How to use color in film pdf

Cinematography 6

We are affected and defined by light. Light is the most important tool we have

to work with, not only as cinematographers, but as people.

—Laszlo Kovacs

Still from Sin City (2005). ©Dimension Films/courtesy Everett Collection

The “Look” of a Scene Chapter 6

Learning Objectives

After reading this chapter, you should be able to do the following: • Have a working knowledge of the cinematographer’s job. • Describe how camera placement and use affects the way we interpret a film. • Discuss the difference between cinematography and mise en scène and recognize the

importance of each. • Explain the importance of lighting design and how it affects the tone and feel of a film. • Give examples of how filmmakers use and manipulate color to reinforce the mood of

a film. • Demonstrate how different focal length lenses affect the look of a shot. • Define terms such as deep focus, panning, tilting, tracking shots, and aspect ratios, as well

as explain certain special effects.

6.1 The “Look” of a Scene When we are first introduced to Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather, played by Marlon Brando, the Mafia boss is sitting in the study of his home. Along with his consigliore, or adviser, Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall), Corleone is listening to a line of people requesting favors on the day of his daughter’s wedding. Corleone is immensely powerful, as we learn by the scope of the favors he is asked to grant, which in one case includes the desire of a singer to be cast in a film to

revive his musical career, and Corleone’s ability to grant them. However, it is not just what Corleone says in the scene, which introduces us to all that will follow, that makes us aware of his power. It is also how the scene looks, how it is shot, and how color and light are combined that give The Godfather such an immediately distinctive feel. The rich hues, the closed blinds, the placing of Corleone behind the desk, a traditional seat of power, tell us that this is a man in charge, a man who is both wise and dangerous. The tone of the film is established from the opening frames. As we discussed in Chapter 5, all of these things we see are elements of the mise en scène. They are what is in the scene.

Director Francis Ford Coppola had much to do with this, of course, as did the actors Brando and Duvall. But an equal, if lesser-heralded, partner in the establishment of Corleone as the head of the crime family is cinematographer Gordon Willis, who served in the same capacity for the two Godfather sequels and such films as All the President’s Men, as well as for many Woody Allen films, including Annie Hall and Manhattan. Willis’s use of dark tones and lighting, one of his trademarks, gives the film a serious feel, one that not only echoes the mood of the film but also serves to make the actors stand out amid the backgrounds. We know from the start that Don Corleone may be able to grant you a favor, but you are better off not being in the position of having to ask for one.

©PARAMOUNT PICTURES/Ronald Grant/Everett Collection

▲▲ Scene from the movie The Godfather. Cinematographer Gordon Willis, over- coming studio reservations, insisted on creating an extremely dark look for The Godfather.

What Is Cinematography? Chapter 6

6.2 What Is Cinematography? If the director is responsible for the film overall, in a general way, the cinematographer is respon- sible for its look, in very specific, shot-by-shot terms. He or she is responsible for the images that the camera sees, and by extension the images that the audience will see in the finished film. Cinematographer is the name applied to a movie’s director of photography, but it’s more than that. The word “photography” means literally writing with light in its ancient Greek roots. Cinematography, on the other hand, means “writing with movement.” Movies move. Cinematography is a true movie art form, to be sure, but it is also a highly technical exercise.

Whereas mise en scène is what we see in a scene, the cinematography determines exactly how we see it. Editing, which we’ll discuss further in Chapter 7, determines when and how long we see the individual views of the mise en scène that the cinematographer has composed. Elements of cinematography go far beyond the mise en scène element of lighting. When we discuss elements of cinematography, we will often use the word shot, which is the camera’s view from a single posi- tion. For example, if the camera is far away, we see a long shot that shows us all or most of what is in the scene. If it’s closer to the actors or objects, we see a medium shot that leaves some things out of the scene but draws our attention to one portion of it. If the camera is very close, we see a close-up, which shows us one character or an extreme close-up showing only specific details the director wants us to notice (see Table 6.1 for descriptions of standard shot distances). The camera may also be placed at eye level, at a high angle looking down, or at a low angle looking up. The camera may be stationary or moving.

Additionally, certain characters or props may be in sharp focus, whereas others may be blurred; focus can change during a shot (a technique called racking focus), or everything may be in focus at once. The choice of lens can make things appear normal or distorted in some way. The type of film stock or camera sensor (and chemical or digital processing) that is used will force the viewer to see things in a specific way through the cinematography—sharp and crisp or soft and “grainy” on film (or “pixelated” with digital video); in natural colors, artificial colors, or black and white. Even the shape of the screen is a function of the cinematography.

Table 6.1 Types of camera shots (by relative distance to subject)*

ELS (XLS) LS MLS MS MCU CU ECU (XCU)

Extreme long shot

Long shot Medium long shot

Medium shot

Medium close-up

Close-up Extreme close-up

Camera a very long distance away and/ or using a wide-angle lens; human figures appear tiny

Camera a moder- ately long distance away; human figures are recogniz- able in setting and visible head to toe

Human figures are visible between head to toe and head to knee in the frame

Human figures are visible from about the mid-thigh to waist up

Human figures are visible head to chest

Human figures are visible head to neck

Camera close enough to show only part of face (from eyes to mouth, or eyes only, mouth only, etc.)

*All distances are relative to each other and may overlap or be variable from film to film or shot to shot (e.g., an MLS may be considered an LS in some situations or an MS in others, and an MS may be relatively close up compared with the rest of the scene).

How Does Mise en Scène Relate to Cinematography? Chapter 6

The cinematographer’s job is to translate the director’s vision for the film, to capture what the director wants to see and to say, and to physically make that happen. Obviously, this requires a great deal of collaboration, though, as we will discuss, different directors offer more freedom than others. Some directors use the same cinematographer on every film; this plays a large part in a director’s film having a certain look. Other directors change cinematographers routinely. Whichever route a director takes, cinematographers are enormously influential in how a film is seen. Think of the contrasting yet wholly original look of films such as Blade Runner, The White Ribbon, Sin City, Lawrence of Arabia, and Apocalypse Now. Yes, their directors shaped their look, but cinematographers actually created it.

When we discuss editing, we will be referring to the process of both constructing and refining a film after it has been shot, or recorded, by the cinematographer. Most directors use sev- eral takes and different camera setups or versions of the same scene. This allows them to pick and choose the best of what they’ve shot and to put scenes together in the way that most effectively tells the story they are trying to tell. In order to have a variety of shots to edit together, however, all those different types of shots must be photographed in the first place. The director and cinematographer must have an understanding of the editing process so they can arrange the mise en scène and compose the shots in ways that will make the editing easier as well as effective. A good cinematographer knows to provide the

director and editor with several options, to cover each scene from a variety of viewpoints that may or may not be used in the final film. This is called coverage. Likewise, camera placement must be consistent to maintain the illusion of continuity (the “180-degree rule”), as we’ll discuss in the editing chapter.

In this chapter, we will look at the various tools at the cinematographer’s disposal and how they’re used. In previous chapters, we have discussed storytelling and uses of mise en scène to tell the story, including actors; here we will delve more deeply into the physical makeup of a film and how it is achieved—the nuts and bolts, as it were, of filmmaking.

6.3 How Does Mise en Scène Relate to Cinematography? Often thought of as the responsibility of the director, the mise en scène is interpreted and inten- sified by the cinematographer, and one key element—the lighting—is designed by the cinema- tographer. Thus, it is included here, along with a recap of its basic elements. As noted in the last chapter, mise en scène includes the props, the background, the blocking (or placing of actors), the costumes, the makeup, and the lighting (or lack thereof). Because film is a visual medium, what is shown—and, just as importantly, what is left out—is essential to our understanding of what we’re watching. Effective framing of the mise en scène is one of the cinematographer’s most important tasks. Framing is done by aiming the camera in a certain way so that only a specific portion of the scene appears within the frame that will appear on screen. But first, let’s look back at how the mise en scène itself can help tell the story.

Courtesy Everett Collection

▲▲ Scene from the movie Lawrence of Arabia. Cinematographer Freddie Young had a long and productive partner- ship with director David Lean. Together they created Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), and Ryan’s Daughter (1970). Young won a Best Cinematography Oscar for each one.

How Does Mise en Scène Relate to Cinematography? Chapter 6

An example of an exceptional mise en scène can be seen in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, a silent 1920 German Expressionist film in which director Robert Wiene and cin- ematographer Willy Hameister create a disturbing, surreal world where images are distorted, props and backgrounds are at odd angles, and shadows and light play off each other (often painted directly onto the set). In the film, a man named Francis starts to tell the story of his friend Alan and his fiancée Jane, and an evil magician named Dr. Caligari who hypnotizes a man named Cesare to kill them. After he begins to tell the story, we see it dramatized on screen. At the end, however, we learn that he, Cesare, and Jane are all patients in the asylum, and that Caligari is actually the director; what we’ve seen is Francis’s delusional fantasy.

The heavily stylized, unrealistic look of Dr. Caligari tells much about the story and influenced countless later films. For instance, when Francis begins and ends his tale, the sur- roundings and background are relatively normal looking. But the story within the story has wild distortions among props and backgrounds, both giving the film a creepy, unnatural feel and, as we later learn, signaling Francis’s insanity. The stylized mise en scène (done in a style called “Expressionism”) does not just enhance the story, then; it helps to tell it, expressing mood and content through physi- cal distortions. Most later films do not go to such extremes in set design, but rather combine harsh patterns of diagonal light and shadows with unusual camera angles to suggest a similar atmosphere within an otherwise more realistic setting.

In the 1982 film Blade Runner, director Ridley Scott and cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth crowd the Los Angeles of 2019 with people, machines, and more, giving the city a claustrophobic feel intensified further by the low-key lighting (high-contrast lighting dominated by deep shad- ows with a few bright highlights) that pervades the film; things have clearly spun out of control. Not only does this make it more difficult for someone like Decker (Harrison Ford) to find repli- cants, or artificial humans; it also contributes to a dehumanizing effect, which is the point of the movie overall.

Perhaps the most famous example of mise en scène appears in the 1941 film Citizen Kane. Director, co-writer, and star Orson Welles and cinematographer Gregg Toland, upon whom Welles relied heavily, created a scene early in the film set in the boardinghouse where the young Charles Foster Kane lives with his parents. They live in poverty until a gold mine is discovered on the property. Charles’s mother (Agnes Moorehead) signs the necessary papers to send Charles away with the banker Walter Thatcher (George Coulouris) so that the boy can get an education. Yet while we see them in the foreground, in the background we see Charles playing in the snow outside the window, joyous (he is unaware that he is about to be sent away), riding on his sled. He, too, is in perfect focus, so that the audience is forced to consider both the adults and the boy with equal weight. Viewers may subconsciously note throughout this shot that the child is literally as well as figuratively separating his parents. The staging of the actors within the set demonstrates Welles’s control of the mise en scène, carefully accentuated through the use of the camera—its position, movements, and choice of lenses. Toland (the cinematographer) was

Mary Evans/Decla-Bioscop AG/Ronald Grant/Everett Collection

▲▲ Scene from the movie The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. A high angle frames the subject by looking down on him. This makes the char- acter smaller, less powerful, and often less significant.

Lighting Chapter 6

able to use deep focus, in which everything in the foreground and background is clear and precise, more expertly than anyone had done at the time.

In Citizen Kane, the cinematographer and director work together to choreograph camera movements along with the move- ments of the actors, their shifting positions reflecting changes in character dynamics as the actors determine the rhythm of the scene through their performances. Welles (the director) allows the entire scene to play out in only two very long, uninterrupted takes, plus three shorter takes, two to intro- duce and one to close the scene. And what Welles and Toland have chosen to include in the shot is equally important, though we do not know it at the time. Not until the last scene of the film do we learn the expla- nation for “Rosebud,” Kane’s famous last words that have set the movie in motion. It is the name of the sled he rode as a boy,

playing in the snow. At the end of the film, it is tossed into an incinerator with countless other artifacts from Kane’s life, symbolizing his loss of innocence and joy as he grew older and attained power, often by disreputable means.

6.4 Lighting Technically, lighting is a part of the mise en scène, whether or not a camera is on the set (such as with live theater). However, it is the focusing of light onto a photosensitive emulsion on film,

or electronic sensor in a video camera, that makes possible the recording of a photo- graphic image. Thus, the cinematographer is responsible for ensuring there is enough light and typically designs the lighting “look” of a movie. A high-key lighting design has very bright light over everything, with few shadows and relatively low con- trast between the lightest and darkest parts of the scene. This style of lighting is typi- cal of comedies, happy scenes, institutional and office scenes, and the like. A low-key lighting design looks dark overall by com- parison. It is marked by extreme use of deep shadows, with very high contrast between the brightest parts of the scene and the darkest parts, which are obscured in shad- ows. Often there may be only a single source

Courtesy Everett Collection

▲▲ Scene from the movie Citizen Kane. Greg Toland and Orson Welles worked closely together on the deep focus approach to Citizen Kane. Welles shared his title card in the credits with Toland, recognizing the importance of their collaboration. This celebratory dinner, like so many other scenes, is composed in great depth.

©Sony Pictures/courtesy Everett Collection

▲▲ In Sophia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, high-key lighting underscores the effervescent, dream-like feeling of living an over-the-top life as queen.

Lighting Chapter 6

of light, coming from the back or the side of the main characters. Low-key lighting is often used for intense dramatic scenes, horror films, mystery thrillers, and the like. However, most scenes of most movies fall somewhere in between these extremes of high-key and low-key lighting.

Part of the so-called “film look” that people shooting on digital (or analog) video strive to achieve comes from the use of lighting in ways traditionally associated with film. The style of lighting that has differentiated professional photographic portraits from personal snapshots and has made Hollywood films stand out from newsreels, home movies, and ama- teur productions for over a century is some variation on what is called three-point lighting (see Figure 6.1). This style of lighting is based upon careful control of shadows by using three main light sources. Two are in front of the subject, but on opposite sides of the camera aimed at roughly 45-degree angles (about 90 degrees from each other). A bright key light provides the most light from one angle. Using only a key light, however, creates harsh shadows across an actor’s face. A slightly dimmer fill light also coming from the front but on the other side of the camera fills in the shadows, but not so much that it eliminates them. This provides a three- dimensional but not-too-harsh modeling to the actor’s face that is absent with very diffused light, which seems to come from everywhere (as on a cloudy day), or the “flat” shadowless lighting that happens when a single light is shining directly from the camera position (as with the flashbulb used for snapshots or light attached to a TV news camera). The third light in the three-point system is a very bright backlight positioned behind the actor and shining at the back of his or her head and shoulders. Now why would a cinematographer want to light up the backs of the actors if the camera is in front of them? The reason is that the bright rim of light visible from the camera position (sometimes called rimlight) makes the actors “pop out” from the back- ground, making it much easier for the audience to find those particular characters in the scene and to draw attention more to the characters than to the background. An example of this is a TV news broadcast—the news anchors and people being interviewed in the studio are usually lit with perfect three-point lighting, although in those cases the fill light may be nearly equal to the key light (giving a high-key effect).

Dramatic scenes in films will vary the intensity and positions of the fill and back lights to suit the mood or to simulate the sources of light visible in the scene (table lamps, street lights, etc.). Shadows can be made sharper or softer by aiming lights directly at the subject, through diffusion screens, or at reflective surfaces. Moving the camera to a new position, of course, changes the relative position of which lights are “front” and which are “back.” Because of this, in commercial films, the lighting positions may be readjusted with each close-up and camera setup for aesthetic and artistic reasons, rather than to create the appearance of “natural” lighting.

Sometimes flat lighting (using a soft light source placed close to the camera to minimize surface detail) is used intentionally, because its lack of shadows enhances a mood the director is looking

Courtesy Everett Collection

▲▲ Scene from the movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Cinematographer Franz Planer used the three- point lighting technique to give believable dimension to his subjects while simultaneously setting them apart from the background. Note the rim of light around Audrey Hepburn’s hair, face, and shoulders that is created by the use of backlight.

Color Chapter 6

for. Natural light usually comes from above—the sun or moon in outdoor scenes, ceiling lights in typical indoor scenes. Lighting that comes from below an actor may be natural if it’s from, say, a campfire; but underlighting, sometimes called “Halloween” lighting because it is so often used for spooky, unnatural situations, creates an unsettling mood for viewers because we’re not used to seeing light come from below the subject. Makers of documentaries and fiction films shot in a documentary style, however, usually prefer a natural look over these other options. They often intentionally try to avoid the artificial three-point system, using whatever type of light is available in the environment they’re shooting in, although they may try to position people to take advan- tage of natural lighting that looks similar to a traditional three-point setup. Interviews conducted in a studio rather than on location, however, typically use the more controlled three-point studio lighting, varying from high-key to low-key depending upon the documentary’s subject material.

6.5 Color Ask interior decorators the quickest, easiest, and best way to change the appearance and mood of a room, and they will tell you color. The same is often true with movies. The infusion of color into a scene immediately alters it, letting us know the intent of the director and cinematographer with a visual cue. The color may be part of the mise en scène, utilizing carefully planned color schemes in the set, props, costumes, and lighting, all simply recorded onto color film. It may

Figure 6.1: Three-point lighting

Three-way lighting reduces the appearance of harsh shadows and creates the fuller, more three-dimensional “film look” we associate with professionally shot films and photographs.

Camera

Key Light Fill Light

Actor

Backlight

Color Chapter 6

also be a function of the cinematography, as the cinematographer can put a colored filter over the lens, or instruct the photo lab to manipulate the colors in certain ways to create a specific “look.” Over the past 20 years, colors have been increasingly manip- ulated digitally after the film is edited to intensify moods and create an overall look. Colors in the finished film do not need to be accurate or even realistic representations of what was on the set. For example, the flash- back scenes in the Godfather films tend to have a yellowish cast, which was created in the printing process by using a color filter. Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing used many intense reds and other warm colors in the settings, but it also used color filters to give a yellowish-orange cast to scenes. Today, many directors of crime, science-fiction, and serious dramatic films prefer the “cool” mood suggested by using bluish-greenish colors throughout the scene design and cinematography. Tim Burton, in films such as Sleepy Hollow and Sweeney Todd, used not only a cool, bluish look, but also desaturation with the colors (in effect, “turned down” to look less intense) nearly to the point of being black and white at times. The film Payback with Mel Gibson had an overall bluish cast with pale, desaturated colors (obtained partly through set design but largely through printing techniques) when originally released, but for the DVD “director’s cut” edition, the director decided to use more natural-looking colors, as they’d actually been recorded on the film.

History of Color

The earliest movies were black and white by necessity, because only black-and-white film was available. Filmmakers could still use color to suggest moods by tinting the black-and-white film with a dye that made the clear film base become a certain color (e.g., blue for night scenes, red for fire scenes) or chemically toning the image so that dark portions turned some other color, often a shade of brown called sepia. Tints and tones were sometimes used together, such as a blue tone with a pale yellow tint to suggest a moonlit night. Some films were even hand-painted or col- ored with stencils, a mechanical equivalent of computer colorization. When color photography became practical for movies, it obviously opened up a wider palette for filmmakers, but it still did not become the norm until the late 1960s. The color processes developed in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s were both technically very complex and economically very expensive. In the 1950s and 1960s, easier and cheaper color processes became available, and after all three television net- works switched to color in 1965–1966, Hollywood films largely abandoned black and white. This is not to say that black-and-white films were not expressive of the emotion and feeling that color could make easier to display. In fact, iconic films such as The Seventh Seal and Citizen Kane could have been made in color—the technology existed—but were no less brilliant for being made in black and white. Directors such as Ingmar Bergman and Orson Welles were masterful in their use of light and shadow, allowing them to “color” their films in rich shades of gray without using

©Columbia/courtesy Everett Collection

▲▲ The Last Emperor (directed by Bernardo Bertolucci) uses color for both dramatic and symbolic effect. Red is the color of imperial rule. Green is knowledge, which is hidden and unseen until the arrival of the child emperor’s tutor.

Color Chapter 6

color. Later directors such as Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, the Coen broth- ers, Joss Whedon, and Alexander Payne have elected to use black and white instead of color for certain films. The Best Picture winner at the 2012 Academy Awards, The Artist, was shot not only in black and white but also as a “silent” film with no recorded dialogue, as was the 2012 Spanish variation on the Snow White fairy tale, Blancanieves.

Contrasting Color With Black and White

The introduction of color revolutionized filmmaking as much as the introduction of sound. For an early example, we need look no further than The Wizard of Oz, released in 1939, which uses black and white and color dramatically—to contrast Dorothy’s real life with the one she experi- ences after a blow to the head during a tornado. In this movie, Dorothy (Judy Garland) is a school- girl in Kansas who runs away from home, but a visit to a fortune-teller (Frank Morgan) leads her back, just as a tornado strikes. A window hits her in the head, and she sees the house being carried into the sky by the tornado, landing in the magical land of Oz—and on top of the Wicked Witch of the East, who is killed. As Dorothy steps out of the house, the film, up to this point shot in black and white (and printed in a brown sepia tone), changes to vibrant color. Dorothy’s friends will appear in Oz as the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion; there is now a Wicked

Witch of the West, swearing revenge against Dorothy for the death of her sister. Color now becomes central to the story. The slip- pers worn by the Wicked Witch of the East, given to Dorothy, are ruby. Dorothy and her friends must follow the Yellow Brick Road to the Emerald City, where they will find the Wizard of Oz (also played by Morgan). The color scenes are shot in Technicolor, a technology that could produce rich, vivid, hyper-realistic colors.

When Dorothy clicks her heels three times and finally returns home to Kansas, vow- ing never to leave again, the film reverts to sepia-toned black and white. It is an inter- esting contrast. Her fantasy life, which she experiences while unconscious, is repre- sented by vibrant color, which is still strik-

ing and might have seemed an almost miraculous effect to the 1939 audience. Yet Dorothy spends her time in Oz working out how she will get home. In Kansas, where she is surrounded by her family and friends, Dorothy’s life is shown in black and white, considerably more drab than the segment in Oz. Yet while in Oz—where her life is shown in rich, vivid color—she longs only to return home. Whatever the intention of director Victor Fleming (and the other, uncredited direc- tors the film had at various times), the effect of color could not be more striking, serving as a clear division between Kansas and Oz.

In the 1998 film Pleasantville, director Gary Ross and cinematographer John Lindley use color as a symbol of freedom in a repressive world. The film stars Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon as David and Jennifer, twins with little in common. They are transported into Pleasantville, a

Mary Evans/WARNER BROS MGM/Ronald Grant/Everett Collection

▲▲ Scene from the movie The Wizard of Oz. What could say more vividly that “we’re not in Kansas anymore” than the yel- low brick road to Oz?

Color Chapter 6

Leave It to Beaver-like black-and-white 1950s situation comedy David watches, by way of a magi- cal remote. Once there, the film switches to black and white, as David and Jennifer must imper- sonate characters in the show.

However, they bring their contemporary 1990s views and values to the show in which they are now living. Jennifer in particular is much more sexually liberated than the women living in Pleasantville, and David becomes a civic leader, advocating more personal freedom. As the townspeople begin to rebel, their lives turn to color. The repressive town leaders, meanwhile, remain in black and white. The device is sometimes used to comic effect, other times more dra- matically. While it may sound like a too-obvious conceit, the change from black and white to color is actually quite effective.

In The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius’s 2011 film, black and white is used exclusively to chronicle the fall of a silent-film star juxtaposed with the rise of an actress during the transition from silent film to talkies. Obviously, this is used as a device to convey the look of films in the 1920s, but it was also considered something of a risk at a time when color and special effects dominated theat- rical releases. That’s because, in addition to being shot in black and white, the film is also largely silent, with title cards and music carrying the story. But Hazanavicius never wavers, using spoken dialogue only sparingly at the end of the film (and as a crucial part of the story).

The effect is to transport one back to the time of silent film, which makes the illustration of the sometimes painful transition to sound all the more powerful. Is it a gimmick? Probably. Yet the film managed, according to critics, to transcend this; it received 10 Academy Award nominations and won five, including Best Picture. Other films, like 2013’s Frances Ha, Nebraska, and Much Ado About Nothing, would also use black and white, though not as such a significant part of the storytelling process.

Use of a Single Color

As color cinematography came to be the accepted form of filmmaking, directors and cinema- tographers began to explore its possibilities even further. The use of a single hue, or color, in the mise en scène could be used to heighten suspense or to enrich storytelling. In Don’t Look Now, a horror film released in 1973, director Nicolas Roeg and cinematographer Anthony B. Richmond use the color red throughout the movie to great effect. Donald Sutherland stars as John Baxter, an architect married to Laura (Julie Christie). Their daughter drowns in a pond; as John pulls her lifeless body from the water, she is wearing a vivid red raincoat. The Baxters move to Venice, where John takes a job restoring a church. However, he repeatedly catches glimpses of a small figure in a red raincoat. Is it the ghost of his daughter? Or could it be something else? Red is used not just in these scenes, but also throughout the film as a sort of connective device. As Roger Ebert writes:

The shiny red raincoat will be a connector all the way through. In Venice, Baxter will get glimpses of a little figure in red running away from him or hiding from him, and may wonder if this is the ghost of his daughter. We will see the red figure more often than he does, glimps- ing it on a distant bridge, or as a boat passes behind two arches. And the precise tone of red will be a marker through the movie; Roeg’s palette is entirely in dark earth tones, except when he introduces bright red splashes—with a shawl, a scarf, a poster on a wall, a house front painted with startling brilliance. The color is a link between death past and future. (Ebert, 2005)

Color Chapter 6

Years later, in the 1993 movie Schindler’s List, director Steven Spielberg and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski would use black and white to create stark depictions of concentration camps in World War II. The film tells the story of Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), a German industrialist who saves the lives of more than a thousand Jews by putting them to work in his factory, spend- ing his entire fortune to bribe guards to allow for more humane treatment. The lack of color lends an almost documentary feel to the movie’s exteriors and a classical Hollywood feeling to its interiors, giving it both a historical and a contemporary resonance. Yet Spielberg and Kaminski use the color red to haunting effect in two scenes. In the first, we see a little girl in the streets, wearing a red coat. Later we—and Schindler—see the girl, identifiable by the red coat, in a pile of dead bodies. She stands out in sharp relief to the black-and-white backgrounds around her, a sign of the hideous acts of which the Nazis were capable and a symbol of innocence sacrificed among the atrocities of war. In the television show Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust, Spielberg explains the use of red:

America and Russia and England all knew about the Holocaust when it was happening, and yet we did nothing about it. We didn’t assign any of our forces to stopping the march toward death, the inexorable march toward death. It was a large bloodstain, primary red color on everyone’s radar, but no one did anything about it. And that’s why I wanted to bring the color red in. (Anker, 2004)

The decision lends the scenes in which the girl appears a heartbreaking power, with the contrast between color and black and white all the more distinctive.

Saturation

Saturation is the deepness, vibrancy, of bright, pure color. Heavily saturated color is often used to express vibrant emotion or heightened reality. In the 1990 version of Dick Tracy, for instance, director Warren Beatty and cinema- tographer Vittorio Storaro limited themselves to the types of colors found in comic books and the newspaper funny pages, the source for the film. As Kathleen Beckett-Young writes in The New York Times:

Just as the strip used a limited number of colors, so does the film. Although there is some fudging, every- thing is colored either red, yellow, orange, blue, green, purple, fuchsia, black, or white. And, just as in the funnies, every red is the same red, whether it’s a dress or a chair or a building. . . . Glenne Headly’s trusting Tess Trueheart first appears on screen wearing green, a color [costume designer Milena] Canonero finds soothing, then switches to red as she approaches dan- ger. (Beckett-Young, 1990)

©Paramount/courtesy Everett Collection

▲▲ Bright, saturated colors burnish the heroic image of a warrior of the air in Top Gun.

Color Chapter 6

Desaturation

Desaturated colors, as dis- cussed earlier, have been muted, appearing less intense, which some filmmakers feel contrib- utes to a more realistic, often gritty look (even though techni- cally it is just as artificial as using oversaturated colors). This tech- nique was used to good effect in Saving Private Ryan, director Steven Spielberg’s film about the invasion of Normandy during World War II and the subse- quent search for a soldier whose brothers have been killed. In the Saving Private Ryan Online Encyclopedia, the filmmakers explain the technique:

To achieve a tone and quality that not only were true to the story, but also reflected the period in which it is set, Spielberg once again collaborated with cinematographer Janusz Kaminski. Spielberg says: “Early on, we both knew that we did not want this to look like a Technicolor extravaganza about World War II, but more like color newsreel footage from the 1940s, which is very desaturated and low-tech. (Saving Private Ryan: Combat footage, 2010)

The Golden Hour

The golden hour, also known as the magic hour (although it actually lasts only about 20 minutes), is the term used for the time of day just after sunrise and the time just before sunset, when colors appear more warm, almost glowing, and there are no shadows, because the sun is not in the sky. Filmmakers often schedule outdoor scenes to be shot during these times, to enrich the use of color. Terrence Malick wanted his film Days of Heaven shot entirely during that period, a long and painstaking process for a full- length feature.

Mary Evans/Ronald Grant/Everett Collection

▲ The desaturated look of Saving Private Ryan is reminiscent of classic World War II-era color home movies and black-and-white newsreel films such as John Huston’s documentary The Battle of San Pietro.

Mary Evans/PARAMOUNT PICTURES/Ronald Grant/Everett Collection

▲ Shooting Days of Heaven was prolonged by director Terrence Malick’s insistence that the filming be done during the “magic hour.”

The Camera, the Lens, and Their Uses Chapter 6

6.6 The Camera, the Lens, and Their Uses On one level, the camera is the basic element of making a movie. It’s what the cinematographer uses to record the action, whether it be on film or, as is often the case in contemporary movies, digitally. A movie camera records numerous individual images, or frames, each second, and those frozen instants of time are then played back at the same speed they were shot at to repro- duce the illusion of smooth, natural motion. The earliest movies might range from about 12 to perhaps 50 images per second, and during the “silent” era usually averaged somewhere between 16 and 30 frames per second, with theaters adjusting their projectors for proper playback. Since the late 1920s, the projection rate was locked at 24 frames per second, standardized when the film industry switched from silent to sound movies and needed one constant speed for compatibility. Movies shot at a slower frame rate will appear to be in fast motion when viewed at the standard rate, and movies shot at a faster frame rate will be in slow motion at the standard viewing rate. Slow motion and fast motion effects can be achieved by the cinematographer’s camera settings. They can also be added artificially during post-production by duplicating or eliminating frames, although the results are often more jerky looking. The irregular duplication of frames to adjust the speed of the action to play at modern frame rates is why many silent-era films look jerky on modern equipment, even though they would have had smooth, natural motion when they were originally made and could be projected one frame at a time at any speed.

The camera itself requires a lens to focus an image onto the film. The types of lenses and focal lengths have an important bearing on exactly how that image appears. Through choice of lenses, framing, focus, and camera techniques, which we will discuss next, directors and cinematog- raphers direct our eye—sometimes subtly, sometimes not—to what they want us to see in any given scene.

Camera Distance, Angle, and Level

As noted earlier, the cinematographer pho- tographs only a small portion of the over- all mise en scène by deciding just where to place the camera. This decision determines whether a particular view is a long shot, medium shot, or close-up, and whether characters are viewed at eye level, from a low angle, or from a high angle (see Figure 6.2). A camera may also be tilted slightly off-axis so it doesn’t look level, a so-called Dutch angle that might give an off-kilter, unsettling feel to a scene or may make action scenes more dynamic.

Most scenes of most movies are typically shot at a horizontal eye level. This puts the audience on the same level as the charac- ters, and variations from eye level will con- vey certain psychological perceptions that

TM & ©20th Century Fox Film Corp. All rights reserved. Courtesy Everett Collection

▲▲ Scene from the movie Pickup on South Street. This Dutch angle adds to the overall menace and violence of this film noir about a pickpocket pursued by communist spies.

The Camera, the Lens, and Their Uses Chapter 6

may not be inherent in the performances or the mise en scène by itself. When the camera looks up at a character, the audience may be meant to “look up” figuratively to that character as admi- rable or may be intended to find that character domineering and intimidating. When a camera looks down on a character, we may be intended to view that character as “below” us or inferior to another character in the film, in a submissive position, or simply from an objective distance. It all depends on the context of a particular scene. Citizen Kane makes frequent use of different cam- era angles, low and high, to imply the relative positions of power of Kane and other characters.

Framing

A good cinematographer knows how to frame each shot for a combination of dramatic impact and aesthetic balance. The cinematographer and director first must agree upon an aspect ratio, which is a number describing the ratio of the frame’s width to its height and may range from nearly square to almost three times wider than it is tall. When movies were first invented, every camera maker was free to use film and image shapes of any width. Within about 10 years or so, movies quickly standardized with 35 mm film that had a picture exactly one and a third times wider than it was tall (an aspect ratio of 4:3, usually called 1.33:1 or simply 1.33). Television adopted the same shape. Then Hollywood introduced a variety of widescreen processes in the early and mid-1950s to lure audiences away from television and back into theaters. Although some of these processes used bigger film and special projectors, most widescreen formats were

Figure 6.2: Framing

Camera position can create a variety of psychological perceptions that might not otherwise exist in an actor’s performance or in the mise en scène. Think about how a low camera angle would make you feel about a character versus a high camera angle of that same char- acter. Would your perception change along with the camera position?

Camera Placement

Frames only a small part of the mise en

scène for effect

NOTE: Major figures are usually framed slightly off-center, looking into or walking toward the empty space. Actors typically have heads near the top of the frame with a small amount of headroom.

Distance

• Long shot • Medium shot • Close-up

Height (from ground)

• Low angle • Eye level

(normal angle) • High angle

Level

• Level to horizon • Canted off-axis

(Dutch angle)

Angle (in relation to subject)

• Head-on • Oblique • Profile

The Camera, the Lens, and Their Uses Chapter 6

designed to be compatible with the existing technical standards of film so theaters would have minimal financial investment to convert—buying only a larger screen and new set of lenses, instead of needing new projectors, and maintaining the ability to run films in the traditional format if desired.

By the late 1950s, theaters standardized two main ratios: 1.85 for “flat” films that used regular lenses but cropped off the top and bottom of the film frame, and 2.35 for “scope” films that used the entire area of the film frame with a special lens to stretch it out twice as wide. The so-called 16:9 ratio (1.78) was created for HDTV and is not normally used in theaters. Even when movies are shot digitally with 16:9 image sensors, they are normally composed for cropping to one of the three standard theatrical ratios used by film. See Figure 6.3 for aspect ratios in use today. Cinematographers usually compose the image to look properly balanced in one aspect ratio but

will sometimes “protect” the image for later television broadcasts that may crop off the sides or show extra image above and below what was seen theatrically.

Sometimes the frame’s balance is symmetri- cal and calls attention to itself by its equal division into two parts. Typically, however, a shot conforms to the rule of thirds. Briefly, this principle divides the screen into three equal parts, whether from side to side, top to bottom, or foreground of the scene to the background of the scene (or any combina- tion). One-third of the image is balanced by the other two-thirds. This may be based on ratios of light to dark, distribution of char- acters or objects, or of subject(s) to back- ground. Most often, a character’s eyes are on the borderline between the top and middle third of the screen, giving a slight amount of “headroom” above, with the character

placed on the left or right third of the screen looking into the two-thirds that shows other charac- ters or scenery. If a character is placed looking off screen with two-thirds of empty scenery behind him instead of in front of him, the audience will expect that someone or something will soon be entering that empty space, and this type of image composition can thus increase dramatic tension.

The framing of a shot also can reinforce, emphasize, or de-emphasize the relationships between characters or between a character and the setting or specific props. For example, a scene depict- ing a very religious character may take care to include some religious objects or symbols in the background every time that character is on the screen. A character expecting an important phone call by a certain time may be framed so that a telephone or a clock is always included in the shot. One character may always be seen on screen with another character in the shot, or may always be seen without a certain character in the shot (think of The Sixth Sense).

K. C. Bailey/© Overture Films/courtesy Everett Collection

▲▲ Images are usually composed with elements of the scene broken into three approximately equal portions left to right, top to bottom, and foreground to background. They are also often approximately one-third dark to two-thirds light (or vice versa). This shot from Jack Goes Boating includes the graphic lines dividing the picture in thirds.

The Camera, the Lens, and Their Uses Chapter 6

Figure 6.3: Film aspect ratios

Of the numerous image dimensions used by filmmakers since the invention of movies, three have become standard. Commercial movie theaters today are normally equipped to project films at two aspect ratios: the 2.4:1 “scope” ratio and the 1.85:1 standard widescreen ratio. From the 1890s through 1953, films were shot in the 1.33:1 aspect ratio (sometimes known as 4:3), which continued to be used for television until the early 2000s and is still used by a few independent filmmakers. To fit onto a television screen, wider-aspect-ratio movies must have the sides cut off the image, or else be shrunk smaller, leaving blank screen space above and below. In certain cases, television may show extra image area that was intended to be masked off in theatrical screenings. Today’s 16:9 widescreen televisions must show blank screen on both sides of the image (a process called “pillar-boxing”) for films shot in any aspect ratio narrower than 1.78:1 to avoid cutting off the top and bottom of the original frame, yet they must still “letterbox” any films shot in wider aspect ratios to avoid cutting off the sides.

CinemaScope Screen Side masking pulled out for 2.4:1 aspect ratio

Normal Widescreen (same height) Side masking pulled in for 1.85:1 aspect ratio

Standard Screen (same height) Side masking pulled in for 1.37:1 aspect ratio

Source: Illustration from “Basic Booth Operation” (Jacobs, 1988, 2006), courtesy Christopher P. Jacobs. Akbar Media Services/Midco Theatres.