Cinematography : Tip For Improving Your Cinematography - Film Courage - R.L. Scott by Florin Şumălan

This is an interesting approach to using a “look book”. I often spend time finding images that display the different feels that I wish to get across in a production. Studying the images to understand more of what is creating the feel I am after. This can be colour, framing, contrast, movement, etc. Add to this the decades of experience that the title “DP” infers that person brings to a project with many many thousands of setups in their memory and there is a vast library of images to draw from.

The idea of re-creating images created by masters is a centuries old practice in art schools. You learn what they did by doing what they did, recreating the image you see. Being a copy is always denoted in the title or description of the finished artwork. In a professional production setting, this practice of trying to remake a shot you like by moving things in your frame about until it matches an image you are holding in your hand has a few problems. It takes a lot of time, which is expensive on a shooting set. It draws into serious question the capabilities of anyone seen doing this. And, it is plagiarism. None of those are good and each and every one should rightly get you fired.

I am somewhat astounded that anyone was putting this forward as a method of image creation on a set for a real production.

Andrew Sobkovich, I think this method is for learning, that's how I understood from what R.L. Scott said; is in the beginning, when you are trying to train your eye. I think this can help if you want to get inspired by great artists. This can be a way to get that sense of how to make beautiful shots and then create your own beautiful shots.

If you are making a shot exactly like a shot from some movie, maybe you want to pay tribute in a way to that cinematographer, maybe you want to say that you admire him and that he is one of the great artists you got inspired from. There are examples like this in movies.

There is article in Business Insider on Quentin Tarantino analyzing how he pays homage to old films... If you watch his films, you don't really think twice about the setups, but if you know that Quentin is a fan of old films and routinely screens them at his home on film prints, you can find many examples in his films where his setups mirror or pay homage to setups in the old films that he loves.

https://www.businessinsider.com/quentin-tarantino-movies-steals-cinema-h...

Florin, while he does say it is for beginners, at about 3:10 he describes how to use the technique when adjusting a shot that had been set up on a shoot. Copying masterworks for practice and education is an honored artistic tradition, plagiarizing is not.

Why would anyone who calls themselves a “cinematographer” actually use such a technique outside of a teaching/learning situation? Too many people want to be given a title instead of earning it.

I don't know, Andrew. He says also at about 3:30: "as you do that it's gonna slowly begin to train your eye to have a more cinematic composition". I see this is as a way to get inspired and then create yourself beautiful shots.

Anyway, I don't think it's bad if you have a good reason for doing a shot exactly like one from another movie.