Re-defining the job description
"Where have we come from, Who are we, Where are we going?" The three essential questions of humankind posed by Paul Gauguin. These questions are just as compelling when applied to cinema technology as social philosophy.
This article from 1999 in the LA Times is a fascinating look from the early trenches at the rise of the digital.
For me the most interesting element of this article is this quote -
"Electronic formats allow directors and cinematographers to control things they can't control on film, where the variables in colour tones, contrast and density are less precise because of the nature of traditional laboratory processing. This is their chance to go in and say, 'Okay, this is what I really wanted to do.' They may come in with an almost romantic attachment to film, but often it's the manipulated digital image that ends up being closer to what they had in mind"This is the great shift not the format itself; as Jay Rose comments in his book Digital Sound for Digital Video,
we don't use digital because its better, we use digital because it's robust but the way the format changes the way cinematic form is made and by proxy how it is experienced.
Cinematography used to be about what happens in the camera but when the digital age allows the cinematographer to continue to work on the cinematography in the post-production phase, long after the camera has been packed away, not to mention cinematography that takes place with virtual cameras with no physical manifestation at all; we need to seriously re-consider what cinematography is.
Lord of the Rings DOP
Andrew Lesnie discusses here how DI and Colour Grading changed his 'camera work' allowed a rethink of where cinematography traditionally begins and ends.
We're in a world where the DOP works in post production, the Editor starts work before the camera rolls, Compositing and Effects production begins on location, Cameras need not be physical and where Live Action is an Option not a Norm.
Its a fascinating time to be making moving images...
Posted at 01:00AM May 04, 2007
by Mike Jones in general |
