Introduction to Film Studies
Mise-en-scène
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
• In William Wyler’s Jezebel, Bettie Davis is a
central figure and lit by the key light from top right,
by the fill light from left and by the back light from
slightly high at back. The figures in front remain
rather dark as the light do not reach them.
Lighting
• Three point lighting in a colour film
• Strong key light from left, a fill light from off right
of the camera, and the office behind the couple is
lit more dimly and softly with background light.
• Whenever the camera position moves, the lighting
positions must be rearranged.
Lighting
• Three point lighting suited to high-key lighting
• Photography with low contrast between brighter
and darker areas
• The most frequently used in classical Hollywood
cinema.
Lighting
• Low-key lighting creates stronger contrasts and
sharper, darker shadows. The lighting is hard, and
fill light is lessened or switched off.
• Light is hard and comes from right in the shot
above, The Maltese Falcon. Fill and back light
eliminated creating a dark shadow on the wall
Lighting
• The fill light and back light are significantly less
intense in Andrzey Wajda’s Kanal making the
back of the screen remain opaque.
Lighting
• Low-key lighting has usually been applied to
somber or mysterious scenes. Common in horror
films of the 30s and film noir in the 40s and 50s.
Revived in the 80s in such films as Blade Runner
and Rumble Fish
Photography: Tonality
• Film stock, lighting and development
determines the tonality of photography
• In general, a slow film stock will produce a
high-contrast look – the sharp difference
between the darkest and lightest areas of the
frame.
• Low-key lighting creates ‘contrast’
• In film developing process, contrast can be
heightened or lessened.
Photography:
Tonality
• In most black-and-white films, grays, blacks and
whites are balanced through high-key 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.’
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)
Photography:
Tonality
• Soviet film stock tended to lower contrast and
give the image a murky greenish-blue cast. The
monochrome colour design in Andrei
Tarkovsky’s The Stalker. Actions seem to be
taking place underwater.
Photography:
Tonality
• Tinting - Already developed positive film is immersed in dye. Lighter areas pick up the colour
while darker ones remarin black and gray. In Abel
Gance’s J’accuse! (1919) the image was tinted in
pink.
Photography:
Tonality
• Toning – when dye is added during the
developing of the postive print, the darker areas
of the frame are coloured and the brighter
portions remain white or only faintly coloured.
• Veá Chytilová’s Daisies
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.
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
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.
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 is landing on
a crowded motorway.
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. When they are shown
sideways, the viewer 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