Movies and Meaning- Pearson New International Edition

by Stephen Prince

  Conveying Mood and Tone The most common use of color design in film is probably to augment and intensify the emotional mood and tone of a scene. The filmmakers constructed a color plot for The Lord of the Rings films, using color to convey emotional tones for the diverse locations. Bags End, the Hobbits’ village, has a cozy, comfortable feel, with a warm, yellow-orange fire in the fireplace. In the sinister village of Bree, in contrast, the fireplace has a dirty greenish-yellow glow. Autumnal colors help give Rivendell, the decaying empire of the Elves, a melancholy quality. Green light, draining color from the actors’ faces, gives the Moria Mines a tomblike atmosphere. In L.A. Confidential (1997), Kim Basinger plays Lynn Bracken, a Hollywood hooker who lives in a palatial Los Angeles

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  Cinematography

  MALCOLM X (40 ACRES & A

  MULE FILMWORKS, 1992)

  Cinematographers often use a color

  arc to organize a film, orchestrating

  color changes across the running time

  of the film in ways that correspond

  with changes in the characters and

  their situations. In collaboration with

  director Spike Lee, cinematographer

  Ernest Dickerson used changes in

  color to define the film’s three nar-

  rative sections. Pictured here are the

  first, in which bold, saturated colors

  characterize an era of excitement,

  energy and recklessness in Malcolm’s

  youth. In the film’s third section, a

  more restrained and balanced palette

  emphasizing earth tones typified the

  mature and settled phase of his adult

  life. Frame enlargements.

  house where she has two bedrooms, one the working bedroom, the other her own.

  Cinematographer Dante Spinotti used color to contrast the emotional tone of these two rooms. He shot the working room with cool blue light to give it a slightly harsh and emotionally distant aura. By contrast, when Lynn takes a man she loves to her real bedroom, Spinotti used a romantic amber lighting to create a sense of warmth and emotional security.

  In James Cameron’s The Terminator (1984), a science fiction fantasy set in Los Angeles during two time periods, 1984 and 2029 a.d. , cinematographer Adam Greenberg used hard, strong, blue light to photograph the terminator (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger). Greenberg found that hitting Schwarzenegger with this light from a high angle made the character seem less human and more savage. When he lit Schwarzenegger with strong light, the actor looked like a piece of sculpture. The high angle of the light increased the shadows on Schwarzenegger’s physique and created a harder look, and the blue cast of the light accentuated his coldness.

  Much has been written about the psychological and emotional effects of color schemes, and many cinematographers have very intense preferences for and against certain colors and a belief that specific colors can have precise effects on the emotional responses of viewers. In general, however, the emotional effects of color are 85

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  THE TERMINATOR (ORION, 1984)

  Cinematographer Adam Greenberg used hard, blue lighting to bring out the violence and savagery of the title character. Color and lighting design intensify the dramatic and emotional impact of the film’s narrative. Frame enlargement.

  strongly context-dependent. Color can augment, intensify, and sometimes contrast and cut against the dominant emotional tone and mood of a scene, but an individual color in itself rarely can supply emotional and psychological content that is otherwise missing in a scene. In the case of the contrasting color schemes of the two bedrooms in L.A. Confidential , the action of the scenes in those locations works with the lighting to help set a unified emotional tone in each locale. Rather than imposing extraneous meaning on a scene or film, color design extends, sharpens, heightens, or, conversely, minimizes, mitigates, or contrasts with the existing narrative, dramatic, or psychological material of a given scene.

  CINEMATOGRAPHY AND THE DIGITAL DOMAIN

  Digital imaging is now a standard part of contemporary film, and the cinematographer’s job intersects with the work of computer-effects artists. Light, color, camera perspective, and movement can be created either digitally or through traditional cinematography. Digital tools enable filmmakers to pre-visualize (or “previz”) their shots before any footage is actually exposed. Software tools such as Frame Forge 3D allow filmmakers to build a virtual set in the computer, to plan their camera positions, and to specify the type of lenses and focal lengths that will be on the cameras. The software package will then show how the set and characters will look when filmed with, say, a Primo E-Series line of lenses. Filmmakers can simulate lens changes and camera moves, can move furniture around inside the virtual set, and can see when a shot is so wide that the ceiling or other unwanted information is visible. This kind of preparation can save valuable time once production actually begins.

  DIGITAL CAPTURE For much of its history, cinema meant film , strips of celluloid that run through cameras and projectors. Cinema is no longer exclusively a film medium, and it is moving swiftly to replace film with digital video. Many films originate as digitally 86

  Cinematography

  captured images. High-end digital cameras, like the Red (used to film David Fincher’s The Social Network ) or the Thomson Viper (used to shoot Michael Mann’s Collateral and Miami Vice ) capture images that have remarkable resolution and tonal values approaching that of film. These cameras operate like computers, crunching huge amounts of data, require a process of rebooting after they are shut down, and get regular software and hardware updates.

  The luminous, sumptuous imagery in Steven Soderbergh’s Che (2008) and Fincher’s Zodiac (2007) and The Social Network (2010) show what can be accomplished with the new generation of data cameras, making these among the most beautifully rendered digital films yet produced. These filmmakers—Fincher, Soderbergh, Mann, along with James Cameron on Avatar (2009)—have been leading the industry toward a digital future, and they have embraced digital capture for aesthetic reasons as well as convenience. (The convenience factor is the elimination of dailies. A cinematographer shooting in digital video sees the results immediately; shooting on film requires waiting for the footage to be developed and printed by a lab, a process that came to be known as waiting on “dailies.”)

  Film still offers superior resolution and tonal values, but not by much. Viewers watching Che, The Social Network, or Zodiac see images that look remarkably film-like. That is because these are high-definition video images or are ultra-high. HD

  (high-definition) cameras, like the Viper or Sony’s CineAlta used by George Lucas to film his second batch of Star Wars movies, produce 1920 x 1080 pixels. The Red, by contrast, can shoot at 4K, producing 4096 x 3072 pixels (ultra-high-definition).

  Many filmmakers and cinematographers believe that a 4K image is indistinguishable from an image projected from 35mm celluloid film. At this high end of digital capture, the gap with what film provides is increasingly narrow. The main giveaway to the films’ digital origins is the difficulty that digital video has in handling highlights.

  Bright areas tend to clip and burn out, looking harsh as compared with film. But careful filmmakers can handle this issue to minimize the limitation, as Soderbergh THE SOCIAL NETWORK (COLUMBIA PICTURES, 2010)

  Cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth shot David Fincher’s film using the Red camera operat-ing at 4K resolution. He found that the Red enabled him to work fast, shoot in low light levels, and get rich, luxurious-looking images. And digital capture facilitated color and image correction in the DI (digital intermediate). In the film, Jesse Eisenberg (pictured) plays Mark Zuckerberg, the inventor of Facebook. Frame enlargement.

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  showed with Che and Fincher did with The Social Network . Moreover, digital video compensates for this limitation by seeing more information in shadow areas than do
es film, and Michael Mann shot his crime films— Collateral, Miami Vice, Public Enemies (2009)—in HD for this very reason.

  The Digital Intermediate

  Whether productions are shot on video or film, digital timing (or digital grading ) is used increasingly to adjust and balance color and tweak other image elements.

  Traditional laboratory methods, using photochemical processes, in earlier periods (a process known as lab timing ) enabled cinematographers to make color adjustments in the entire image overall, whereas today they can selectively remove or alter individual colors or sections of the image, as cinematographer Andrew Lesnie did on The Lord of the Rings films. Whereas traditional lab timing only makes gross adjustments in the three primary colors of red, blue, and green, digital timing enabled Lesnie to work directly with delicate blends, such as lavenders and salmons, and in small, precisely defined areas of the image (skin tones, for example). O Brother, Where Art Thou? was the first feature film to be entirely digitized and color corrected using this method. Because of the image control that digital timing affords, cinematographers are becoming increasingly involved in this area of postproduction, whereas in previous decades their work was largely finished with the completion of principal photography.

  An entire film may be digitally graded or select scenes only. In either case, the first step involves making a digital intermediate (DI) —the film images are converted to digital video (if the movie was digitally captured in production, this step is skipped), where they undergo the grading process. The corrected digital footage (the digital intermediate) is then scanned back out to film for exhibition in theaters. If the movie is to be shown in a 2.35:1 ratio, then the scope extraction typically is performed during the DI.

  Many light and color effects that were once accomplished during filming are now achieved with a digital intermediate. The intensely saturated colors of House of Flying Daggers (2004), as well as the monochromatic, desaturated color palette of Flags of Our Fathers (2006), were achieved with a digital intermediate. Lighting problems also can be fixed. While filming the appearance of the samurai in a twilit, smoky forest in The Last Samurai (2003) and the many day exterior scenes in Alexander (2004), the cinematographers accepted problems of lighting continuity, knowing these would be fixed with digital grading.

  The great advantage offered by a DI is the precision with which alterations in the image can be made. Filmmakers can select a small area, for example, and alter it. A selecting and masking function, called power windows, enables artists to work on one part of an image and leave the rest unchanged.

  When cinematographer John Alton wrote Painting with Light , this description of the cinematographers’ art was mainly a metaphor. The DI takes it closer to reality by virtue of the expanded aesthetic powers it gives to a cinematographer. At the same time, while many cinematographers welcome the new levels of control that digital grading gives them, others prefer the traditional photochemical methods of color correction. On There Will Be Blood (2007), Batman Begins (2005), and Inception (2010), the filmmakers used traditional tools of light and color because they did not want a digitally graded look.

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  KING KONG (UNIVERSAL, 2005)

  Naomi Watts commands the viewer’s attention in this shot because the focal plane is shallow and also because the highlights in her eyes add the spark of life to her face. Director Peter Jackson used power windows in the DI to make many subtle alterations in the film, which included emphasizing the highlights in Watts’ eyes. Frame enlargement.

  Case Study RATATOUILLE

  Filmmakers today can accomplish many tasks of cinema-

  hard and plastic look), reflection (to convey an appeal-

  tography—color, lighting, camera movement—using

  ingly moist texture), and color saturation (to indicate

  digital tools. Pixar’s animated film Ratatouille (2007) fea-

  freshness). They also used the technique of subsurface

  tures exquisitely rendered lighting effects. Indeed, light-

  scattering , which had been developed on The Lord of

  ing was essential to the story, which is about a clever rat

  the Rings for simulating Gollem’s skin. This technique

  working as a gourmet chef in one of the world’s great

  mimics the way that light penetrates an object, scatters

  restaurants. Making the animated food on screen look

  below the surface, and then exits at a different place

  real enough to eat was accomplished by careful digital

  from where it entered. They also used a complemen-

  lighting. The digital light designer works with key, fill,

  tary technique they called “Gummi,” which emulated

  and back lights but these are not real in the physical

  light transmission through an object, such as a glass of

  manner of traditional cinematography. They are virtual

  wine. To get both techniques to work required running

  lights, created in a computer. Ratatouille presented

  a series of computations to determine how light would

  numerous lighting challenges because so many of its

  behave in contact with different surfaces, densities, and

  scenes presented a kitchen full of food, and the food

  degrees of translucence. Consultants on the film who

  needed to look real. The digital designers created virtual

  were gourmet cooks instructed the CG artists in how

  lighting effects that emphasized texture and surface

  food looks, how sauces behave when stirred, and how

  detail, and made the food look fresh. To do so, they

  food reacts when chopped with a knife.

  studied the photography that appears in food maga-

  The result in the film is food that looks good enough

  zines and cookbooks. As they wrote about this kind of

  to eat, an illusion created by the careful way that digital

  photography, “Light falls across cuts of meat to reveal

  light is used to model the surface properties of texture,

  their perfectly cooked texture, a soft backlight hints that

  color, and translucence. While the film is an animated

  fruits and vegetables are plump and juicy, and highlights

  fantasy, the lighting is quite realistic—the digital

  glisten on sauces.”

  lighting behaves according to the known properties

  In particular, the digital lighting of the animated

  of real light. The illusion created on screen is a

  food conveyed the properties of softness (to avoid a

  convincing one. ■

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  RATATOUILLE (PIXAR,

  2007)

  Remy, the film’s hero and a

  gourmet rat, surveys some

  tempting bread. All of the food

  in the film had to look real

  and edible, an illusion accom-

  plished by digital lighting and

  careful rendering of surface

  textures and colors. Frame en-

  largement.

  VISUAL STYLE AND DESIGN QUOTATIONS

  The discussion thus far has tended to emphasize how cinematography functions within individual films, with a stylistic design suited to expressing the needs of a given production. But one also can understand cinematography in terms of visual styles across groups of films. The cinema is now more than a century old, and cinematography has established some important visual traditions. Certain lighting and color designs, used extensively across many films, have emerged as enduring features of style.

  Filmmakers can quote from these in their own work, and what is “real” for an audience is sometimes a function of how films in the past have represented the world.

  During the decade of th
e 1940s, hard, low-key lighting was an established visual convention pervasive in Hollywood cinema. (A convention is an agreement shared by filmmaker and audience about what will be valid and acceptable in a film.) Dark, moody, shadowy compositions were firmly established in crime and detective films, especially film noir. The low-key shot from Out of the Past is such an example.

  Contemporary cinematographers photographing crime films whose narratives are set during the 1940s consciously try to evoke this lighting style. In Bugsy (1991), dealing with real-life gangster Ben Siegel’s experiences in Hollywood in the 1940s, cinematographer Allen Daviau used abundant hard lighting because this was one of the staples of 1940s crime film cinematography. Barry Levinson, the director of Bugsy , wanted the dark areas of the compositions to be extremely dark, and to comply, Daviau worked small pieces of highly directional hard light.

  What is striking about this aesthetic choice, from the standpoint of visual conventions, is that to evoke a period style and setting for Bugsy , the filmmakers chose to imitate the lighting style of 1940s Hollywood pictures. In this regard, the lighting style has established its own reality and its own validity. To visually represent the world of 1940s crime on film means to evoke the lighting style that Hollywood employed in its films during those years. Roger Deakins’s black-and-white, low-key cinematography for The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001) reproduces the look of Hollywood film during this period, appropriately because the story is set in the 1940s.

  Hollywood is a very small community whose artists know each other and study one another’s work. This accentuates the speed at which influences can operate. The striking visual designs created by one cinematographer can shape the work of other artists and their films. In JFK (1991), cinematographer Robert Richardson created a distinctive 90

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  JFK (WARNER BROS.,

  1991); INGLOURIOUS

  BASTERDS