synopsis

"Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematography" is definitely worth watching before choosing a film to pursue for this second project, especially if you've never taken a film course or critically watched a movie to evaluate it's visual success. Contemporary cinematographers are interviewed, as well as directors, to discuss how the craft of shooting a movie and using the camera as a tool has evolved through time. It’s a mostly chronological sequence, with examples dating back to 1909. There are over fifty films alluded to in the movie; the list is compiled below.

I found the history and development of cinematography to be quite interesting. Cinematographers who shot movies in the teens and twenties had to both know and study photography because of the conventional black and white framework. The Germans in the twenties were blowing everyone out of the water; they took the formal elements found in German expressionist graphics, paintings, etc. and re-appropriated those into their films (ex. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1919 and The Last Laugh, 1924).

The impact of sound on films with respect to their cinematography was discussed. Now having to accommodate microphones and larger sound-proof cameras, the dynamism and “freeness” of the camera found in earlier films was lost. The “painfully obvious” microphone in the vase at the middle of the table was illustrated as an example, with the actors leaning and speaking directly into it. One cinematographer even claimed that we would probably have stronger films today if sound hadn’t appeared for another ten or fifteen years after it actually did. In these early sound films the camera couldn’t move or pan; it took cinematographers some time to “free the camera” again. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1931 was one of the first films in sound to accomplish this successfully. It was here, during the time between 1930 – 1950 that we got cameras moving with actors, counter to actors, tracking, panning, etc. that led to each studio having a specific style: “gloss of Paramont, hard edges of Warner Bros., and glamour of MGM.”

It was during this rich period that each studio developed their own techniques and cinematographers became inventors in both the figural and literal sense. They had to manufacture and test on screen new devices adopted to achieve a specific effect. For example, the fascination with lighting the female face became critical on screen. Marlena Dietrich’s face was always lit at a much higher footcandle than other objects around her for contrast. One cinematographer told the anecdote of having to construct an entire stageset around an actresses’ face because it was best lit from one side only.

The work of Greg Tolland in Citizen Kane (1941) was highly praised in the movie. Many said it read like a “textbook” for cinematography because so many different techniques were explored, giving the film incredibly deep space and extraordinary dynamics. The clips extracted from it were great; I REALLY want to see the movie. The film noir movement just after the war is also covered. Cinematographers said many of these films had a “primal simplicity” in their deep shadows, low angles, and stark contrast.

Other films are covered in the movie, including more recent films like Raging Bull (1980) and Jaws (1975). I've got the dvd at my desk if you want to check it out.