Cinematography

Love this, thanks for sharing!

You're welcome, Emily J. Love these roundtable and behind-the-scenes videos! I learn so much.

what a great roundtable, thank you for sharing!

You're welcome, Sam Rivera.

I always love these!

Big fan of Sofia Coppola, thank you for sharing!

You're welcome, Sam Rivera. I plan on watching more of Sofia's movies. Mainly "Lost in Translation" and "The Godfather Part III."

Definitely Google this as there’s some great articles; information about how to deal with this issue.

What about AFI? I am sure they offer camera classes.

Suzanne Bronson Thanks! That's cool that AFI offers tuition free courses. The Women's Intensive Cinematography program sounds interesting.

Lindbergh E Hollingsworth I will be attending the NAB Show in Vegas for work this year to film our booth. I'm hoping some of them will be there.

Last I knew Panavision is a good place to go to for things like that. Not just getting to build camera sets and test them out, but then you're at Panavision :-)

Lindsey Jones , you can also visit the Sigma Cine showroom in LA to test Sigma lenses. They also throw a number of events throughout the year at their LA location.

I didn't see a ton of new films this year, but I was really surprised by how good the visuals and story of A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes were. It's a prequel to the Hunger Games franchise, which I thought was just ok. So I went in with low expectations and actually left really impressed by it.

But my favorite cinematography that I saw this year was in the Apple TV+ series, Foundation. The visuals are INCREDIBLE. I was blown away.

For me, I was actually surprised by the Cinematography of "The Sound of Freedom." External night shots are always hard to do if you want to include the background and with the budget they had, shooting on a river, at night - it must have been a logistical nightmare. I really did like it a lot though.

Jack Cardiff's early Technicolor films like the eye-popping BLACK NARCISSUS and THE RED SHOES.

Robert Richardson's body of work.

This year, Hoyte Van Hoytema's work on OPPENHEIMER, and Rodrigo Prieto's KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON.

Just re-watched 'High Plains Drifter' with Clint Eastwood. What a cinematic treat.

Loved Aki Kaurismäki’s film “Fallen Leaves”. He still shoots on 35mm film.

Florin Şumălan thank you so much for sharing this. In the history of cinema, I love the likes of Tarkovsky and Kieslowski, for their poetic style of filmmaking, but I think we can see how exacting Tarkovsky’s method could be.

And of course, Nykvist was a master. I loved what he said about not being technical all the time, but to use intuition, otherwise all your films look alike!

“Light is the philosophy of the cinematographic art.” Love that.

Andrei was an absolute genius. Thank you for posting this. Warms my heart :)

Geoff Hall , Nathan Woodward , you're welcome. I thought it was interesting to see a glimpse of how they worked together. I don't know why I thought that they didn't shoot in a studio. I thought they filmed the interiors too in a location, a real house and mostly natural lighting.

Florin Şumălan me too, Florin. I had forgotten that some of the interiors were studio shots, but watching this, it all makes sense.

There is a book called Master Shots - get it.

Now, this should be a collaborative conversation between the director and the cinematographer. I have never been in a situation where a director has let me go all willy nilly on my own, nor have I ever let a cinematographer do that when I'm directing. That being said, there was one time when I had an emergency and had to actually leave the set (never do that unless someone is dying, and they were) and my cinematographer, because we had the conversation before hand, a bunch of times, knew exactly what I wanted and delivered it.

That being said, the first rule of camera movement is that it must be motivated. Now, I've been on a set where the director just didn't want the camera to stop moving. Keeping your job is good motivation, but just because is bad directing.

Anytime the camera moves it should be to follow the action or reveal something. For example, two people exit out a door and they leave the credit card on the table. Pan to them leaving and tilt down to reveal the card they forgot.

People are walking down a hall? Good use for a dolly.

Crazy psychotic warzone, sounds like a steadicam or handheld is a decision to make, for a warzone you're probably going to want handheld, for following a person up a flight of stairs your probably going to want a steadicam.

End of the movie with a hero riding off into the sunset? Boom up or Drone it.

I hope that helped answer your question. :-)

Should always be based on the the scene or story. Coming up we have a fight scene. Although the show I am on we are on dollies the majority of the time, stable shots, the director would like to use hand held cameras for the fight to get a more frenetic look. On Animal Kingdom we almost always used hand held cameras, that was the look chosen for the show. Used a crane, like Nathan said if it was a big establishing shot or something that needed a bigger scope. Steadicam if it was more of a walk and talk. This is based on what I've seen working as an AD and working with the directors and DPs.

It is critical to understand what the emotion is. If it is joyful and happiness, all the light I can muster. The more despair a character gets the less light they get. The more intense the feeling the centered (never fully centered) the talent gets in the frame. Romance? Warmer light. It's hard to do passion in a cold color scheme. I know that is lighting, and not composition. It is a good idea to use negative space in moments of sadness and despair as well. Face the talent toward the shorter distance to the edge to give the idea they are turning their back on whatever is in front of them. Good post :-)

Great answer Nathan Woodward !

It has been my experience that many times the color palette of a film is decided between the film's Director and it's Art Director. It's is too big of a decision to saddle the Director of Photography with. That being said, color plays a significant role in every production, and highlights the importance for a camera's crew's attention to detail in ensuring the color temperature is universally correct to balance the film's palette.

This is actually one of my favorite topics of conversation.

First, foremost, front and center: The choice of your lens is drastically more important than the choice of your camera. The camera can cost you 5 million dollars, but if you put a 150 dollar piece of glass in front of it you have a 150 dollar picture. The inverse is also correct. You can have a 150 dollar camera, with a 5 million dollar lens, whatever you capture will probably look amazing. Lenses are expensive, but they are a better investment than cameras. You would specifically want a PL mount on your lens set. My personal favorite glass is Zeiss. Rent the camera.

Now to the camera. Important? Obviously. There are so many factors that are going to go into this question. Film or Digital? For the sake of a contemporary era I'm going to assume digital. Is your targeted release format IMAX? Cinemascope? If yes - you don't have a lot of options. Now, a disclaimer - Black Magic Design cameras are my favorite. If you are shooting at night and do not have a lot of resources for lighting the set I would avoid those cameras. Now, if you're shooting a standard film with regular lighting the camera will work great for two reasons - they're relatively cost affective, and their codec is a natural fit into Davincci Resolve - you can thank me later.

I tend to avoid using the Red cameras because I don't like their workflow. Many times producers and I are at odds because they want to play with the latest and greatest. I'm not saying Red is bad, just not for me. It is a very capable camera but you don't need Nike's to run a marathon.

How big of a space are you filming in? Are you going to have a Zolly shot (Vertigo)? For example, if you're in a small room with a window and you want to compress the background outside your going to need a smaller camera. Something along the lines of Canon's C series.

So there's a lot of things that go into those decisions. I hope that answer helped.