Whether described as video or film, any movie production relies on a crucial group of elements that are grouped under the label of cinematography. Cinematography is essentially the craft of telling stories and invoking emotional responses using moving images. Although almost anyone can capture video images using equipment as basic as a smartphone or compact point-and-shoot camera, along with the natural lighting available in the location they’re filming; it takes considerably more skill and experience to move from badly lit, shaky, hand-held footage, to well-considered, engaging movie footage that can immerse viewers in the story you’re trying to tell.
Essential understanding:
For many years I taught still photography to secondary students and one of the most difficult expectations to overcome among those who enrolled on the course, was understanding that good photos aren’t taken, they’re made! This is why a talented photographer can use a smartphone to photograph the same scene as a less experienced shooter with a high-end DSLR and end up with a vastly more engaging result. The same thing applies to shooting movies, if, that is, you’re ever going to reach beyond the very basics of creating a simple record of events that are taking place in front of the lens.
Although cinematography is far more art than science, it is important to have at least some understanding the technical elements of movie capture. Technical cinematography involves the science of recording light information digitally, via electronic image sensors, or recording scene information using light-sensitive chemical emulsions on traditional celluloid film. Regardless of which method of capture is used, understanding at least the basics of how light interacts with your chosen medium and how the information is processed to create moving images is pretty much essential to filming in a controlled and purposeful way. Also, some understanding of optics and how lenses can be used to shape and manage the light hitting your sensor/film frame is also pretty essential to predictable, controlled results.
In addition to having a firm grasp of the technical aspects of cinematography, a firm understanding of the functional elements of movie capture is also essential. Functional cinematography involves the composition of images, movement of the camera, use of creative focusing and management of light within a scene. In other words, it is about taking the mundane reality of what is in front of the camera and transforming it into the engaging storytelling element that you want the viewer to see. Again, without some clear understanding and experience of how functional elements can be exploited to achieve your vision, you’re always going to be hoping to take an interesting shot, rather than making a good one.
Without at least some understanding of both the technical and functional aspects of cinematography, you will inevitably be working on a hope for the best basis when shooting, to some degree.
Key elements of good cinematography:
If you want to create engaging moving images, several key elements cannot be ignored.
Lighting:
Lighting is probably the most crucial element of cinematography to understand and master if you want to elevate your movie making to an engaging level. Simply ‘going with what’s there’ while sometimes appropriate, is frequently a recipe for badly exposed footage, which, at best, doesn’t set an appropriate visual mood for the scene, or, at worst, is difficult for the viewer to decode visually; either of which are doing you no favours in terms of telling your story. Even the simplest factual video sequences can be enhanced by appropriate lighting or ruined by poor judgement regarding the same. Making good decisions about lighting, including its quality, amount, and direction, while understanding how to achieve this with the best choice and deployment of equipment is perhaps the most important job of any cinematographer.
Lighting equipment comes in all shape and sizes and with varying capabilities, from creating general washes of light and colour to providing quite surgical detail within your scene. Lighting modifiers, such as barn doors, scrims, softboxes, grids, and lenses, also provide additional variation to the shape and quality of light that fixtures produce. Having said that, good lighting doesn’t have to mean throwing thousands into expensive gear, as sometimes, skilfully placing a homemade foamboard reflector or polyester diffuser to help shape your lighting, turning up at your location at the right time of day, or simply changing your subject’s position in relation to a window, can make all the necessary magic happen for little or no cost. As with many other things, it’s not necessarily what, but how that’s really important.
Composition and focus:
Composition and focus are used to draw attention to and give visual context to chosen elements within a scene. They are the design elements of cinematography. Good cinematography involves highly developed design skills like choosing exactly what should be in a frame and what should be left out, forming visual relationships between key elements within a shot, identifying shape and movement, creating tension and resolution, aiding continuity with adjacent shots, and so on. It is a critical part of the magic of moving image production. Many of the compositional skills used in still photography can be applied to cinematography, but these are often adapted with movement through time in mind, as we’re no longer just talking about elements in two-dimensional space. A good example of this is where a cinematographer might use a focus pull to change the optical emphasis within a frame, shifting attention from one element to another, while a still photographer would typically either choose which element to have in focus or use greater depth of field to keep both elements sharp. Compositional conventions like the rule of thirds can still be applied successfully in cinematography, but a cinematographer will often need to consider position as transitory rather than fixed, thinking about spatial start and endpoints and the transitional path they produce within the shot. Similarly, background elements present whole new compositional possibilities, when they’re temporary or moving within a shot, rather than being static within a fixed frame. Learning the language of cinematography is essential to good movie production at whatever level and by far the best way to do this is by studying the work of others and then learning to apply their ideas and methods to your own work through practice.
While good technique and a strong sense of visual design are undoubtedly a pre-requisite for high-quality cinematography, they only go so far unless coupled with imagination. Good cinematography, like good still photography, often involves looking at things differently from how we would in everyday life. A really good mantra, which I learned many years ago from my college photography tutor, is that changing your point of view, whether physically or emotionally, is, more often than not, the key to creating interest. If you compare, for example, the difference between everyday tourist snapshots of a famous monument and really great architectural photos of the same structure, it is invariably viewpoint that has done most to raise the game of the latter. Choosing an exciting, intriguing, or downright unsettling camera angle can do so much to charge a shot with emotion and engage the viewer, as it forces them to rethink reality. So, if you find yourself setting your camera at eye level, taking in a scene at a comfortable, everyday angle, think again!
Appropriate capture equipment:
Cameras:
One of the most common questions I get asked is: ‘what’s the best camera I can buy for £**** and my reply is always the same: what do you want to achieve? In essence, its actually quite difficult to buy a poor camera these days, at least in terms of simple measures like image resolution and available frame rates. It is, however, very easy indeed to buy a totally inappropriate camera for your needs. If you want to capture footage of your exploits as a snowboarder, for example, then an action-cam of some kind, small, robust, easy to use, auto everything, is clearly the way to go; but if your main area of interest is filming in low light, then the best action-cam in the world is unlikely to cut it, because its design criteria are entirely different. Conversely, you’d look pretty stupid making your way down the slopes with an Arri Alexa strapped to your helmet. It’s very important, therefore, to be clear about your main aim in film making and to select equipment that fits with this. A minimum requirement for half-decent filming is good image resolution and quality, with 1080p resolution and 8-bit sampling as minimum capabilities, with a choice of frame rates and as little noise as possible in lower light use. At time of writing many cameras, even cheap ones, offer 4K resolution, though this often means squeezing lots of pixels onto a tiny sensor and fairly aggressive compression in order to process and record the amount of information coming off that sensor; so although appealing to spec-heads, 4K can mean significantly lower image quality than might have been achieved by sticking to 1080p in the same basic device. Having XLR mic inputs and half-decent mic pre-amps may also be important, again depending upon your area of work.
Camera support:
If you’ve ever watched the closing credits of a feature film, you will have seen, and probably pondered upon, the job titles ‘grip’ and ‘key grip’. Grips are an entire team on set, who’s job it is to see to the stability of, smooth movement of and safety of camera equipment during filming. They will operate jibs and cranes, construct small train tracks for running camera supports and generally do a great deal to ensure that the camera operators themselves can concentrate solely on the job of operating their camera, rather than also having to worry about its stability. Even if you’re working on much smaller scale productions, camera stability, smooth movement and safety is still crucial to the job, although you probably won’t have the luxury of a specialist on set to manage this. Key to camera stability and safety is a robust tripod, which is capable of supporting several kilograms of camera and other equipment safely, keeping it very still and allowing it to pan and tilt smoothly. This is one area where my advice is not to think cheap. If you’re attaching a camera costing several thousands of pounds to something, it had better be reliable! In addition, it needs to be well enough engineered to operate flawlessly over and over again. Also ensure your tripod has a fluid video head, which offers smooth pan and tilt movement, with adjustable tension.
You may also consider using equipment such as a gimbal for getting very smooth, steady-cam style footage on the move, or a camera slider to create smooth linear movement within a scene. All of these gadgets have seen significant price falls and significant expansion of choice in recent years, mainly thanks to the explosion in video production among the DSLR fraternity. Coupled with appropriate, lightweight cameras, gimbals and sliders costing just a few hundred pounds can do an excellent job, but if you want to support heavier equipment such as professional camcorders or cinema cameras, you’re looking at thousands of pounds just to get started. Whatever level you investment in support equipment, there’s one simple rule to consider: if your footage is meant to look still or to move smoothly, then your equipment should enable it to do just that, because even the slightest shake or judder will look like an earthquake in the finished product.
Lighting equipment:
I’ve already spoken about the importance of lighting to successful cinematography and like many other areas of production equipment, the last ten years have seen dramatic developments in lighting, particularly that of low cost LED units. Currently, a simple three-point lighting rig, capable of doing a perfectly respectable job, can be purchased for less than a thousand pounds including stands and carry cases. Of course, you still get what you pay for and more expensive equipment is inevitably more robust and reliable, both of which are important features for everyday professional use. In addition to lights and stands, a range of modifiers (scrims, snoots, barn doors, grids, soft-boxes, etc) will make a world of difference to the effectiveness and general versatility of your lighting armoury, so be sure to select lighting equipment that can accommodate a range of accessories. When it comes to lighting modifiers, there is a whole lot that can be done on a DIY basis and there are numerous YouTube videos that demonstrate how to build effective reflectors, diffusers and so on from easily available materials. However, in my experience, what this saves you in cash is more than offset by what it costs you in time and effort, DIY equipment is also rarely capable of being collapsed and transported easily.
Audio:
Although this article is about cinematography, which is, strictly speaking, a completely separate area of concern from that of sound recording, almost no movie production is complete without high-quality audio. To this end, if you are considering developing your movie-making skills, getting your head around the basics of good audio recording is essential, not to mention getting you bank balance around the cost of it. In just the same way that there is no one size fits all video camera, the same thing applies to mics and, if you’re using a DSLR, external audio interfaces/recorders. A decent range of mics, including at least: a lavalier mic for noisy location interviews, a decent shotgun mic and a decent small-diaphragm condenser mic are invaluable, along with cables, a boom pole and maybe an overhead mic stand. Decent extreme-isolation headphones (not to be confused with noise-cancelling headphones) are also an essential item of movie-making kit for monitoring audio effectively.
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