“Photography is the literature of light. The cinematographer is a writer who utilizes light, shadow, tonality, and color, tempered with his experience, sensitivity, intelligence and emotion to imprint his own style and personality on a given work.”
One of sharpest observation about the impact and meaning of camera angle was made by cinematographer Michael Chapman (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull), who also became a director:
“Angles tell us emotional things in ways that are very mysterious. And emotional things that I’m not very aware of. I think a particular angle is going to do one thing, and it does something quite different sometimes. I no longer have any sure sense that I have a grasp of it. Angles are the most mysterious thing about movies to me.”
Consistency of Image:
Uniformity
Visual harmony
Matching shots
By intent, some films use mixture of visual textures.
JFK:
b/w and color, 35mm, 16mm, super8; 14 different film stocks
Cinematography and Stars:
Peacocock, p. 377
High-key lighting: placing key light, the strongest source of lighting, right next to the camera.
Movie stars of the Golden Age like high-key, because it disguised facial lines by eliminating shadows
Charles Lang and Dietrich
William Daniel and Garbo
Camera Movement
Giannetti, 501
Camera movement is associated with vitality and energy of youth
Citizen Kane:
Kinetic principles: Kane’s movements as youngster convey whirlwind energy.
Static camera is associated with illness, old age, death
Best Films
Peacocok table, p. 360
1894-1949:
Citizen Kane
GWTW
Sunrise
Metropolis
Wizard of Oz
Magnificent Ambersons
Casablanca
Battleship Potemkin
The Third Man
Birth of a Nation
1950-1997
Lawrence of Arabia
The Godfather
2001
Days of Heaven
Schindler’s List
Apocalypse Now
The Conformist
Raging Bull
Blade Runner
Touch of Evil
“Every picture defines its own look, and that definition begins with the director’s intention”–Sven Nykvist (The Virgin Spring, 1959)
“There is no such thing as complete freedom for a cinematographer. You have to do the director’s film. There’s no such thing as a cinematographer’s film”–Vilmos Zsigmond, 1996
Black and White vs. Color
Though shooting in color has been the norm, some major films have relied on black and white cinematography due to their subject matter or the contexts of their stories:
The Apartment, Billy Wilder, 1960
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Mike Nichols, 1966
In Cold Blood, Richard Brooks, 1967
The Last Picture Show, Peter Bogdanovich, 1971
Paper Moon, Peter Bogdanovich, 1973
Raging Bull, Scorsese, 1980
Elephant Man, the, David Lynch, 1980
Schindler’s List, Spielberg, 1993 (the last b/w film to have won the Best Picture Oscar).
Landmark Films
The Conformist (1970)
Italian cinematographer Vittorio Storaro’s work on Bertolucci’s 1970 masterpiece, The Conformist, is admired by many due to the fact that the visual style and tonal qualities (shades of yellow and brown) were matched to the film’s major themes of moral decadence.
Film Theory: Cinematography–Role, Theory, Practice
Research in Progress, Feb 12, 2023–458w
Vittorio Storaro (The Last Emperor):
“Photography is the literature of light. The cinematographer is a writer who utilizes light, shadow, tonality, and color, tempered with his experience, sensitivity, intelligence and emotion to imprint his own style and personality on a given work.”
One of sharpest observation about the impact and meaning of camera angle was made by cinematographer Michael Chapman (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull), who also became a director:
“Angles tell us emotional things in ways that are very mysterious. And emotional things that I’m not very aware of. I think a particular angle is going to do one thing, and it does something quite different sometimes. I no longer have any sure sense that I have a grasp of it. Angles are the most mysterious thing about movies to me.”
Consistency of Image:
Uniformity
Visual harmony
Matching shots
By intent, some films use mixture of visual textures.
JFK:
b/w and color, 35mm, 16mm, super8; 14 different film stocks
Cinematography and Stars:
Peacocock, p. 377
High-key lighting: placing key light, the strongest source of lighting, right next to the camera.
Movie stars of the Golden Age like high-key, because it disguised facial lines by eliminating shadows
Charles Lang and Dietrich
William Daniel and Garbo
Camera Movement
Giannetti, 501
Camera movement is associated with vitality and energy of youth
Citizen Kane:
Kinetic principles: Kane’s movements as youngster convey whirlwind energy.
Static camera is associated with illness, old age, death
Best Films
Peacocok table, p. 360
1894-1949:
Citizen Kane
GWTW
Sunrise
Metropolis
Wizard of Oz
Magnificent Ambersons
Casablanca
Battleship Potemkin
The Third Man
Birth of a Nation
1950-1997
Lawrence of Arabia
The Godfather
2001
Days of Heaven
Schindler’s List
Apocalypse Now
The Conformist
Raging Bull
Blade Runner
Touch of Evil
“Every picture defines its own look, and that definition begins with the director’s intention”–Sven Nykvist (The Virgin Spring, 1959)
“There is no such thing as complete freedom for a cinematographer. You have to do the director’s film. There’s no such thing as a cinematographer’s film”–Vilmos Zsigmond, 1996
Black and White vs. Color
Though shooting in color has been the norm, some major films have relied on black and white cinematography due to their subject matter or the contexts of their stories:
The Apartment, Billy Wilder, 1960
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Mike Nichols, 1966
In Cold Blood, Richard Brooks, 1967
The Last Picture Show, Peter Bogdanovich, 1971
Paper Moon, Peter Bogdanovich, 1973
Raging Bull, Scorsese, 1980
Elephant Man, the, David Lynch, 1980
Schindler’s List, Spielberg, 1993 (the last b/w film to have won the Best Picture Oscar).
Landmark Films
The Conformist (1970)
Italian cinematographer Vittorio Storaro’s work on Bertolucci’s 1970 masterpiece, The Conformist, is admired by many due to the fact that the visual style and tonal qualities (shades of yellow and brown) were matched to the film’s major themes of moral decadence.