Cinematography Logbook

Shot another short film. A slow melancholic story. Interesting thing is the director had one word for me: warm. First reaction was why? I felt the colors should reflect the story: desaturated, on the cold side. But I never contested it. I went with it. 

It made me think…has my use of color in the past been cliche. Blues and greens for sadness, red and oranges for love and excitement.

Am I a hack!?!

But time and time again in great cinematography we see those colors being used for those kind of moments in the script: 

Those aren’t happy people. Forgive me for being so on the nose but they are all feeling a bit blue…

And these people:

…are having a good time.

Ofcourse it does have alot to do with performance. But I am sure if the colors were the opposite it wouldn’t be helping at all. So I think this is one of those things that have transcended cliche and cynicism to become just the right thing to do. 

But in relation to the short film and what the director wanted I saw this image:

From Snow Flower and the Secret Fan; cinematography by Richard Wong. The color on the actress is warm, but the dominant color is still cool. Hence the dominant sad mood is due to that color despite the presence of the opposite emotional color. For the short film, this use of blues would keep the warm colors the director wants from dominating too much and the film looking too monochromatic. 

Robert Elswit’s work in Magnolia was also a huge influence for this chosen color palette: 

His work gave me the courage to not give a shit in terms of motivation for the strong blues which doesn’t really happen in reality.

I think it works for the short film in the end. I am pleased with the look we had:

Dominant colors in the frame greatly influence the mood.

Obvious but …

Must remember this.

Worked on some short films. Have learnt alot.

It is daunting to put it all down here.

Even more daunting is the thought I still have so much to learn.

One thing I have learnt is the style of lighting I like: A kind of constructed naturalism

Light can come from anywhere and we will believe it. I have learnt to not get too bogged down with motivation for lighting. If it looks like it would happen then why not.

Though very naturalistic…where is that light opposite the window coming from really? The “sunlight” from the window would never reflect of the walls so beautifully. 

Other times the message or story behind the image must outweigh the realism.There might be in a situation or camera angle where getting light where you want it would mean going against motivation. Sometimes you just gotta say fuck it and put the light in:

The light on the photograph with the the 4 brothers is the perfect accent to what is happening in the scene: the mother being told her 4 sons are dead. But that light isn’t sunlight, and it isn’t light from the lamp as we see the shadow of the lamp. Point is it really doesn’t matter does it. 

Must remember this. 

This maybe controversial but I’ll say it, singer Adele is not the widely accepted ‘ultra thin super model’ idea of beauty. But she is in fact beautiful: 

But in addition to what she has naturally, she has been photographed by people that know how to use light and shadow to accentuate one’s gifts and hide one’s flaws. 

In that picture of Adele, it uses that classic lighting from a high angle above the camera that is used on women time and time again. It is remarkable how much that technique does for accentuating what makes a woman’s face attractive:

1) If a woman has pronounced cheek bones it creates a shadows beneath them, which defines them nicely

2) If done correctly it places the nose shadow just below the nose so it doesn’t distract from the rest of the face

3) It creates a shadow below the woman’s lower lip, which slightly exaggerates the lip’s ‘plumpness’…which is always a good thing  

The final benefit of this applies especially to women like Adele; it creates a shadow along the jawline which makes it a bit more distinct, hence giving a slimmer look: 

A big source, whether it be a big soft source or a big hard one always helps as it wraps around the subject’s face and takes away the hard edge to the shadows. 

At this moment there should be an honorable mention of old time Hollywood photographer George Hurrell: 

Must remember this.

What do all these pictures have in common? Overexposure of skin tones.

Why? My deduction is overexposure of skin tones gets rid of or hides details in the skin tones. Hence making skin looks smoother. I suppose oversexposed soft light on skin is ever better. Hence this screen-shot from Robyn’s music video. Her skin looks almost flawless: 

Overexposure by 2 to 3 to even 4 stops has been a known technique, used on Icon Marlene Dietrich in the Golden years of Hollywood:

And it is a technique still used today:

Must remember this. 

So I saw Biutiful. One of my favorite DPs: Rodrigo Prieto. Needless to say it was a gorgeous film to watch.

An aesthetic of the film was the use of soft creamy flares. And I have always struggled, even befor seeing this film, with defining what emotional value these kind of flares added to an image.

Such as these from the film:

The films deals with death and the afterlife, so naturally these images of light peering in, in some cases like halos, have spiritual connotations. But even without knowing the theme the effect does something for me emotionally.

The effect of looking pass almost overwhelming light is like waking up in the morning. Your eyes adjusting to the light. Whatever or whoever you wake up to see at that moment is even more haunting or gratifying:

Above - Ellie Golding - Your Song (Music Video)

To me, it is like an emotional exclamation mark on an image. To be used only when it is meaningful.

Must remember this.

So one morning, probably due to late nights infront of my laptop, I woke up to my left eye being red with irritation. It shocked me. I was worried. My eye looked really really red. So I put my black jacket over my red hoody that I had slept in and headed to the pharmacy. After coming back and looking in the mirror (with my leather jacket on) It didn’t look so bad. Of course once I took off my leather jacket it was redder than ever once again.

It is from this experience I remembered that in human vision, we like to pair things or group things. And this applies to costume and the eyes:

In this famous National Geographic photograph taken by Steve McCurry, the young girl’s eyes are hauntingly beautiful. Why is this? I think it is because our vision puts the green background, green under-shirt and the green in her eyes together and this causes her eye color to really pop out.

In the making of HBO’s John Adams, an interview with actress Laura Linney had this same effect:

I like this effect. And I imagine this could extend to the color of the light as well. Maybe the lighting behind a character could be used to bring out eyes by being the same color. Or by making the lighting behind a character a contrasting color to their costume and eyes. I believe this is also what causes the eyes to pop in both the National Geographic photograph and the screenshots with Laura Linney; Red and green or blue and orange. Would be very interesting when applied to an event in a story where this effect would be appropriate.

Must remember this technique.

So I got a reply from the DP Shane Hurlbut via his blog.

The theory I had is that he set his key light at 2 to 3 stops under in order to get that intimate feel. And also if he did this on set or did it in post.

His reply on his blog: “…I light to eye. I used my HP Dreamcolor and starved the sensor of light to get that low light feel, probably underexposed the sensor about 3.5 stops. I also work with very warm bulbs… They are about 2600 degree kelvin. These lights give me a beautiful skin tone.”

So I was correct. Something small such as this can open up so much in the way I think about placing my key when lighting a scene.

Must remember this.

This one falls into my interesting compostion category but also falls into frame within a frame.

Above - from film Saving Private Ryan (DP: Janusz Kaminski)

This screenshot doesn’t do the shot justice as what is truly great about the composition is it puts the moving car in that window frame in the top left corner and your eye is drawn to it as it goes from left to right into the next window frame. Add the context where we know it is badnews for this woman and it is really mise-en-scene in practice.

Actually the shot after was also great mise-en-scene through great composition and lighting:

This image is so full of subtle information that it is almost like a painting. This screenshot alone could be put on a wall and a viewer would know exactly what is happening.

Must remember to be as good as Janusz Kaminski (lawl).

I never usually think of the frame itself as anything but something that contains the image. But once thinking seriously about composition I am realizing that the frame doesn’t contain the composition, it creates it.

In photoshop I have often cropped a photo down to make it better compositionally.

(This is something that annoys me as I need to work more on taking my time and getting the composition right in the first place - I digress)

This is the same concept as the frame creating the composition rather than containing it. This is something I will have to think about more, but what I have come to realize is that the frame itself can help create the frame within a frame effect.

Thanks to this image I saw in a promotion online:

I really liked this composition; it used bare simplicity (through the exposure which left the subject in near silhouette ) and it put the subject in a frame within a frame. But the frame within a frame was created by the top of the frame itself as the rocks probably didn’t meet.

I thought I’d try to put this into practice by taking this photo one morning: 

I tried to make the viewer’s eye go to the tower in the background via the rule of thirds and by putting it in a frame within a frame created by the top of the frame.

Must remember to try this again when the right circumstances present themselves.

Photography 101: create a frame within a frame:

Above - from Saving Private Ryan (DP: Janusz Kaminski)     

Below - from Tree of Life (DP: Emmanuel Lubezki)

Doorways and windows are great for this. But there are unconventional frames within frames using:

Trees:-

Both from film Michael Collins(DP: Chris Menges)

Man-made constructions:-

Above- from Michael Collins (again…Chris Menges ftw)

But some frames within frames are ones that are almost subconcious to the viewer. Where the director or DP uses the surroundings or props to form a frame around the subject:

Above - from film Empire of the Sun (DP: Allen Daviau)

Below - from film There Will Be Blood (DP: Robert Elswit)

The last one really amazed me because the tree and the props of the hat and jacket are being used to frame this father and son image. A DP controls his/her environment to enhance the image, but also (like in the image above) does it in a meaningful and expressive way.

Must remember this.