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CHAPTER 5
THE SHOT: CINEMATOGRAPHY
Chapter Outline
The Photographic Image
The Range of Tonalities
Speed of Motion
Perspective
A Closer Look: From Monsters to the Mundane
A Closer Look: Virtual Perspective 3D
Framing
Frame Dimensions and Shape
Onscreen and Offscreen Space
Camera Position: Angle, Level, Height, and Distance of Framing
The Mobile Frame
Duration of the Image: The Long Take
Real Time is…What?
Functions of the Long Take
The Long Take and the Mobile Frame
Summary
Teaching “The Shot: Cinematography”
The Purpose of the Chapter
Aside from Chapter 11, Film Criticism: Sample Analyses, this is the longest chapter in
Film Art. This is because cinematography is such a complex subject. The modern
motion-picture camera and raw stock offer an enormous range of technical possibilities
for lens length, shooting speed, aspect ratio, color, and camera movement—all of which
profoundly affect the look of the film. Moreover, the filmmakers make a huge number of
aesthetic decisions about how to frame their images.
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of Evil is more than just a scene of a couple strolling across the Mexican border,
unaware of a bomb in a car that passes them. They will be able to specify that it is a
craning and tracking long take that begins on a close-up framing and ends on a
medium-long framing.
Lecturing on and Discussing Cinematography
films without the sound.)
You might also consider showing the ninety-minute documentary film, Visions of
Light: The Art of Cinematography (1993, Arnold Glassman, Todd McCarthy, and
Stuart Samuels). It contains excerpts from more than eighty films (mostly with sound
and American, but with a sampling of silent and foreign films) and interviews with many
cinematographers. While many of the clips are quite short, they are a good way to
expose a beginning student to a variety of styles in a short time. Some of the
commentary by the cinematographers is quite insightful, and there is documentary
footage of cinematographers in action. Visions of Light can be found on DVD, as well as
online.
Visions of Light has the advantage of treating older films with extraordinary reverence,
and it could convince students that there is something worth watching in the black-and–
white classics they might otherwise resist. It also uses many of the terms introduced in
Film Art (for instance, high-key light) and shows some of the shots illustrated in the text
(for example, the Steadicam view of Jake moving through the corridor and into the ring
in Raging Bull). In general, the film contains clips from many films that are dealt with in
Film Art, including Citizen Kane, The Wizard of Oz, Meet Me in St. Louis, Touch of Evil,
and Raging Bull. Finally, Vittorio Storaro (cinematographer of Apocalypse Now and The
Last Emperor) reprises our discussion in Chapter 1 of why the director is usually
considered the “author” of a film.
Assigning a Paper on Cinematography
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The same basic topic described in the section on mise-en-scene in Chapter 4 could
be assigned, but with the students directed to write on one or more motifs of
cinematography in a film.