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What Is Cinematography?
Cinematography is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work… when you go to church… when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth (Morpheus).
We love cinema no matter how much the formats audiences and distribution may have changed. We have been telling stories in motion ever since the Lumiere brothers first. Brought us this gift and since that inception, great thinkers have attempted to explain our connection with it. They have said that movies are dreams but, there are windows in two worlds and lives that are not our own but, they allow us to sculpt in time but as poetic these descriptions are they capture the specificity of the art form and our ability manipulate it or if this is about the art of visual storytelling then the heart of cinema is cinematography. Now cinematography is not only about how we capture the action of the scene it is how we show that action to the audience. It just means that cinematography is all about communicating with the viewer take, but because the cinematography is often so beautiful and so emotional, it makes us assume that the murky process of filming movies must be built on some murky instinct, but instead, like all disciplines, cinematography is built on principles of concrete understanding because is a language. It sounds so simple, but it’s like zooming in on the atomic level, you get to see how it really works on people. Think about it in terms of a language analogy, words have meanings, sometimes a few of them, but they have clear definitions. We have verbs now in sentence structure these rules are critical to our use of language but also, we build on them, evolve them, invert them and use them ironically. The key understanding is that rules are at the heart of how we speak to each other and us understand of cinematography works the exact same way.
Now you may have all these things you want to do, and these cool shots ideas and you want to try and mimic or invent but there are still basics of the cinematic language that must be reckoned with. We must zero in on the specific words and meanings embrace the glossary of high angles low angles wide lenses depth of field color palate the more we understand the meaning of these words the better we understand the language of cinema like a language you must learn how to speak. For example, you were filming a scene and wanted to show that someone was really scared. The first tool, the cinematic language you would reach for is the high angle, the subject looks down on the victim cowering below showing the person in a place of being threatened. Now you could say all come on it just showing a person scared and thats why you think that, but the language of cinema does more than that it emphasizes it’s not just about the information (whats happening on screen), its the way that information. Is being shown the way it evokes emotion and makes it scarier. The way it goes right past the connection of our brains and dyes into our nervous system and can do this because it understands the perspective. Imagine if you pursued the opposite tack. For example, in Jurassic World, there is a scene and theres a camera angle looking from the monsters perspective and we wanted to no longer be with the monster looking down on the scared human and instead emphasize with her feeling, in that case, we would switch to a lower angle with her looking up at the monster our perspective would be her perspective. The monster would tower over us with menace and violence and makes us feel the same way she does. The great thing is we instinctively understand this these are the kind of things that happen in movies all the time just with a slider and more sublet emphasis. You think of that famous scene in the graduate, where Dustin Hoffman is being guided around at the party by his parents, they take up the sides of the frame dominating over him as he shrinks into the lower center, its same exact principle as the verts of horror movies shots, but just used in much more subtle conducts. The cinematography is obviously not a series of mechanical static angles. Cinema is alive, it moves and just like with angles, the way camera moves tells us something to the smoothness of the steadicams or tracking shots and stills us with confidence, ease and an omnipresent godlike ability to go through action with clarity and impunity a documentary style organic movement makes us feel uneasy like we were witnessing the real world. Dutch angles make us feel like the world is off-kilter skewed and we can use any number of techniques to go beyond the layers of surface and peer in at the people who lay under them to unfurl the world before us these tactics reveal the heart of cinematherapy where you put the camera doesnt just allow you to tell the story it tells you what to think and feel about the story you are watching. Cinema is an effect the movie gods view and sometimes, it can seem like this movie god is actively investigating people, sometimes this movie god is trying to show us something about these people they dont even want to show themselves because, the god of a movie universe is the storytellers behind the camera. Therefore, it is up to the cinematherapy to decide what they wish to communicate to emphasize to us make us feel something, you think that you want your action heroes to be unstoppable, cool, refreshing but doing so can easily lose the dramatic effect of a fallible hero in danger, making the audience feel that way to. Either way, it’s all about what you want to communicate to your audience.
What Does Animation Use Cinematography For?
Live action movies depend heavily on staging a set and a camera to capture scenes while animation requires simulating movement with a sequence. Frame by frame drawing which is why animation requires a talented artist/animator.
With live action movies, the art style can be done to a certain limitation, while there is no limitation to animation art style. The animation itself has more art style from different countries, from west to east the animation style are different. For example, Disney, anime, stop motion, etc. With animation, there are infinite different possibilities/worlds that can be created as well as various characters/species that can have their own perks. I know that with live action, CGI has contributed a lot to it specially, Marvel, DC, SONY, etc.
However, sometimes CGI stands out and takes you away from the world youre watching. With animation, the style and animation style has already been developed, so any new or quirky things are usually kept in the same style, and therefore less likely to knock you out of the reality. Examples of this would-be majority of Pixar (literally all of them) and studio Ghibli, both stand out to me personally. Not only because of the art style but some of the things/creatures that appear in My Neighbor Totoro or spirited away would look very different in live action/CG. In addition to this, you can see, you could almost analyze the difference between the anime Death Note (directed by TetsurM Araki) and the live-action movie Death Note (directed by Adam Wingard). Seeing Ryuk, a character in Death Note, in the anime, and Ryuk in the live-action has two different effects on an audience. In the anime, the character had a big part to play, his character development was very impressive; however, live action version of it couldn’t achieve all his personality from the anime. Also, they even had hidden messages in the anime. Ryuk has a great fondness for apples, stating the addiction to be a comparable of cigarettes and alcohol for humans. He also suffers certain symptoms of withdrawal symptoms involving twisting himself up like a pretzel and doing handstands. His addiction to apple is like a metaphor to humans addictions to drugs, etc. Live-action take on Death Note also informed the audience that Ryuk is addicted to apple, but the way they presented him wasnt a clear presentation of him from the anime. In the live action, his character seemed much more mysterious, scary and evil. Whereas in the anime he was lazy and was to entertain himself which is the reason why he bought the death note into humans world, he was much more likeable in the anime.
Speaking of hidden messages, animation movies tend to show stronger metaphors compared to live action when trying to portray a message. For example, in animation movies, metaphors/hidden messages are often done better due to how well they have been hidden to viewers. Often are unable to become aware of the hidden messages until the further analysis has been made. An animated film that has a hidden message/story is Spirted Away, the movie overall is about a girl, 10-years -old Chihiro, and her parents getting lost in a spirited and her finding a way out while discovering the place and the people who live there; however, the director of the movie himself, Hayao Miyazaki, has confirmed that the story is about Japanese brothel industrial. There are many hints given in the movie such as the writing above the bathhouse says yu, meaning hot water. And during the Edo period bathhouses were brothels and the women were known as yuna or hot water women. Another big hint was Yubaba, which means hot water old women and that was the name of the old witch that runs the bathhouse in the movie. Signing a contract to work in the bathhouse and changing your name is what prostitutes used to do in Japanese culture which is what Yubaba does to Chihiro.
Recently, Disney made a remake live action movie of Beauty and the Beast, but the more I watched it the more I am bothered by them. I find nearly every shot to be beautifully composed, perfectly lit and bursting with rich colors yet something about it just feels off. Comparing an identical scene from the 1991 animated version proved insightful for me and I hope of interest to you the scene from the 2017 live action version opens with two beautiful shots of a clock striking eight oclock immediately, I ask why two shots? Hitchcocks rules, the size of an object in a frame should be equal to its importance in the story at that moment . The sudden cut to an extreme closeup tells me this is as important as the clock striking midnight for Cinderella, but is it? Furthermore, Emma Watson performances didnt even come close to the animated version had. For example theres this scene Belle askes the beast to come into the light, after he captures her father and in the animated movie belle very curiously, cautiously tells the beast to come into the light so that she came see him and he takes a step forward and this small beam of lights fall down on him and its just this really powerful effect when shes looking up at him in fear and she turns away in distaste now in the live action movie, Bella tells beast come into the light and instead of waiting for him to step forward she takes a candle stick and shoves forwards towards his face so shes revealing him herself instead giving him a chance this subtle difference but it creates a big chance in her character and the cinematography shots where used in the animated version crated a better impact.
Conclusion
I believe that animation is better than live action because animation movies need much more talent and skills than a standard film does. The traditional hand-drawn animating has a bigger impact how cinematography mostly, because of the hand-drawn style. Overall, live action and animation can come up with amazing cinematography and both have they difficulties, but animation shows that its harder but out is much greater. I also understood that with animation being produced in from so many countries and so many cultures that it has a different art style which also means it new ways of cinematography. Anime style has a different cinematography to Americans animation style so watching animation has a variety of different, new and refreshing feeling to the audience’s eyes.
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