992.
(where one thing suggested is the danger femme fatale)
or the cold, lifeless, washed-out greys achieved in the
interview scene Seven. Fincher. US. 1995.
• Film often spoken about in terms of the flamboyant,
colourful performance of Johnny Depp as Jack
Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.
Verbinski. US. 2006. is actually a very dark film with
continual use of murky greens and cold blues and greys.
- Fantasy
• A film like Little Miss Sunshine. Dayton and Faris. US.
2006. employs an entirely different, more naturalistic,
use of colour and lighting. – stronger relationship to the
‘real’ world.
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The Crying Game. Jordan. UK. 1992.
Seven. Fincher. US. 1995.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s
Chest. Verbinski. US. 2006.
Little Miss Sunshine. Dayton and
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Faris. US. 2006.
Black & White
• More often driven by economics
• Sometimes – creative use:
– Raging Bull (Scorsese, 1980): flashbacks
– Schindlers List (Speilberg, 1993): depict holocaust,
history event, echoes newsreels and documentaries
– Casino Royale (Campbell, 2006): harking back to the
cold war period where most countries, behind iron
curtain, used b&w footage
• NOIR (or dark) look associate with early bond movies
– Seven (Fincher, 1995): some scenes – grey and
‘washed out’: creating a bleak, murky urban
landscape.
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Seven. Fincher. US. 1995)
Raging Bull. Scorsese. US. 1980
Schindlers List. Speilberg. US. 1993
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Colour
• Most obviously colour as with bright lighting
simply gives pleasure to the audience - literally
brings light and colour into our lives
• Particular colours/tints can be used to suggest
warmth/coldness or particular seasons or types
of emotion.
– Associated with colours in natural world
• Colours can be used symbolically
– RED: blood and danger, or passion and lust.
• Colours can be made to standout
– Saturated: vivid
– Desaturated: dull and muted as possible
• NOTE: colours have different associations and
significations from culture to culture
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Colour - Activity
• Choose a film you know that seems to use
colour in an interesting way and pick an
extract that seems to demonstrate an
especially good example of the way in
which colour works in this film. Think
about how you feel colour is contributing to
creating meaning and generating audience
response in your film extract.
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Lighting
• Fundamental choice: natural
(supplemented with artificial lighting or not)
• High key: relatively bright lighting used in
romantic comedies
• Low key: used in film noir and neo noir
Seven
• Hard: narrow, intense beam and gives
sharp-edged objects and harsh shadows
• Soft: broad, more diffused beam that gives
soft-edged objects and shadows
• Lighting
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Lighting
• Possible sources of light
– Front, back and side
– Overhead lighting: heavy shadows, conceal eyes and create an
image of a face that is mysterious, sinister, perhaps conveying
danger or darker/lighter aspects or confused character e.g. The
Searchers. Ford. US. 1956 & My Beautiful Laundrette. Frears.
UK. 1985.
– Lighting form below: challenges the viewer by reversing all our
usual experience - the sun overhead
• We are confronted to be strange and otherworldly
• Lighting can be used in highly contrived, artificial ways to
achieve particular purposes or in naturalistic ways in
order to achieve in some sense replication of the real
world
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Lighting
• Conventional lighting norms
• Most often a combination of lighting positions will
be used around the subject.
– THREE POINT LIGHTING
• Key: usually 45 degrees either side of camera
• Fill: usually opposite to key light
• Back light: making subject stand out from the background
– These are only general positions
• more light could be added or taken away
• Angle of lights could be changed
• Choice of hard and soft lighting
• This is why the job of the
cinematographer/Director of Photography often
referred to as ‘painting with light’
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Colour & Lighting - Activity
• Give reading into the use of colour and
lighting for the extract shown.
• Draw up lighting plan for the shot given.
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Camerawork
• Filmmaker also has control of the manipulation of our
physical point of view.
• They can put us in a position that makes us feel
comfortable or uncomfortable, dominant or vulnerable,
simply by deciding on the positioning and movement of
the camera.
• Reservoir Dogs. Tarantino. US. 1991. Scene showing
cutting of ear ‘looks away’ almost as of the whole thing
is too uncomfortable or painful to watch.
• La Haine static shot used to show police interrogation
scene denying us the potential relief of looking away.
• The point is that choices that are made about the use of
the camera are often made in order to create particular
effects on the audience.
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Camerawork
• Lenses: used to give appearance of movement towards
or away from subject. Make things sharper of more
indistinct or even alter the appearance – distort.
• Camerawork more fluid and mobile: 50s it became
easier to do location shooting. Does not mean good
films are when filmmakers utilise this – some stick with
‘static shooting’.
• Often the creativity with which available technology is
used that is of most interest – how filmmakers of their
time used available camera kits.
• Distance and angle of shot (see frame sizes &
camera terms handout)
– RANGE: extreme long shot (ELS) to extreme close up (ECU)
– Position spectator by varying the angle – high, low and eye level
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Camerawork
• Choices within the camera set-up
– Decisions depend on the following factors:
• Lens
• size of aperture: the opening on the camera that allows light in
• Type of film: or film stock
– Varying these factors, gives filmmaker choices over:
• Depth of field
• How far into the distance objects within the shot will remain in
focus
• How much of the space behind or to the sides of subject is
shown
• How deep the shot will seem to be
• How much sense of ‘going on into the distance’ the shot will
have
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Camerawork
• FILM STOCK
– Can be more or less sensitive to light.
– Slow film stock requires more light than fast film stock
• Used in studios mainly and allows for more intense light set-up
giving a more finely details final image.
– Fast film stock requires less light
• Often used where it not easy to enhance the natural lighting
‘documentary look’
• LENS
– Essentially choices are wide-angle, normal or telephoto
• If we move closer to the subject and employ a wide-angle lens
then there is something approximating to the original shot but
with the areas to either side of the character and in particular
the depth of space behind the character is taken in, perhaps
giving an enhanced sense of vulnerability or isolation.
• Moving away from the subject and using telephoto lens would
make the background appear much closer to the subject. More
immediate threat with background seeming to encompass or
engulf the subject.
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Camerawork
• LENS
– Telephoto lens would give an intense, essentially ‘closeup’, image of the subject with everything around the
subject cropped away, whereas the wide-angle lens would
reduce the relative size of the subject within the frame and
take in much more of the space to the sides, behind the
subject and in front of the camera.
– Best way to see this for yourself is try it out !!!
– Extreme wide angle lenses: fish eye
produces distortion
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Camerawork
• ESTABLISHING SHOT
– Gives the setting in which the scene is to take place and enables
the viewer to establish the spatial relationships between
characters involved in the scene.
– Not all follow this ‘subvert’
• Giving the sense of disorientation
• This will be part of what the filmmakers are attempting to achieve;
as well as perhaps defying the expected filmic norm and thereby
challenging any presumption that there are certain correct ways of
making films
• CAMERA MOVEMENT
– Panning, tilting, tracking and crane shot
• Tracking on tracks
• Dolly on wheels
– Hand held: shaky, used for POVs Point of view shots, involving
the audience
• Tend to associate with ‘low budget look’: Blair With Project.
Myrick/Sanchez. US. 1999.
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Camerawork
ACTIVITY
1. Why has the opening camera
movement been chosen, and how
does it work to introduce the film and
the central character?
2. In what ways is it appropriate for the
film and the character?
3. How does it contribute towards
ensuring that the opening engages our
attention?
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SUMMARY
• The question we must ask ourselves is why
might these elements have been chosen.
• How might these elements been considered
appropriate or ‘correct’ for the film?
• There will be a range of possible answers but
the key point is that we must ask ourselves the
question.
• Film Studies is in a sense only asking you to
take what you already know and to think about it
in a slightly more analytical fashion.
• Ask yourself the recurring vital question of why
the filmmakers have chosen to use these
particular creative aspects of their trade in this
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way.
SUMMARY
• You need to be become more aware of what
is going on within the frame as it has been
composed by the filmmaker.
• It is not just a question of what the subject,
or character, is doing within the shot that is
important BUT how he or she has been
placed within the frame.
– Is the space behind/front or on the sides being
emphasized and if so, why?
– Are objects in/out focus – why?
• The key point is that the approach used by
filmmakers suggest certain meanings or
generate certain responses
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